ternal entail, which binds it over to perpetual sterility. It is God's,
_i.e._ it is the Church's; and no one,--no, not even the Pope,--dare
alienate a single acre of it. No Pope would set his face to such a piece
of reformation, well knowing that every brotherhood and sisterhood in
Rome would rise in arms against him. And even though he should screw his
courage to such an encounter, he is met by the canon law. The Pope who
shall dare to secularize a foot-breadth of land which has been gifted to
the Church is by that law accursed. Here, then, is the price which the
Romans pay for the Papacy. Outside the walls of the city lie the estates
of the Church, depastured at certain seasons by a few herds, tended by
men clad in skins, and looking as savage as the animals they tend; while
inside the walls are some hundred thousand Romans, enduring from one
year's end to another all the miseries of a partial famine. Nor is there
the least hope that matters will mend so long as the Papacy lasts. For
while the Papacy is in Italy, the Campagna, once so populous and rich,
will be what it now is,--a desert.

And the Papal States, lapsed into more than primeval sterility, overrun
by brigandage and beggary, are the picture of what Britain would be
under the Papacy. Let the Roman Church get the upper hand in this
country, and, be assured, the first thing it will do will be to demand
back every acre of land that once belonged to it. Before the
Reformation, half the lands of England, and a third of the lands of
Scotland, were in the possession of the Church. She keeps a chart of
them to this hour: she knows every foot-breadth of British soil that at
any time belonged to her: she holds its present possessors to be robbers
and sacrilegious men; and the first moment she has the power, she will
compel them to disgorge what she holds to be ill-gotten wealth, and
endow her with the broad acres she once possessed. Nor will she stop
here. By haunting death-beds,--by putting in motion the machinery of the
confessional,--by the threat of purgatory in this case, and the lure of
paradise in that,--she will speedily add to her former ample domain. And
what will our country then become? We shall have Mother Church for
landlord; and while she feasts daily at her sumptuous board, we shall
have what the Romans now have,--the crumbs. We shall have monks and
nuns for our farmers; and under their management, farewell to the
smiling fields, the golden harvests, a