letter to Colonel Ney the solution of the
problem: _Secularization and the Code Napoleon_; but it is evident that
the Court of Rome will struggle to the last moment, and by every possible
means, against the realization of this twofold combination. It is easily
understood that it may appear to accept civil and even political reforms,
taking care always to render them illusory. But it knows too well that
secularization and the code Napoleon, once introduced into the edifice of
the temporal power, would undermine it and cause it to fall, simply by
removing its principal supports--clerical privileges and canon law.
Clerical organization opposes insurmountable impediments to all kinds of
innovations."

Cavour urged, in conclusion, that "the legations" must be separated
politically, and a viceroy set over those provinces. Walewski and
Clarendon supported these views, but cautiously using the enigmatic
language of diplomacy. The Plenipotentiaries of the other Powers were
silent, or refused to give an opinion, on the ground that they had no
instructions. M. de Mauteuffel alone, the Prussian representative, sternly
observed that such recriminations as M. de Cavour had brought forward were
very like an appeal to the revolutionary movements in Italy. Prussia did
not, at that time, foresee what advantage it was destined to reap from the
alliance of the Italian revolution with Napoleon III. France, however, had
reason to dread lest the chief of her choice should return to the dark
practices of his youth. Her too well-founded apprehensions were confirmed
and aggravated when it came to the public ear, through the newspapers of
the time, that the Emperor had held a too intimate interview with M. de
Cavour at the waters of Plombieres. All this, notwithstanding an alliance
of France with Piedmont, for the destruction of the Pope's temporal
sovereignty, appeared as yet to be so completely out of the question, that
the French ambassador at Rome refuted publicly the calumnies which M. de
Cavour had so selfishly promulgated. Count de Rayneval had been a long
time at Rome, first as Secretary of the Embassy of King Louis Philippe,
and afterwards as Plenipotentiary of the Republic, before he was appointed
to represent the Emperor Napoleon. None could be better qualified to give
a luminous report of the state of matters at Rome. The revolutionary
press, however, never noticed it, and the government refused to publish it
in the _Moniteur_, prefer