ntiff has been respected and still subsists."
Two words on this point--just two words--shall suffice to make us understand
the whole matter.

"It is perfectly true that the spiritual power of the Papacy is its
principal power; the temporal is only an accessory, but that accessory is
one that is indispensible. The Catholic world has a right to insist upon
it, that the infallible organ of its belief shall be free and independent.
The Catholic world cannot know with certainty, as it needs must know,
whether that organ is really free and independent, unless it be sovereign.
For he alone who is sovereign, depends on no other power. Hence it is that
the question of sovereignty, which everywhere else is a political
question, is in Rome a religious question."

"Constituent assemblies may exist rightfully elsewhere; at Rome they
cannot; at Rome there can be no constituent power outside of and apart
from the constituted power. Neither Rome herself nor the Pontifical States
belong to Rome or belong to the Pope--they belong to the Catholic world.
The Catholic world has recognized, in the Pope, the lawful possessor
thereof, in order to his being free and independent; and the Pope may not
strip himself of this sovereignty, this independence."

The greatest statesmen of the age, such as Guizot, Thiers, and
Montalembert, in France; Normanby, Lansdowne, Disraeli, and even
Palmerston, in England; the statesmen of Prussia, and even those of the
Russian Empire; the Emperor of Austria and his advisers; Spain, Portugal
and Naples, all shared the opinion of the illustrious Spanish statesman,
Donoso Cortes. All alike favored the restoration of the Holy Father, and
the securing of his government against the accidents of revolution in the
future by placing it under the protection of the Great Powers. "The
affairs Rome," wrote the Russian Chancellor in a circular, "cause to the
government of his Majesty the Emperor great concern; and it were a serious
error to think that we take a less lively interest than the other Catholic
governments in the situation to which his Holiness Pope Pius IX. has been
brought by the events of the time. There can be no room for doubting that
the Holy Father shall receive from the Emperor a loyal support towards the
restoration of his temporal and spiritual power, and that the Russian
government shall co-operate cheerfully in all the measures necessary to
this result; for it cherishes against the court of Rome no sent