vereign; 2. That of
a foreign kind, acknowledging the authority of the pope, This Roman
influence was, in the nature of things, superior to the local; it
expressed the sovereign will of one man over all the nations of
the continent conjointly, and gathered overwhelming power from its
compactness and unity. The local influence was necessarily of a feeble
nature, since it was commonly weakened by the rivalries of conterminous
states, and the dissensions dexterously provoked by its competitor. On
not a single occasion could the various European states form a coalition
against their common antagonist. Whenever a question arose, they were
skillfully taken in detail, and commonly mastered. The ostensible
object of papal intrusion was to secure for the different peoples moral
well-being; the real object was to obtain large revenues, and give
support to vast bodies of ecclesiastics. The revenues thus abstracted
were not infrequently many times greater than those passing into the
treasury of the local power. Thus, on the occasion of Innocent IV.
demanding provision to be made for three hundred additional Italian
clergy by the Church of England, and that one of his nephews--a mere
boy--should have a stall in Lincoln Cathedral, it was found that the sum
already annually abstracted by foreign ecclesiastics from England was
thrice that which went into the coffers of the king.

While thus the higher clergy secured every political appointment
worth having, and abbots vied with counts in the herds of slaves
they possessed--some, it is said, owned not fewer than twenty
thousand--begging friars pervaded society in all directions, picking
up a share of what still remained to the poor. There was a vast body of
non-producers, living in idleness and owning a foreign allegiance, who
were subsisting on the fruits of the toil of the laborers. It could not
be otherwise than that small farms should be unceasingly merged into
the larger estates; that the poor should steadily become poorer; that
society, far from improving, should exhibit a continually increasing
demoralization. Outside the monastic institutions no attempt at
intellectual advancement was made; indeed, so far as the laity were
concerned, the influence of the Church was directed to an opposite
result, for the maxim universally received was, that "ignorance is the
mother of devotion."

The settled practice of republican and imperial Rome was to have swift
communication with all her