ife; the nature of theocratic
government; the possibility (to borrow Cavour's famous phrase) of a free
church in a free state; and above all,--as he says to Manning now, and
said to all the world twenty years later in the day of the Vatican
decrees,--the mischiefs done to the cause of what he took for saving
truth by evil-doing in the heart and centre of the most powerful of all
the churches. His translation of Farini, followed by his article on the
same subject in the _Edinburgh_ in 1852, was his first blast against
'the covetous, domineering, implacable policy represented in the term
Ultramontanism; the winding up higher and higher, tighter and tighter,
of the hierarchical spirit, in total disregard of those elements by
which it ought to be checked and balanced; and an unceasing, covert,
smouldering war against human freedom, even in its most modest and
retiring forms of private life and of the individual conscience.' With
an energy not unworthy of Burke at his fiercest, he denounces the fallen
and impotent regality of the popes as temporal sovereigns. 'A monarchy
sustained by foreign armies, smitten with the curse of social
barrenness, unable to strike root downward or bear fruit upward, the
sun, the air, the rain soliciting in vain its sapless and rotten
boughs--such a monarchy, even were it not a monarchy of priests, and
tenfold more because it is one, stands out a foul blot upon the face of
creation, an offence to Christendom and to mankind.'[255] As we shall
soon see, he was just as wrathful, just as impassioned and as eloquent,
when, in a memorable case in his own country, the temporal power
bethought itself of a bill for meddling with the rights of a Roman
voluntary church.

FOOTNOTES:

[241] For the two _Letters to Lord Aberdeen_, see _Gleanings_, iv.

[242] There was a slight discrepancy between the two on this point, Mr.
Gladstone describing the position as above, Aberdeen believing that it
was by his persuasion that Mr. Gladstone dropped his intention of
instant publicity. Probably the latter used such urgent language about
an appeal to the public opinion of England and Europe, that Lord
Aberdeen supposed it to be an immediate and not an ulterior resort.
Aberdeen to Castelcicala, September 15, 1851, and Mr. Gladstone to
Aberdeen, October 3.

[243] The mere announcement caused such a demand that a second edition
was required almost before the first was published.

[244] _Wesleyan Methodist Magazine_, O