used to be
punished. He felt that his own temporal power was abused by the
overawing influence of Austria, and he pardoned those who had offended
only a foreign potentate, and were suffering under the condemnation of
their own rulers. He would have led the movement to a peaceful and
desirable result, but, alas! the oppression of centuries had made the
many mad; and their limbs had been so galled with the manacles of
political oppression that they became restive under the wholesome
restraints that order and appropriate government demand; dragged
forward by these eccentric bodies, and restrained by the timidity and
prejudices of some of his legitimate advisers, Pius has felt that his
triple crown was the means of triple sorrow; but he has also shown
that he understood the maxim, that "he only is fitted to rule who
knows how to sacrifice."

The arms of the Italian States and the influence of the Pope have been
successful against Austria, and even though that overgrown and tumid
empire should reconquer all her late possessions in Lombardy, and be
as omnipotent in Venice as she is in Triest or Vienna, still the
prestige of power is gone, and she can no longer extend an influence
over the human mind that tends upward in its views. The _taste_ of
independence has been enjoyed--the tree of knowledge has yielded some
of its fruits--and hereafter there can be no rest, no quiet, without
something of liberty, much of science.

The question has been raised as to the existence of the power of the
Pope deprived of his temporalities. That is, can the Pope yield up the
government of the Papal States to a secular ruler, and maintain the
full amount of spiritual power which he now exercises, and which he
and those of his creed deem a necessary portion of his official life.

We are noways concerned in the settlement of that question, beyond its
bearing upon the condition of Italy, and through her upon many other
portions of the earth. We do not know that there is _now_ any
probability that the Papal States will pass under another ruler than
the Pope; but we entertain no doubt that the Pope could exercise all
the functions of Bishop of Rome, with all the supremacy which he
claims for that office over other bishoprics, as well without the
appanages of temporalities as with them. There is nothing in the
office, or all that is claimed for it, that renders direct temporal
power necessary. Bishops of Rome existed for centuries with all the
s