he higher prizes
of their career. Even the country people, who were never tainted with
the ideas of the secret societies, were not always well affected.

It is more difficult for a priest than for a layman to put aside his
private views and feelings in the administration of justice. He is the
servant and herald of grace, of forgiveness, of indulgence, and easily
forgets that in human concerns the law is inexorable, that favour to one
is often injury to many or to all, and that he has no right to place his
own will above the law. He is still more disqualified for the direction
of the police, which, in an absolute State and in troubled times, uses
its unlimited power without reference to Christian ideas, leaves
unpunished acts which are grievous sins, and punishes others which in a
religious point of view are innocent. It is hard for the people to
distinguish clearly the priestly character from the action of its bearer
in the administration of police. The same indifference to the strict
letter of the law, the same confusion between breaches of divine and of
human ordinances, led to a practice of arbitrary imprisonment, which
contrasts painfully with the natural gentleness of a priestly
government. Hundreds of persons were cast into prison without a trial or
even an examination; only on suspicion, and kept there more than a year
for greater security.

The immunities of the clergy were as unpopular as their power. The laws
and decrees of the Pope as a temporal sovereign were not held to be
binding on them unless it was expressly said, or was clear from the
context, that they were given also in his character of Head of the
Church. Ecclesiastics were tried before their own tribunals, and had the
right to be more lightly punished than laymen for the same delinquency.
Those events in the life of Achilli, which came out at his trial, had
not only brought down on him no severe punishment, but did not stand in
the way of his promotion. With all these privileges, the bulk of the
Roman clergy had little to do; little was expected of them, and their
instruction was extremely deficient.

At the end of the pontificate of Gregory XVI. the demand for reforms was
loud and universal, and men began to perceive that the defects of the
civil government were undermining the religious attachment of the
people. The conclave which raised Pius IX. to the Papal throne was the
shortest that had occurred for near three hundred years. The necessity