f public law, the principles on which it treats the clergy
at home, and the manner in which it has trampled on the rights of the
Pope and the interests of religion, the perfidy and despotism it
exhibits, render it impossible that any securities it may offer to the
Pope can possess a real value. Moreover, in the unsettled state of the
kingdom, the uncertain succession of parties, and the fluctuation of
power, whatever guarantee is proposed by the ministry, there is nobody
to guarantee the guarantor. It is a system without liberty and without
stability; and the Pope can never be reconciled to it, or become a
dweller in the new Italian kingdom.

If he must choose between the position of a subject and of an exile, he
is at home in the whole Catholic world, and wherever he goes he will be
surrounded by children who will greet him as their father. It may become
an inevitable, but it must always be a heroic resolution. The court and
the various congregations for the administration of the affairs of the
Church are too numerous to be easily moved. In former times the
machinery was more simple, and the whole body of the pontifical
government could be lodged in a single French monastery. The absence of
the Pope from Rome will involve great difficulties and annoyance; but it
is a lesser evil than a surrender of principle, which cannot be
recalled.

To remove the Holy See to France would, under present circumstances, be
an open challenge to a schism, and would afford to all who wish to
curtail the papal rights, or to interrupt the communication between the
Pope and the several churches, the most welcome pretexts, and it would
put arms in the hands of governments that wish to impede the action of
his authority within their States.

The conclusion of the book is as follows:--

If the Court of Rome should reside for a time in Germany, the Roman
prelates will doubtless be agreeably surprised to discover that our
people is able to remain Catholic and religious without the
leading-strings of a police, and that its religious sentiments are a
better protection to the Church than the episcopal _carceri_, which,
thank God, do not exist. They will learn that the Church in Germany
is able to maintain herself without the Holy Office; that our
bishops, although, or because, they use no physical compulsion, are
reverenced like princes by the people, that they are received with
triumphal arches, that their arrival