s
Providence, which breaks or changes the instrument when the work
is completed, and by secret and inscrutable ways conducts us to the
fulfilment of our desires and of our hopes.

"If Pius IX. refuses, the Italian people does not therefore draw back.
Nothing remains to the free people of Italy, except to unite in one
constitutional kingdom, founded on the largest basis; and if the chief
who, by our assemblies, shall be called to the highest honor, either
declines or does not answer worthily, the people will take care of
itself.

"Italians! down with all emblems of private and partial interests.
Let us unite under one single banner, the tricolor, and if he who has
carried it bravely thus far lets it fall from his hand, we will take
it one from the other, twenty-four millions of us, and, till the last
of us shall have perished under the banner of our redemption, the
stranger shall not return into Italy.

"Viva Italy! viva the Italian people!"[A]

[Footnote A: Close of "A Comment by Pio Angelo Fierortino on the
Allocution of Pius IX. spoken in the Secret Consistory of 29th April,
1848," dated Italy, 30th April, 1st year of the Redemption of Italy.]

These events make indeed a crisis. The work begun by Napoleon is
finished. There will never more be really a Pope, but only the effigy
or simulacrum of one.

The loss of Pius IX. is for the moment a great one. His name had real
moral weight,--was a trumpet appeal to sentiment. It is not the same
with any man that is left. There is not one that can be truly a leader
in the Roman dominion, not one who has even great intellectual weight.

The responsibility of events now lies wholly with the people, and
that wave of thought which has begun to pervade them. Sovereigns and
statesmen will go where they are carried; it is probable power will be
changed continually from, hand to hand, and government become, to all
intents and purposes, representative. Italy needs now quite to throw
aside her stupid king of Naples, who hangs like a dead weight on her
movements. The king of Sardinia and the Grand Duke of Tuscany will be
trusted while they keep their present course; but who can feel sure
of any sovereign, now that Louis Philippe has shown himself so mad
and Pius IX. so blind? It seems as if fate was at work to bewilder
and cast down the dignities of the world and democratize society at a
blow.

In Rome there is now no anchor except the good sense of the people.
It seems impossi