uld submit to
constitutional monarchy in favor of the Holy Father. This is assured
to us partly from information which we believe we possess as to the
concert with Austria; from the proclamations of General Oudinot; from
the formal declarations made by successive envoys to the Triumvirate;
from the silence obstinately maintained whenever we have sought to
approach the political question and obtain a formal declaration of the
fact proved in our note of the 16th, that the institutions by
which the Roman people are governed at this time are the free and
spontaneous expression of the wish of the people inviolable when
legally ascertained. For the rest, the vote of the French Assembly
sustains implicitly the fact that we affirm.

"In such a situation, under the menace of an inadmissible compromise,
and of negotiations which the state of our people no way provoked, our
part, Monsieur, could not be doubtful. To resist,--we owed this to
our country, to France, to all Europe. We ought, in fulfilment of a
mandate loyally given, loyally accepted, maintain to our country the
inviolability, so far as that was possible to us, of its territory,
and of the institutions decreed by all the powers, by all the
elements, of the state. We ought to conquer the time needed for appeal
from France ill informed to France better informed, to save the sister
republic the disgrace and the remorse which must be hers if, rashly
led on by bad suggestions from without, she became, before she was
aware, accomplice in an act of violence to which we can find no
parallel without going back to the partition of Poland in 1772. We
owed it to Europe to maintain, as far as we could, the fundamental
principles of all international life, the independence of each people
in all that concerns its internal administration. We say it without
pride,--for if it is with enthusiasm that we resist the attempts of
the Neapolitan monarchy and of Austria, our eternal enemy, it is with
profound grief that we are ourselves constrained to contend with the
arms of France,--we believe in following this line of conduct we
have deserved well, not only of our country, but of all the people of
Europe, even of France herself.

"We come to the actual question. You know, Monsieur, the events which
have followed the French intervention. Our territory has been invaded
by the king of Naples.

"Four thousand Spaniards were to embark on the 17th for invasion of
this country. The Austrians,