aller states by the great powers: now they
are abandoned. France in Italy, Russia in Hungary, Prussia in Germany, a
little later perhaps in Switzerland; these are now the masters of the
continent. England is thus made a nullity; the "celsa sedet in Eolus in
arce," which Canning delighted to quote, to express the moderating
function which he wished to reserve for his country, is now a
meaningless phrase. Let not your preachers of the theory of material
interests, your speculators upon extended markets deceive themselves;
there is history to teach them that political influence and commercial
influence are closely bound together. Political sympathies hold the key
of the markets; the tariff of the Roman Republic will appear to you, if
you study it, to be a declaration of sympathy towards England to which
your government did not think it necessary to respond.

* * * * *

And yet, above the question of right, above the question of political
interest, both of which were of a nature to excite early the attention
of England, there is, as I have said, another question being agitated at
Rome of a very different kind of importance, and which ought to have
aroused all those who believe in the vital principle of religious
reformation--it is that of liberty of conscience. The religious question
which broods at the root of all political questions showed itself there
great and visible in all its European importance. The Pope at Gaeta was
the theory of absolute infallible authority exiled from Rome for ever;
and exiled from Rome was to be exiled from the world. The abolition of
the temporal power evidently drew with it, in the minds of all those who
understood the secret of the papal authority, the emancipation of men's
minds from the spiritual authority. The principle of liberty and of free
consent, elevated by the Constituent Assembly into a living active
right, tended rapidly to destroy the absolutist dogma which from Rome
aims more than ever to enchain the universe. The high aristocracy of the
Roman Catholic clergy well know the impossibility of retaining the soul
in darkness, in the midst of light inundating the intelligence of men;
for this reason they carried off their Pope to Gaeta; for this reason
they now refuse all compromise. They know that any compromise would be
fatal to them; that they must re-enter as conquerors, or not at all. And
in the same way that the aristocracy of the clergy felt this