n and tenure of religious property than would be interesting
now. The object of the Siccardi laws, as they were named after the
Minister of Grace and Justice who introduced them, and of the stronger
measures to which they led up, was to make the priest amenable to the
common law of the land in all except that which referred to his
spiritual functions; to put a limit on the amassment of wealth by
religious corporations; to check the multiplication of convents and
the multiplication of feast days, both of which encouraged the people
in sloth and idleness; to withdraw education from the sole control of
ecclesiastics; and finally, to authorise civil marriage, but without
making it compulsory. The programme was large, and it took years to
carry it out. The Vatican contended that it was contrary to the
Concordat which existed between the Holy See and the Court of
Sardinia. Massimo d'Azeglio replied that the maintenance of the
Concordat, in all its parts, meant the ruin of the state; that he had
tried every means of conciliation, made every effort towards arriving
at a compromise, and that since his endeavours had failed in
consequence of the refusal of the Vatican to abate pretensions which
it neither could nor did enforce in Austria, Naples or Spain, heaven
and the world must judge between Rome and Piedmont, between Cardinal
Antonelli and himself.

The struggle throughout was bitter in the extreme, but its most
striking incident was the denial of the last Sacraments to a member of
the Government, the Minister of Agriculture, Santa Rosa, who happened
to die soon after the passing of the Act abolishing the _Foro
Ecclesiastico_. Santa Rosa was a sincerely religious man, but he
resisted all the attempts of the priest to extort a retractation, and
died unabsolved rather than leave a dishonoured name to his children.

The popular indignation excited by this incident was in proportion
with the importance attached to outward observances of religion in
Catholic countries; the government had to protect the Archbishop of
Turin from violence, while, at the same time, they sent him for a
month to the Citadel for having forbidden his clergy to obey the law
on the _Foro Ecclesiastico_. He and one or two of the other bishops
were afterwards expelled from the kingdom. An unwelcome necessity, but
whose was the fault? In other countries, where the privileges claimed
by the Piedmontese clergy had been abolished for centuries, did the
bishops