In June, 1846, the death of Gregory the Sixteenth, and the election of Cardinal Mastai and his elevation to the Papacy, under the name of Pius the Ninth, summoned us to Rome, the Eternal city. I felt a momentary grief, as I saw the mouldering ruins of pagan Rome, the ancient capital of Gentilism, and felt indignation at beholding the diminutive Rome that had supplanted it; but I felt sure that the old gods lingered still in those ruins of the Capitoline and Palatine hills, and that the time was drawing near when we might evoke Jupiter Tonans and the fiery Mars, and the Goddess of Victory, from their slumber of centuries; revive the old Roman spirit, and reëstablish the old Republic, so long triumphed over by the barbarism of the cross. Never before had I felt how thoroughly alienated from the Christian world, and assimilated in my feelings to the old Gentile world I had become. I was in the capital of the Christian world, the centre of Christian art, and of the most glorious Christian associations for two thousand years, and my heart was touched only at sight of the monuments of pagan antiquity, which time and the still more destructive hand of man had spared.
But we had no leisure for sight-seeing, and still less for sentimentalizing over the ruins of that stupendous superstition of which Rome was the capital, and which had gradually supplanted the patriarchal Christianity, only slightly corrupted, of the primitive Romans. The superficial politicians, Catholic and non-Catholic, regard the Papacy as comparatively of little political or social significancy in our times; but whoever looks a little below the surface of things, knows very well that the Pope, though weak as to his temporal states, is not only the oldest but the most influential sovereign in Europe. The death of one Pope and the accession of another, is an event which reverberates through the whole civilized world; and the policy of the sovereign pontiff, the feeble old man of the Vatican, with hardly a regiment of guards, has not seldom the preponderating weight in the councils of princes, although unseen, unrecognized—so much the more inexplicable, as there no longer remains a truly Catholic government on the globe, and not a Catholic nation in whose heart lives and breathes the old Catholic faith. Not a nation in Europe would, to-day, for the sake of religion alone, rush to the assistance of the Pope; yet the Papacy is everywhere, and not a court in Europe but trembles when it thinks of the Pope, even weak and unsupported as he is.
All the Liberals throughout the world held a jubilee as soon as they heard of the death of the old Pope, who had, no one could tell how, held them in check. The whole world seemed to have been suddenly relieved of an invisible burden, and bounded with a wild and frantic joy. The good time that had been a-coming, now could come. This joy grew wilder and more frantic still, when it was known that Cardinal Mastai was the new Pope. He was known to be gentle and humane, kind-hearted and pious, and suspected of leaning to liberal views, and of being a Giobertian; and nobody doubted that he would attempt a policy the reverse of Gregory’s. We, who were in the secret, knew that he was not the choice of Austria, and had no doubt that he would incline to France, and follow, to no inconsiderable extent, the advice of Count Rossi, the French Ambassador, and one of our friends.
At that time Guizot was at the head of the government of France under Louis Philippe, a Protestant and a quasi-conservative statesman, but with many sympathies with the European Liberals. He believed, or professed to believe, that a change in the institutions of the monarchical states in Europe, giving the people a moderate share in the government, was demanded by the exigencies of European society, and if freely offered by authority, and not given as a concession to the people in arms to effect it, would be a wise and beneficial public measure, and in an eminent degree politic too, as it would tend to extract the point from the declamations of the radicals, and prevent, or at least indefinitely postpone, the revolution with which all Western and Central Europe was threatened. He had urged this policy upon Prussia, perhaps upon Austria, certainly upon the smaller German states which had not yet adopted the constitutional régime, and upon the Pope and the other Italian princes.
We were perfectly well aware of Guizot’s policy, and knew equally well how to turn it to our account. Your doctrinaire, juste-milieu, or via-media statesmen, who follow expediency, and govern without principle, are generally regarded as wise, prudent, and eminently practical, but they are among the shortest-sighted mortals to be encountered, and are as miserable humbugs as the Genevan banker, M. Necker, who could never understand that government was any thing more than a question of finance, or its administration any thing more than the administration of a joint-stock bank. When there is no serious discontent on the part of subjects, and not the least danger of revolution or insurrection, authority may modify without danger, immediate danger at least, the constitution, in favor of popular power, as the English government did in 1832; but when there is grave discontent, with or without just cause, and a secret conspiracy is forming in behalf of liberal or popular institutions, nothing is less wise or statesmanlike than for authority to make popular concessions with a view of forestalling and disarming it. The disaffected attribute such concessions solely to the weakness and fears of the government, and only rise in their demands, and conspire with the more energy and courage.
The government, in times of general discontent, as was the case in Europe from 1839 to 1848, should either concede all and abdicate itself, or concede nothing, because, if it is to defend itself it needs all its prerogatives and the concentration of all its powers. The advice of Guizot was fitted only to weaken the powers that entertained it, and to render them, in the hour of trial, timid and undecided; and it is only where authority is timid, hesitating, and undecided, that a popular revolution can ever succeed. The only wise and even merciful way in such times is, to make, on the first outbreak, a free use of grapeshot and the bayonet. There will be no second outbreak, however powerful or well concerted the conspiracy may have been. Napoleon understood this, and his nephew understands it, also, tolerably well. No man understands it better than Nicholas, Autocrat of all the Russias, although his single unarmed presence is ordinarily all that is necessary to quell an insurrection in his capital.
There is no doubt that Pius the Ninth, during the first days of his pontificate, followed, in temporal matters, the advice of the French government, which, as far as I have been able to learn, never, since Philip the Fair, has been guilty of giving the Pontiff advice not to his own hurt. France advised the fatal amnesty and some sort of quasi-popular institutions. The former was granted, the latter were promised, and the world was made to believe that for once it had a liberal Pope. There was nothing heard but Evviva Pio Nono! throughout Rome, Italy, France, England, and the United States. Radicals, Infidels, Protestants, and even the Grand Turk, united in one grand chorus of loud and prolonged exultation. It seemed, to those who saw only the external manifestation, that all hostility to the Papacy had ceased, and that all the world were on the eve of becoming Papists. Rome became one perpetual festival. Songs, hymns, processions, benedictions, speeches, addresses, congratulations, became the regular order of the day. Multitudes of Catholics, honest, simple souls, really felt that the day of heresy and schism, of conflict and trial, for the Church, was over. Some shrewd old cardinals at Rome took their pinch of snuff, shrugged their shoulders, and retired to their palaces. We, who knew what agencies were at work, laughed in our sleeve, and, with all the chiefs of the liberal party, called upon all the powers which we had prepared, visible and invisible, to aid in increasing the general intoxication, not doubting but the Papacy was at its last gasp. For we felt sure that if, by flattery, by enthusiasm, by loud, long, and reiterated shouts of Evviva Pio Nono! we could get the Pope fairly to enter the path of reform, or what was, we supposed, the same thing for us, make the Catholic world believe he had entered it, it was all over with the Papacy, therefore with Christianity, law, and social order.
No doubt some of the enthusiasm manifested was real, but a great deal of it was feigned, for the precise purpose of imposing upon the public. We were not ourselves for a moment deceived. We felt sure that Mastai was a genuine Pope, that he could hardly be deceived by the demonstrations which must have been painful to him; which, in fact, gave him no rest, and which, under pretence of unbounded devotion to him, were becoming unmanageable, secretly undermining his throne, and growing into a real conspiracy against his freedom of action. We knew well there must come a point beyond which he could make no further concession, and our plan was to get the Catholic populations of Europe so committed to the cause we pretended he favored, that when that point was reached, we could turn the popular enthusiasm against him, and he find himself disarmed and powerless to resist it. In this it is well known that we fully succeeded.
We should not have gone so far, and succeeded so rapidly, perhaps, had we not been aided by English politics. Lord John Russell and Lord Palmerston did not disappoint my expectations. At the time of our visit to Rome, the government of Louis Philippe was in the zenith of its glory. The wily monarch seemed to have fully confirmed his throne, and his prime minister was successful in urging upon a large number of princes constitutional reforms, and it seemed likely, for a moment, that the revolutionary party would spend its fury harmlessly under the lead of the sovereigns themselves. But he deeply offended England by the Spanish match, the marriage of the Duc de Montpensier with an Infanta of Spain. By this marriage, he seemed to have completed his circle of alliances, and to have made himself too powerful for English politics, and was rendering himself still more so by the constitutional reforms he was urging upon German and Italian princes. It was necessary to thwart him, and put an end to his illegitimate reign. Lord Minto was despatched, and other agents instructed to confer with the chiefs of the revolutionary party in Italy, and also in France, and encourage them to insist on reforms effected by the people from below, and to refuse to be satisfied with reforms effected from above by the princes. These chiefs were assured of the sympathy, perhaps they were promised the assistance, of the English government, which makes it a point to support a revolutionary party in every foreign state.
In the mean time, all the batteries we had erected were opened. Exeter Hall, and the Protestant Alliance were in full operation, and I thought it quite certain that a force was accumulated and brought to bear on the Rock of Peter that would shiver it into ten thousand atoms. Our presence was no longer necessary at Rome, and after Easter of 1847, we went to Paris, to fire a train in that city of combustibles. We were not needed there, for having had interviews with the chiefs of the revolutionary party in Geneva, we had already prepared them. They had more than profited by our instructions; they had even improved on them, and stood in closer relation to the Unknown Force than we did ourselves. All we could do to aid on the revolution which broke out the following February, was to persuade some of the leading Liberals to introduce the “peaceful agitation,” reduced to so perfect a system by O’Connell in Ireland, which was done in what were called the “Reform Banquets.”
All France at that moment was, in some sense, revolutionary. Guizot, at the head of the government, was a reformer, as I have shown, but only on condition that authority took the initiative. But, to admit the necessity or propriety of any reforms or changes was a tacit concession altogether to the prejudice of the existing order. After Guizot and his party, came the dynastique reformers, such as Thiers and Odillon-Barrot, who wished the Orleans family to possess the throne, but to deprive the throne of all effective power, and to establish a parliamentary despotism. The watchword of these at that moment was, the extension of the electoral franchise. There were at that time, out of a population of thirty-six millions, only about two hundred thousand electors. After the dynastique reformers, came the Catholic party, led on by the noble, learned, eloquent, and singularly pure-minded Montalembert, a man of principle, of faith and conscience, with whom religion was a living and all-pervading principle. This party consulted, first of all, the freedom and independence of the church, and was comparatively indifferent to the dynastique question. Its drapeau was neither that of Henri Cinque nor that of the House of Orleans, but religion and social order. The watchword at that time was, Freedom of Education, denied by the monopoly secured to the University, which educated in a pantheistic, Voltarian, or an irreligious sense. As the government sustained the University, and denied freedom of Education guarantied by the constitution, they opposed the government.
Behind these came the Legitimists, the adherents of the elder branch of the Bourbons, filled with old Gallican reminiscences, and whose watchword was Henri Cinque. They were opposed to the existing government, ready to take active measures to overthrow it, and were ready to support the church, in so far as she demanded nothing for herself, and would lend all her resources to uphold and decorate the throne. They were a set of superannuated old gentlemen, with polished manners and courtly address, decorated with some very respectable prejudices, but wholly ignorant of their times, and incapable of learning. They were a clog on the Catholic party, and were chiefly answerable for the reëstablishment of the Bonapartists and the present Napoleonic Cæsarism in their beautiful country. However, they were opposed to Louis Philippe, and ready to effect a change.
After the Legitimists, who were royalists and opposed to the existing government, came the Republicans, moderate and immoderate; the moderates having for their organ Le National, the immoderates La Réforme. These, however, were all opposed to monarchy, whether in the elder or younger branch of the Bourbons, and wished the république,—some, as Lamartine, Arago, with the Girondins, those phrase-mongers of the old revolution, the république of the respectables, of the Bourgeoisie, attorneys, professors, and hommes de lettres; others, such as Ledru-Rollin, and the Montagnards, a république démocratique, une et indivisible, with Robespierre, Couthon, Saint-Just, Danton, and Marat; while others still, too numerous to mention, wished, with Barbeuf, La République démocratique et sociale; and not a few wished no government, no political or social order at all. These were the Subterraneans, reformers after our own hearts, and on whom we chiefly operated, and through whom we brought the odic force to bear on the revolutionary movement.
Aside from all these, but ready to coöperate, for the moment, with any or all of them, as would best serve their purposes, were the Imperialists, the Bonapartists. After the fall of Napoleon, and the Restoration of the Bourbons, the Bonapartists had affected liberal, I may say, democratic ideas, and had lent their powerful influence throughout Europe to democratize the public mind; and at the time of which I speak, the chief of the family was very nearly an avowed socialist, and was hand-and-glove with the Subterraneans. They knew well that they could be healed only when the waters should be troubled; and, whether they were troubled by an angel of light or an angel of darkness, was a matter of perfect indifference, unless, indeed, they had more confidence in the latter than in the former.
Add to these parties the intrigues of England, who could not forgive the Spanish match, that crowning act of the Philippine policy, also the illusions we were able to keep up as to the views and intentions of Pius the Ninth, and it required no messenger from another world to announce that France was on the eve of a tremendous convulsion; that the days of the King of the Barricades were numbered; and that, whatever might be the afterclap, the reigning dynasty must fall, with a crash that would be reverberated throughout all Europe. The only care of our party was to push forward in front the more moderate reformers, more especially the dynastique reformers, while we organized a Subterranean force that would drive them, in the moment of their success, beyond the point at which they aimed, and compel them to accept the République, which, if proclaimed at Paris, we felt certain that we could, during the panic which would succeed, fasten upon the nation.
The history of the events that followed is well known, and need not be repeated. The old king, in the moment of peril, proved that he was a true Bourbon, incapable of a wise decision or an energetic act. All at once he had a horror of bloodshed, sacrificed his ministry, called to his council Thiers, Odillon-Barrot, and other dynastiques, who, vainly imagining that their bare names would allay the storm which they still more vainly imagined that they had conjured up, ordered the troops back to their barracks, and gave up the king and his dynasty to the armed and infuriated mob. The king abdicated; the Regency, under the Duchess of Orleans, was scouted; the royal family scampered for their lives towards England, that refugium peccatorum; monarchy was abolished; the République was proclaimed; a provisional government was organized impromptu, and a convention of delegates, to be chosen by universal suffrage, was ordered to meet and give France a regular political organization.
But a few days elapsed before the movement in Paris was followed by insurrections in Berlin, Vienna, and a large number of the smaller German states. The Italian peninsula was all in a blaze; democracy was in the ascendant in all Europe, except Russia, Spain, Belgium, and Holland. Hungary demanded independence of Austria; the Slavic populations of the Austrian Empire at Prague and Agram were preparing to join in a panslavic movement; Pius the Ninth was deprived of all freedom of action, and held virtually imprisoned; Naples and Sicily were in full revolt, and the king ready to concede every thing, and, Bourbon-like thwarting every effort of his loyal subjects to protect him; Charles Albert declared himself the sword of the Holy See; the Lombardo-Venetian kingdom rejected Austrian supremacy, and chose him for king. He marched at the head of his troops, swelled by contingents from all Italy, to drive the barbarians back over the mountains, and to clear the peninsula of every vestige of foreign dominion.
We were elated; we felt that success was sure, and that our grand philanthropic World-Reform was on the point of being completely realized. But alas! homo proponit, Deus disponit. The spirits had deceived us. Pius the Ninth displayed a passive courage that we had not counted on, and nothing could induce him to sanction the war against Austria; and in spite of all we could do, it finally leaked out, that he had not sanctioned it, and that the revolutionists had belied him, and entirely misrepresented his principles, conduct, and wishes. Old Radetzky, after retreating before Charles Albert till he had obtained reënforcements, turned upon his pursuer, defeated him, and drove him, with shame and loss, out of Lombardy. Prince Windishgrätz beat the rebels in Prague; the lazzaroni flogged the republican heroes in Naples, and the people seized the throne, in spite of its weak and pusillanimous occupant. In fine, Cavaignac, after four days of hard fighting, prostrated the Subterraneans of Paris, and became Dictator of the Republic. We were no longer in the years of grace ’91, ’92, or ’93. The age was not as far gone in unbelief as we had reckoned, and the friends of religion and society were more numerous and more energetic than we had believed.
Our hopes were damped, but not extinguished. We had thus far used the Pope, but we could use him no longer, and we must get rid of him, and completely secularize the Roman government. We had used the Italian princes; we must now reject them, and abandon Gioberti for Mazzini. We succeeded in wresting the government entirely from the Pope, but he himself escaped us, and fled to Gaëta, which was a serious injury to our cause. The Pope in exile is more powerful than in the Vatican. We meant to have confined him in his palace, and held him as a puppet in our hands, and still for a time continued the use of his name; but in this his flight defeated us. We were obliged to proclaim the Roman Republic, and the temporal deposition of the Pope, prematurely; but still we hoped, as we took care not to touch his person or his spiritual prerogatives, that we should not lose the sympathy of the Catholic public.
But it was all in vain. Our magic failed us; a more powerful magician than we intervened, and everywhere the reaction gained ground against us. Austria, whom we thought we had disposed of, rose Antæus-like from the ground; the Giobertians, predominant in the Subalpine kingdom, would not own us. Florence was deserting us; Venice held out, indeed, but Lombardy was chained by old Radetzky. Great Britain wished us well, gave us good advice, but came not to our aid; and Spain and Portugal, that we thought dead, suddenly started into life against us. Russia, though she loved not the Papacy, detested us, and was ready to interpose to bring Prussia to her senses, and to assist Austria. And last of all, the French Republic, which we had been the principal agents in creating, fearing the preponderance of Austria, and anxious to have an outpost in the Eternal City, sent her troops against us.
It was in vain to struggle. I saw clearly that the battle was against us, and that we should never succeed, by political and social revolutions, in effecting our purpose; and I made up my mind at once to have nothing more to do with them. I resolved to return home, and fall back on what I have hinted as an ulterior project. It was in the Autumn of 1849. The abortive attempt to reorganize the German Empire had failed, and not to our regret, since we saw, if reorganized at all, it would not be on democratic principles; the authority of St. Peter was reëstablished at Rome; the Magyars were forever prostrated in Hungary, and our friend Kossuth had taken refuge with his friends the Mussulmans, and France was becoming an orderly government under the Presidency of Louis Napoleon and the conservative majority of the Legislative Assembly. There was nothing more that we could do.
It is true, that many of our friends thought differently from me, and wished to continue the struggle; but I told them that, if they did, they must do so without my active coöperation; that I should leave them to their simple human strength, and they would find all their plans miscarry. The time is not opportune. Christianity has yet a stronger hold on the European populations than you or I had calculated, and the Christian party can no longer be duped and made to fight for us. They thrill with horror now to hear us say, “Christianity is democracy, and Jesus Christ was the first democrat.” They are beginning to see, as clearly as we do, that all this is at best absurd, and that our movement is essentially anti-Christian. They see, they admit, they deplore a certain number of political and social abuses; but they believe these abuses more tolerable than the reforms we would effect.
We have given the bishops, the clergy, and the pious laity a horrid fright; and you will see them, almost to a man, before three years expire, exultingly consenting to the reëstablishment of pure Cæsarism, in order to be relieved of their fears of us. Louis Napoleon will succeed in making himself, almost with the unanimous voice of France, proclaimed Emperor, with absolute, or virtually absolute power, with no effective check on his arbitrary will; parliamentary government will be scouted, as hardly a step removed from Subterranean democracy; free discussion of public affairs will be closed; the press will be muzzled, and no voice will be heard throughout the empire, save a voice in praise or flattery of the new Emperor.
But herein is our consolation and our hope for the future. The new Emperor will have to deal with Frenchmen; and he counts without his host, if he thinks he can, for any great length of time, silence thirty-six millions of French voices, or make them all speak one way. Mortal man cannot do it. Satan himself could not do it; and only One, whom we name not here, could do it. Now they are afraid of us, and have had even an excess of talk. They will consent for a time, even as a novelty, to be silent, or shout, as an admirable change, Vive l’ Empereur, instead of Vive la République démocratique et sociale,—à bas les Démocrates, instead of à bas l’ Aristocrates, or l’ Aristocrates à la lantern, and à bas les socialistes, instead of à bas les Rois. But rely upon it, that after a brief repose, these same Frenchmen will be desirous of mouvement, and will by no means be pleased to find themselves doomed to the silence and stillness of death. Then will be our time once more, and perhaps then we may be more successful. Till then I engage no more in political and social reforms. I shall take myself to that which underlies all political and social ideas, and slowly, perhaps, but surely, prepare a glorious future. You will hear from me again, or if not, you will feel the influence of what I shall do.
With remarks like these, I took my leave of my European revolutionary friends. I communicated to Priscilla, who had faithfully served me throughout the time I had been abroad, and powerfully contributed to such successes as we had had, my design of returning home. We were in Paris. She would, perhaps, have rather returned to Rome. She had, in fact, began to droop, and to be weary of the part I had forced her to play. She had, during our stay in Rome, become a mother, and new feelings and affections had been awakened in her heart. Her husband had treated her kindly, forbearingly, but he had much changed, and no longer favored philanthropy or reform, and it was rumored that he had become devout. Priscilla evidently began to turn to him with something approaching the love and esteem she owed him, and would gladly have broken her liaison with me. But I would not hear of it; she must return with me.
