THURSDAY, JANUARY 17, 1901. THE DUKE OF NORFOLK AND THE TEMPORAL POWER.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXIX, Issue 3, 17 January 1901, Page 16

THURSDAY, JANUARY 17, 1901. THE DUKE OF NORFOLK AND THE TEMPORAL POWER.

2| jRj^NG LAND'S premier Duke— the Duke of Nor. i rtlr folk —^ aß * ncurre< * the wrath of the yellow Uv_* Press. He recently headed a concourse of w~jro^ English pilgrims to Rome. This might, indeed, be borne. But he also presented to the ejilwi Pope an a(^ reBB w hich voiced the hope that the y *Vr Head of the Catholic Church on earth might ** be restored to the measure of temporal independence that is necessary for the safe and untrammelled discharge of the duties of his sacred office. And this was a sin against the sacrosanct Italian Revolution which is not to be forgiven either in this life or in the life to come. Some Italian anti-clerical journals raved and tore their hair

and raised their voices in thunderous protest. The verdant rustic from 'Way Back takes for the work of some Jupiter Tonans the stage thunder that is shaken by an ex -cobbler out of a sheet of galvanised iron. In the same way some bucolic minds may be impressed by the newspaper fulminations that have resounded in our midst against the Duke of Norfolk. We, for our part, view the paltry clamor with jnere contempt. We know that it is the mere hollow-sound-ing echo of the distant muttenngs of sundry venal garreiacribblers who depend for their morning jtagnnttpllo and their double daily dose of maccaroni on the secret service funds of the anti-Catholic Government of * United ' Italy. • • • An attempt was made to give an air of international importance to the action of the Duke of Norfolk. It required but little reflection to recall the fact that the Duke a6t£d during the pilgrimage in his capacity as a private oitizen, and that it was impossible for him to have posed as the representative of the British Government for the simple reason that he resigned his office when he donned the khaki to fight for what he deemed to be his country's defence in South Africa. But brain- torpor is more favored than brain•xercise in the hum-drum lotus-land in which a certain class of political leader-writers doze their lives away. Newspapers have dow tardily and ponderously recognised the fact that the Duke acted throughout in his purely private capacity as ft child of the Catholic Church. The Italian Government is graciously pleased to be 'satisfied with this explanation.' It had jumped up with the aggressive squeak of a Jack-in-the-box. :It dropped back into quiescence with a mechanical snap. And thus, after all the noise, the incident is closed. • • • A casual perusal of some of the newspaper articles on the pilgrimage incident would lead the unwary general reader to suppose that it is some new form of Bulgarian atrocity to advocate the principle that the Holy See should be permanently independent of the control of any civil government. "But the principle has time and again found expression, not alone from practising Catholics, but from statesmen who were by no means favorably disposed towards the Papacy, and even from some of the leaders of the Italian Revolution. Gioberti, for instance, put forward a scheme to establish ' without upheavals or revolution ' ' a pacific and lasting confederation of Italian princes, commanded and protected by the Pope.' Cesare Balbo favored an Italian federation which would leave the Pope independent, but which would have at its head the King of Sardinia. Durando proposed a confederation consisting of three Italian States : the House of Savoy (Kings of Sardinia) to reign in the north ; the Bourbons in the south ; and the Pope, with a restricted kingdom, but with a real and effective independence, in the middle. Over half a century ago, when Rome was ia the hands of the Garibaldians and Pius IX. was an exile at Gaeta, Lord Brougham said in the British House of Lords : My opinion ha, that it will not do to say that the Pope ia al' very well aa a spiritual prince, but we ought not to restore his temporal power. For what would be the consequence ? Stripped of that seoular dominion, h e would become the slave, now of one Power, then of another : one day the slave of Spain, another of Austria, another of Franoe ; or, worst of all, as the Pope has rjoently been, the slave of his own factions and rebellious subjects. His temporal power ie an European question, not a local or a religious one ; and the Pope's authority should be maintained for the take of the peace and the interests of Europe. Lords Lansdowne and Palmerston gave expression to similar views. The principle is as sound to-day as it was fifty years ago that the spiritual head of 250,000,000 Christians shall not be the subject of any secular prince. And we find no record that the British Press of the days of Lords Brougham, Lansdowne, and Palmerston endeavored to play the part of Mrs. Caudle to the Protestant statesmen or the Italian revolutionists who furnished the Duke of Norfolk with some of the most cogent arguments in support of the position which he took up in the address presented by him to the Pope on behalf of a body of pilgrims of his faith and nation. • • • Unhappily for the peace of Europe, other counsels than those of Lord Brougham ultimately prevailed. Count Cavour, Prime Minister of Victor Emmanuel, King of Sardinia, set his bard head and his dogged will to prevent

any confederation of Italian princes, to wreck the Temporal Power of the Pope, and on the ruins of the old order to place the House of Savoy in possession of the whole of Italy. He knew how to direct to his purpose the secret underground movement that was being carried out in Italy by the apostle of political assassination, Mazzini. The filibusterer Garibaldi was another of his tools. Both lived long enough to publicly express regret for the part they had taken in a movement that opened such a Pandora's box of woes upon their native land. Piedmontese gold was lavished in every free State in Italy. Piedmontese agents, aided by salaried domestic traitors, set the revolutionary kettle boiling briskly from the Alps to Cape Passaro. One of the most shocking features of this artificially produced revolutionary campaign was the treacherous and "habitual abuse of their position by the Piedmontese ambassadors ab Rome, Florence, Parma, Modena, and Naples. By Cavour's dierections they used their point of vantage to aid the revolution by every means in their power, and to foment plots and even levy war against the friendly States to which they were the accredited Ministers, Their action deprived them of ambassadorial privileges and made them amenable to the laws of the countries whose confidence and forbearance they had so grossly abused, and if they had received their deserts they would have been hanged as high as Aman. Writing from Tuscany in 1859, Mr. Scarlett, British Minister at the Florentine Court, reported to his Government that ' the troops had long been, like the people, tampered with and worked upon by Piedmontese agents.' Elsewhere he refers to ' the intrigues of Piedmont, seconded by Signor Buoncompagni,' who was Piedmontese Minister to Tuscany. Buoncompagni's treachery was made the subject of indignant comment in the British House of Peers by Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, as that of the Sardinian agents in Parma and their employer, Cavour, was by the Marquis of Normanby. # # ♦ Few political movements in modern history are so chock-full of cynical and concentrated Machiavellianism as the Piedmontese invasions of the Kingdom of Naples and the Papal States. At a time when the Kingdoms of Sardinia and Naples were at peace with each other, Cavour fitted out an expedition for the invasion of the latter State. Persano, admiral of the Piedmontese fleet, was in charge. Garibaldi was its nominal leader. While the invaders of a friendly State were steaming gaily on their southward way, Cavour and Victor Emmanuel hastened to protest to the Cabinetß of Europe their total disapproval of the expedition which they had secretly organised and directed. Cavour's instructions so Persano were these : 'to help the Revolution, but to help it in such a way that it may appear in the eyes of Europe to have been a spontaneous act. The reduction of the Kingdom of Naples is a grim record of treachery, blood, and savagery. We need only refer in passing to General Pinelli's regime of barbarism and massacre in the Abruzzi, and to the fearful and indiscriminate campaign against men, women, and children in the provinces that remained faithful to the fortunes of King Francis of Naples. In May, 1863, Mr. Bailie Cochrane, in the British House of Commons, referred in the following terms to one of the savage proclamations enforced against the unhappy dwellers in the Abruzzi : * A more infamous proclamation has never degraded the worst days of the Reign of Terror in France.' In fourteen months the Piedmontese invaders of Naples had sacked and burned no fewer than sixteen towns, containing a population of 49,365 inhabitants; and for three years — to use the words uttered at the time by General Bixio, Garibaldi's lieutenant — 'a system of bloodshed was established in Southern Italy.' In the States of the Church revolutions were, as Admiral Persano's diary informs us, fomented in Umbria and the Marches. Bands of filibusterera were sent across the papal borders. The Papal States were invaded without any diplomatic rupture or cause or declaration of war. Ancona was bombarded for twelve hours after the white flag had been set flyiDg on every fort and tower in the city and all resistance had been at an end. On September 7, 1870, Visconti-Venosta, the Sardinian Minister of Foreign Affairs, addressed the famous despatch to the other Powers, in which he assures them that King Victor Emmanuel, 'as a sovereign of a Catholic nation,' is about to set out for Rome in order to protect the Head of the Church, ' and for the defence of the Holy See.' This was

followed by the hypocritical letter of Victor Emmancel to Pope Pius IX. The Sardinian King declared that he addressed the Pope ' with the affection of a son, with the faith of a Catholic, and with the loyalty of a king.' He solemnly asseverated that he advanced with his troops ' for the safety of your Holiness.' And in due course he ordered General Oadorna to batter down the walls of Rome at the Porta Pia, and wre«M tho Hry and t.hp surrounding territory liy force of arms from the venerable old Pontiff whom he had a few weeks before professed to reyaid ( svilli the affection of a son.' * # * The 'regeneration' of 'United' Italy has not brought cither liberty or prosperity to that distracted country. Even the decent semblance of liberty has been crushed by a military despotism. The Press is muzzled. Despite the wholesale confiscation of the property and endowments of the Church and of the patrimony left for the support of the poor, Italy is the most impoverished country in Europe. It is ever on the dizzy brink of national bankruptcy, and is taxed to an extent unknown in any other civilised country in the world. Every wage-earner is taxed, as Mulhall shows, to the extent of 20*4 per cent, of his total earnings, as against 11-2 per cent, in the United Ivingdom, and 7*4 per cent, in Australia. Bread riots and brigandage are almost chronic over considerable areas of the country. From 1874 to 1883 some 12,000 peasant families were annually evicted and their property sold for the non-payment of an impossible tax. In an article which appeared some time ago in the Fortnii/hth/ Review the noted Anglican clergyman and writer, Rev. Mr. Haweis, stated that none of Ihe Deputies or Ministers of ' United' Italy were above fraud ; and he broadly describes the new regime as one of ' widespread robbery, bribery, and corruption, from the the ticketoffice to the National Bank.' According to Mulhall, 1,147,U00 persons lied from ' regenerated ' Italy in the years 1881-87. Later years show an enormous increase in the statistics of emigration. At the close of July, 1899, exPremier Cri.spi, one of the ' regeneratoi s,' felt himself constrained to confess that ' Italy is surely going to destruction.' And the well-known writer, Profsssor Lombroso, said, in the course of a letter to the Tribwui ■ ' The crater is ready to spit fire.' ' Editors and statesmen,' he added, 'do not dare to raise their voice for fear of arrest, and the people are cowed into temporary obedience by the military.' • • • In the census of lxyl the Pope was entered as a subject of the Italian Crown. His very palace and furniture are held in tenancy, the declared property of the .State. The disgraceful onslaught made by organised sectaries on the corpse of Pius IX. in the streets of Rome on July l-j, 1881, — under the eyes of the Italian police, who made not the least attempt at effective interference — fully justified the remark made by the London Times in its issue of July 1 0 of the same year, ' that a living Pope may be excused if he does not trust to remaining in the Vatican, when they [the Italian (Jovernment] allow a dead Pope to be outraged in the streets of Rome by an insulting mob.' It has not been reserved for the Duke of Nokkjlk to discover that the present position of the Pope in the Eternal City is one that cannot endure. Leading politicians of the Italian Rovolution have themselves cried out for a settlement of the Roman question. The Marquis Vi^coxti-Vexosta — already mentioned in the course of this article — declared during the great hunger-riots of two years ago, that until what he calls 'the eternal Roman question' 'is settled we shall never have peace it Italy. At no time,' he adds, 4 since the Italian troops entered Rome, has the Roman question so insistently demanded solution. To-day an agreement between the (Juirinal and the Vatican is a question of life and death for the nation.' He then added the following significant remarks :—: — Diplomacy has two ways of dealing with hostile nations. If they are weak, it tries to extinguish them. If they are too strong, it arranges an understanding. The Papacy cannot be extinguished. All the anti-Catholic persecutions of the last six years have been useless. The Btrength of the Papacy and of the Catholic party has waxed greater every day. Never waß it so powerful as at this present moment. I consider the Vatican the real arbiter of the situation. We Italians must arrive at an arrangement with the Pope, even at the cost of a great sacrifice of our pride. If we do not, our nation is doomed in the near future to a terrible cataclysm, of which the recent riots have been the premonitory symptoms.

Cavour, the father of the Italian Revolution, saw enough of the results of his work to say : 'A treaty of religious peace in Italy would reach further into the future of human society than the Peace of Westphalia.' The solution of the Roman question put forward last year by one of the sons of Garibaldi was a Federal Italian Republic under the presidency of the Vatican. But the plan that is most in the minds of men, and has been most discussed in newspapers, magazines, etc., postulates the independence of Rome, with a cirrondario or surrounding district, and of ft l»ort — say Civitavecchia— guaranteed to the Pope by Italy and the other Powers of Europe. Even this minimum amende for a great outrage would probably settle for ever a difficulty which is becoming year by year more acute, and which, coupled with the ruinous financial condition of Italy, can only accentuate internal discontent and blast the prospects of the peace and prosperity of that most distressful of European nations.