The Roman State from 1815 to 1850, Tr. by W.E. Gladstone [And] (a Lady). (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1851. Excerpt: ... with a splendid opportunity of restoring to tbe Churoh those liberties and rights which the State had usurped, and the Governments assented, because in their position it was popular and not ecclesiastical liberty which caused them the greater alarm and injury. Popular liberty being naturally hateful to the clerical Government, founded as it is upon the temporal dominion of the Popes, was given up by the Papacy into the hands of those Governments which restored or established ecclesiastical liberty at the same time that they restored the temporal dominion. I do not mean to affirm that these were actual conditions. It was the Revolution, the Crusade, and Fate that made these stipulations between the Pope and the Princes. Inebriated by its triumph, intoxicated by French teachers who disseminate, as something new, doctrines of the time of King Pepin, the Roman Court imagined that the present century, tired and frightened at liberty, would apply itself to restore that strong authority and that sacerdotal pre-eminence which were in vigour during the middle ages; and that not only would politioal liberty be overthrown, but with it that social liberty which, under some political form or other, the present age desires to acquire, maintain, and consolidate. Whence it was, that when the absolute Government of the clergy was restored in the Roman States, the Court effected alliances with all the Governments which put narrow limits to popular freedom, and as it was intent not only on procuring ecclesiastical liberty, but also on preserving and restoring those ancient privileges which were contrary or hostile to civil liberty, it promoted and favoured a universal re-action against social as well as political liberty. Hence many writers and ecclesiastical orators have t...