of the Tattlesnivel Bleater in the light of
a mischievous Blockhead who, by hiring himself
out to tell what he cannot possibly know, is as
great a public nuisance as a Blockhead in a
corner can be. Second, to suggest to the
men of Tattlesnivel that it does not improve
their town to have so much Dry Rubbish shot
there.

Now, sir, on both these points Tattlesnivel
demands in accents of Thunder, Where is the
Attorney-General? Why doesn't THE TIMES
take it up? (Is the latter in the conspiracy?
It never adopts his views, or quotes him, and
incessantly contradicts him.) Tattlesnivel, sir,
remembering that our forefathers contended with
the Norman at Hastings, and bled at a variety
of other places that will readily occur to you,
demands that its birthright shall not be bartered
away for a mess of potage. Have a care,
sir, have a care! Or Tattlesnivel (its idle
Rifles piled in its scouted streets) may be seen
ere long, advancing with its Bleater to the foot
of the Throne, and demanding redress for this
conspiracy, from the orbed and sceptred hands
of Majesty itself!

THE POPE IN ACCOUNT.

M. DE MONTALEMBERT, in the treatise,
which "authority" has deemed it advisable,
as far as may be, to suppress, has asked
the question, "What wrong has Pope Pius
the Ninth done?" It is a question which
authority might well be anxious to suppress,
were we still in the days when such
suppression was possible. But neither Pope, nor
Emperor, censor, nor police-prefect, can, by
any utmost exertion of power or vigilance,
prevent M. de Montalembert's bold challenge from
ringing forth to the utmost confines of Christendom,
or can hinder millions of hearts and tongues
from shouting back indignant answer. But it
is not so that we would propose to reply to it.
A fair question, as the phrase goes, deserves a
fair answer. What wrong has Pope Pius the
Ninth done? Let us see whether we cannot do
something towards presenting a fair and honest
statement of the account current, as between
the Pope and Humanity.

The Pope, observe, versus Humanity. This
is the issue to be debated. For we entirely
decline to permit the question to be either
blinked, or confused, or narrowed by mixing it
up with the comparatively insignificant, and, in
truth, wholly insoluble one of the conduct of an
individual man. Who, save the common Judge
of Popes and peasants can know, how far the
man Giovanni Mastai, who calls himself the
Ninth Pius, has acted well or ill as a moral
agent? He has done many acts which outrage
my sense of right and justice, and that of the
majority of mankind. But it is replied that he
acted according to his conscience, and, in so
acting, did his duty as Pope. We are perfectly
ready to admit the truth of the statement. It
is possible, nay, probable, that Pius the Ninth
suffers from no reproach of conscience. It is
possible, that as much might be said with equal
truth of a Borgia or a Medici. The fact, therefore,
if it be so, is utterly irrelevant to us, however
important it may be to the individual Pius.
If it be so, we have to remark, as we pass to
the real question, that the Pope has committed
moral murder on Giovanni Mastai, for one
thing. He is one and not the least pitiable
victim of Papacy. So is a drummer, of the system
of military flogging. But in all the controversies
of which that sad system has been the
subject, we do not remember in any case to have
met with any strictures on the conduct of the
drummer, whose hard fate it was to administer
the lash. Let us assume, then, that Pius the
Ninth has any amount of angelic disposition,
with which the defenders of the Papal system
wish to credit him. The extreme " benignity"
—that is the favourite phrase—of the " Holy
Father," shall be fully admitted, since his friends
are so eager to assert it. But it must be
remembered that the man can only be thus praised
at the expense of the system. When we come
to the consideration of the deeds which the
Papal power in such hands has enacted, we shall
be entitled to argue, that these things are the
necessary and unfailing product of the system;
that the inexorable system forces them on the
best and on the worst administrators of it
indifferently; and that, as soon as the coming
moment has come, when Christendom shall have
reached that point of progress at which it can
no longer tolerate the evils which Popes have
inflicted on it, it must and will be, not the Pope,
but the Papacy that will have to be put down.

Looking at the matter from this point of
view, it will be seen that the bill of wrongs
suffered by humanity from the Papacy must
range over a wide field. The spiritual and the
temporal power of the Pope have each in their
due degree worked evil to mankind. And
though, for reasons to be presently adduced, the
writer of these lines does not admit the complete
divisibility of these two fields of operation, we
will first give a glance to the least complex and
most universally understood portion of the
subject. And we will understand the terms
"temporal power" and "spiritual power" in their
usual acceptation; merely remarking, as we
pass, that the latter phrase is in truth only a
specimen of that sort of professional or official
slang which the gradual severance of pretension
from fact gathers around many departments of
human life. In reality, the Pope has no spiritual
power whatever. Spiritual power is the power
of spirit over spirit. If spirit by means of
the eloquence of your tongue, or the flash
of your eye, can persuade, awe, or subjugate
my spirit, that is spiritual power. But it
is many an age since a Pope has exercised this
power in a measure to work either weal or woe
to mankind. The special "power of the keys,"
as it is called, and all the various modes of
influencing the mind which are derived from them,
are, of course, an exercise of spiritual power, as
long as they do operate by influencing the mind.