CHAPTER XXII

DEATH OF CAMILLO BENSO CAVOUR. A.D. l86l.

COUNT Cavour laboured continually to convînce the Catholic States that the temporal power of the papacy was incompatible with national unity and liberty, that it was an anachronism which must give way before modem progress, and that the Holy Father would enjoy a more exalted position, more real authority, if he were rid of the embarrassment of it. The Italian Government, he said, was slandered by those who represented that they wanted to overtum Catholicism ; on the contrary, they wished to make it more respected, more respectable, than it had been for long âges. In taking possession of Rome they would contract a lasting peace between the Church and civilisation.

Ail history proved, he said in one of his speeches, that nothing but a misérable and corrupt despotism could resuit from the union of the spiritual and civil authority in the same hands. That the State and the Church should be separated was désirable as much in the interest of the one as the other. The authority of the Pope, the independence of the Church, would be much better assured by the free consent of twenty-six

million of Italians than by the presence of a body of mercenaries gathered round the Vatican, or even by a valorous and friendly, but still a foreign army.

It remains [said he] to convince the Pontiff that the Church can be independent, while losing the temporal power. But we will présent ourselves to him, and say,

‘ Holy Father, the temporal power is no longer for you a guarantee of independence. Renounce it, and we will give you that liberty which you hâve in vain for three centuries demanded from ail the great Catholic powers — that liberty which you hâve sought to drag from them in small portions by means of concordats, for which, O Holy Father, you were constrained in retum to concédé privilèges — and worse than privilèges — to concédé the use of spiritual arms to temporal powers, in order that they might grant you a little liberty. Well, that which you hâve never been able to obtain from those powers who boast themselves to be your allies and your devoted sons, we corne to offer you in ail its fulness ; we are ready to proclaim in Italy this great principle, Free Church in Free State.’

These were Cavour’s sincere convictions. He was a Catholic as Victor Emmanuel was ; that is, he believed in the Church itself, apart from the priesthood. In the beat of the combat with Rome, remembering the fate of Santa Rosa, he had made a compact with a liberal priest that in case of sudden illness he should corne to him, no matter where he was, to administer the sacraments.

In these last two months of his life, Cavour worked