SARDINIA AND THE HOLY FATHER.*

[From the Catholic World for June, 1871.1

THE Volume giving the call and proceedings of the meeting held last January at the Academy of Music, in this city, in celebration of Italian unity, especially the occupation of Rome and the suppression of the papal government, is handsomely printed, and does credit to the taste and skill of our New York book-makers; but it is a sad book, and almost makes one despair of civil society and natural morality. Nothing can be more sad and discouraging to all right-minded men than to see a large number of the most distinguished and influential men of a great nation-statesmen, politicians, judges, lawyers, officers of the army, ministers of religion, journalists, poets, philosophers, scholars, professors and presidents of colleges and universities-assisting by their presence, addresses, letters, or comments, to applaud events notoriously brought about by fraud, craft, lying, calumny, and armed force, in contravention of every principle of international law and of public and private right. It is a sad thing for our republic when so many of its representative men, whose names are recorded in this volume, can endorse the fraud and violence by which the Sard king has effected what he calls the unity of Italy, and congratulate him on his successful sacrilege and spoliation in the Roman state; and the only consolation left us is that, with a solitary exception, no Catholic name appeared on the list, and all the sympathizers are Protestants, and all, or nearly all, prominent adherents of the same dominant political party.

To the unity of Italy, under some circumstances, we might not seriously object. It is true, we hold small states are more favorable to the growth of intelligence, the development of elevated and strong personal character, to individual liberty, to social well-being, to the moral progress of the people, than huge centralized states or empires, which can be governed only despotically, and in which there is so great a distance between power and the people that personal and

1. The Unity of Italy. The American Celebration of the Unity of Italy, at the Academy of Music, New York, Jan. 12, 1871; with the Addresses, Letters, and Comments of the Press. New York: 1871.

2. Programma dell' Associazione de' Libri Pensatori in Roma. La Com missione. Roma, Febbraio, 1871.

affectionate relations between the governors and the governed, and which do so much to soften the asperities of authority and to render obedience willing and cheerful, are, for the most part, impracticable. But if the several independent Italian states that have been absorbed by Sardinia to form the new kingdom of Italy had freely and of their own accord given their consent to the absorption, and no craft, fraud, violence, or disregard of public or private right had been resorted to in order to effect it, we might doubt its wisdom,but we could not object to it on the ground of international law or of natural justice. We, of course, defend the temporal sovereignty of the pope; but if the pope had, motu proprio, without coercion, the show or the threat of coercion, given his consent to the absorption of the Roman state in a united Italy, we should have nothing to say against it, for it would have been the act of the Roman state, no public or private right of justice or morality would have been violated, and no blow struck at the equal rights of independent states or nations, at the authority of the sovereign power of a state to govern it, or to the duty of obedience to it.

But it is well known that such is not the case either with the Holy Father or the several other Italian sovereigns that have been dispossessed and their states absorbed by Sardinia in order to effect Italian unity. In every case, the absorption was effected by violence and force, without and against the consent of the sovereign authority. The pope refused his assent to the absorption of the ecclesiastical state, and said, to the demand to surrender it, Non possumus. The Roman people, without the pope, gave no assent-had no assent to give or to withhold; for, without the pope, they were not a state or a sovereign people. It matters not whether plebiscitums can or cannot be alleged, for a plebiscitum, where there is a legitimate government, cannot be taken without its authority, especially not against its authority; for without its authority it would be a legal nullity, and against it it would be revolutionary and criminal. Nor would it help the matter for the absorbing state to invade with its armies the state to be absorbed, overthrow the legiti mate government, take forcible possession of the territory, and then call upon the population to decide their future condition by a plebiscitum, so long as a legitimate claimant to the government remains living. This was the case in the Roman state and in the other independent Italian states that have been absorbed. As a plebiscitum before the con

quest is treasonable and not permissible, after the conquest it is a mockery, for the fate of the state is decided, however the population may vote.

Let us look the facts in the face, and see by what deeds and on what principles the unity of Italy has been effected. Sardinia, aided by France and Prussia, made an unprovoked war on Austria, and wrested from her the Lombardo-Venetian kingdom, and appropriated it to herself. Neither she nor her allies had any just cause of war against Austria, or even of offence, except that she wanted to get possession of all Italy. France wanted the left branch of the Rhine for her boundary, and Prussia wanted to absorb the rest of Germany. There was no other reason for the war. The several independent ducal states fell with Austria, with whom they were closely allied, and were invaded and taken possession of by the Sard king. The kingdom of the Two Sicilies was invaded by Garibaldi and his filibusters, backed -covertly at first, openly at last-by the Sard government, conquered, because the Neapolitan king listened to the insidious advice and deceitful promises of imperial France, said to have been given not to offer any serious resistance, taken possession of and appropriated as the highwayman appropriates the traveller's purse. The Emilian provinces of the Roman state, prepared for insurrection by the secret societies and Sardinian emissaries, were invaded by the Sardinian forces and appropriated by the house of Savoy. Finally, the Roman state was invaded by the same Victor Emanuel, with too strong a force for the papal government to resist, its sovereign declared deposed, its government suppressed, and its territory and people annexed to the so-called kingdom of Italy.

This simple recital of facts tells the whole story. Sardinia, aided by the arms and diplomacy of France and Prussia, by the foreign policy of the Whigs and radicals of Great Britain, the intrigues of the secret societies, the money and coöperation of the Protestant propaganda, the malcontents and malefactors of all the states of Italy, and adventurers and miscreants from all nations of the earth, has succeeded, without any right, without having received any offence or provocation, in the violation of every principle of international law and every precept of morality or natural justice, in absorbing every Italian state, and effecting the unification of the whole peninsula under her own royal house. These are the facts, stated in their simplest form, without passion and without exaggeration.

These facts, being public and notorious, must be as well known to those distinguished American sympathizers who addressed the meeting or wrote letters of approval to the committee that called it as they are to us. We dare not so insult the intelligence of such eminent men as to suppose, for a moment, that they did not know what they sympathized with, or that, in applauding the unity of Italy, they were ignorant of the craft, violence, and robbery that had been resorted to in order to effect it. What, then, must we and all right-minded men think of their own principles, of their religion, their politics, or their sense of justice? Does their Protestantism or their hatred of the papacy justify, approve the violation of international law, the equal rights of sovereign states, the sacred rights of property, public and private, the principles of natural justice, the basis of the state and of all legitimate authority, without which not even natural society itself can subsist? Does it authorize them to applaud unprovoked war and conquest, and public and private robbery? If so, how can they justify their Protestantism or their hatred of the papacy? If they cannot assert either without denying all public and private right and trampling on all laws, human and divine, how can they regard either as defensible?

There is no mistaking the real character of the acts by which the sovereign states of Italy have been suppressed by Sardinia and her allies, and the present unification of Italy effected; and it only adds to their atrocity that it was done in part by exciting the populations, or a portion of them, to insurrection and rebellion against their respective sovereigns. There is nothing meaner or more unjustifiable than for one sovereign to tamper with the fidelity of the subjects of another, especially in time of profound peace between the two states. If persisted in, it is a justitiable cause of war. International law, or the law of nations, makes all sovereign states equal in their rights, without regard to the form of government, size, race, language, or geographical position; and the law of ethics, at least, requires each sovereign state to respect, and to cause its subjects to respect, the authority of every other sovereign state over its own subjects, as it requires every other to respect its authority over its subjects. The rule is, no doubt, often violated, but it is none the less sacred and binding on that account. It is equally wrong for the citizens of one state to attempt to seduce the citizens of another state from their allegiance.

International law, national law, municipal law, as well as the moral law, know nothing of the doctrine, so eloquently preached by the ex-governor of Hungary, of "the solidarity of peoples."

Mr. Richard H. Dana, Jr., an able lawyer, reputed to be well versed in the law of nations, and who affects, in his elaborate letter to the committee, to argue the question as it affects Catholics with fairness and candor, appears to have some doubts whether the invasion of the Roman state by the Sardinian troops, the deposition and virtual imprisonment of its sovereign in his own palace, and the annexation. of its territory and inhabitants to the dominion of the house of Savoy, is really a violation of international law; but he evidently, besides arguing the question on a collateral issue, takes a juridical instead of an ethical view of international law, and considers it only so far as it enters into the national jurisprudence, and is enforcible by the nation through its own courts on its own citizens. Yet he cannot be ignorant that there are violations of international law which cannot be taken cognizance of by the national jurisprudence, and which may be, and often are, justifiable causes of war. The basis of international law is the law of justice, or droit naturel, as it is the basis of all natural ethics. There may be treaty or conventional agreements between nations, which must be considered whenever the case comes up juridically, or the law is to be juridically enforced, but these cannot abrogate or modify the law of justice, the jus gentium of the Roman jurists, which is the principle and foundation of all law. Acts in contravention of justice, St. Augustine and St. Thomas after him tell us, are violences rather than laws, and are nullities. International law applies justice to the mutual relations of sovereign states, precisely as ethics does to the relations of individuals. It declares all sovereign states equal in their rights, the territory of each to be sacred and inviolable, and that no one is permitted to do to another what it would not have another to do to it. The rule is plain and practicable, and under it Mr. Dana's doubts ought to vanish. For one sovereign state to invade with its armies another, suppress its government, and absorb its territory and population, without any provocation or any offence given, but merely because it wants it to complete and round off its own territory, as Sardinia has done to the Roman or ecclesiastical state, is too manifestly a violation of interna

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