matters of church government in Catholic countries, and as the recognized interpreter of their religious faith.  So long as people remain Roman Catholics, they must remain in allegiance to the head of their church.  They may cease to be Catholics, and no temporal harm will happen to them; but the awful power remains over those who continue to abide within the pale of the Church.  Of his spiritual subjects the Pope exacts, as he has exacted for centuries, absolute and unconditional obedience through his ministers,—­one great hierarchy of priests; the most complete and powerful mechanism our world has seen for good or evil, built up on the experience of ten centuries, and generally directed by consummate sagacity and inflexibility of purpose.

I have nothing here to say against this majestic sovereignty, which is an institution rather than a religion.  Most of the purely religious dogmas which it defends and enforces are equally the dogmas of a majority of the Protestant churches, founded on the teachings of Christ and his apostles.  The doctrines of Saint Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, the great authorities of the Catholic Church, were substantially embraced by Luther, Calvin, Cranmer, and the Westminster divines.  The Protestants rebelled mainly against the usurpations and corruptions of the Catholic Church as an institution, not against the creed of the Fathers and schoolmen and theological doctors in all Catholic countries.  The Nicene and Apostles’ creeds bind together all orthodox Christians, whether of the Roman or Greek or Protestant churches.

Thus, in speaking of the liberation and unity of Italy as effected by an illustrious band of patriots, aided by friendly powers and fortunate circumstances, I mean freedom in a political sense.  The papal yoke, so far as it was a yoke, was broken only in a temporal point of view.  The Pope lost only his dominions as a temporal sovereign,—­nothing of his dignity as an ecclesiastical monarch; and we are to consider his opposition to Victor Emmanuel and other liberators chiefly as that of a temporal prince, like Ferdinand of Naples.  The great Italian revolution which established the sovereignty of the King of Sardinia over the whole peninsula was purely a political movement.  Religious ideas had little or nothing to do with it.  Communists and infidels may have fought under the standards of Mazzini and Garibaldi, but only to gain political privileges and rights.  Italy remained after the revolution, as before, a Catholic country.

In considering this revolution, which destroyed the power of petty tyrants and the authority of foreign despots, which gave a free constitution and national unity to the whole country,—­the rule of one man by the will of the people, and the checks which a freely elected legislature imposes,—­it will be my aim to present chiefly the labors and sacrifices of a very remarkable band of patriots, working in different ways and channels for the common good, and