“Battles long ago” never wholly lose their interest.  The mere words, “There was once a battle fought here” make the traveller stop and think, even if he does not know by what men of what race it was fought.  But the parliamentary struggles of one generation seem passing stale and unprofitable to the next.  Yet the history of nations depends as much on their civil as on their warlike contests.  In Piedmont the strife always turned on the same point:  whether the State or the Church should predominate.  Free institutions do not settle the question; it is most manifestly rife to-day in a free country, Canada.  In Italy itself a great clerical party is working silently but ceaselessly, under the mask of abstention from the elections, to recover its political power.  The Sardinian Government could not withdraw from the duel at will; the Church in Piedmont was a political force constantly on the lookout for an opening to retake the position it had lost.  Besides the moral power derived from the support of the peasants and of the old aristocracy, it wielded the material power of an organised body, which was numerous and wealthy in proportion to the numbers and wealth of the population.  The annual income of the Church, including the religious houses, was nearly L700,000 a year.  There were 23,000 ecclesiastics, or 1 monk to every 670 inhabitants, 1 nun to every 1695, 1 priest to every 214.  In spite of the vast resources of the Church, the parish priest in 2540 villages received a stipend of less than L20 per year.  Not only radicals but many moderate politicians were of opinion that the great number of convents of the contemplative orders formed an actual evil from the fact of their encouraging able-bodied idleness, and the withdrawal of so considerable a fraction of the population from the work and duties of citizenship.  In the autumn of 1854, before the Crimean War was thought of, Rattazzi framed a bill by which the corporations that took no part in public instruction, preaching, or nursing the sick, were abolished.  Since the last crisis on the civil marriage bill, which wrecked D’Azeglio’s ministry, Cavour, who all his life was not theoretically opposed to coming to an understanding with Rome, had made several advances to the Vatican, but with no effect:  Rome refused any modification of the Concordat or any reduction of the privileges possessed by the clergy in the kingdom of Sardinia.  On the failure of these negotiations, Victor Emmanuel despatched three high ecclesiastics on a private mission to the Pope to see if the quarrel could be made up.  This mission, which might have seriously compromised the king, was not counselled by Cavour, who put a violent end to it when he authorised Rattazzi to bring in the bill for the suppression of religious houses.  Victor Emmanuel was deeply mortified, and the Pope protested against this new “horrible and incredible assault of the subalpine Government.”  Just at the time that the measure was discussed in Parliament, the king lost his mother, his wife, his infant child, and his brother, a series of misfortunes in which the Church saw “the finger of God.”  As the two queens and the Duke of Genoa were devoted Catholics, their last hours were rendered miserable by the impending sacrilegious act.  It is not to be wondered if the king was almost driven out of his mind.