was needed, because, as a matter of fact, the clergy preserved their immunities untouched and showed not the slightest disposition to yield one jot of them.  The Piedmontese clergy, more numerous in proportion to the population than in any state except Rome, were more intransigent than any ecclesiastical body in the world.  The Italian priest of old days, whatever else might be said about him, was rarely a fanatic.  The very nickname ‘Ultramontane’ given by Italians to the religious extremists north of the Alps, shows how foreign such excesses were to their own temperaments.  But the Ultramontane spirit had already invaded Piedmont, and was embraced by its clergy with all the zeal of converts.  There was still a Foro Ecclesiastico for the arraignment of religious offenders, and this was one of the first privileges against which Massimo d’Azeglio lifted his ‘sacrilegious’ hand.  To go through all the list would be tedious, and would demand more explanation regarding the local modes of acquisition and tenure of religious property than would be interesting now.  The object of the Siccardi laws, as they were named after the Minister of Grace and Justice who introduced them, and of the stronger measures to which they led up, was to make the priest amenable to the common law of the land in all except that which referred to his spiritual functions; to put a limit on the amassment of wealth by religious corporations; to check the multiplication of convents and the multiplication of feast days, both of which encouraged the people in sloth and idleness; to withdraw education from the sole control of ecclesiastics; and finally, to authorise civil marriage, but without making it compulsory.  The programme was large, and it took years to carry it out.  The Vatican contended that it was contrary to the Concordat which existed between the Holy See and the Court of Sardinia.  Massimo d’Azeglio replied that the maintenance of the Concordat, in all its parts, meant the ruin of the state; that he had tried every means of conciliation, made every effort towards arriving at a compromise, and that since his endeavours had failed in consequence of the refusal of the Vatican to abate pretensions which it neither could nor did enforce in Austria, Naples or Spain, heaven and the world must judge between Rome and Piedmont, between Cardinal Antonelli and himself.

The struggle throughout was bitter in the extreme, but its most striking incident was the denial of the last Sacraments to a member of the Government, the Minister of Agriculture, Santa Rosa, who happened to die soon after the passing of the Act abolishing the Foro Ecclesiastico.  Santa Rosa was a sincerely religious man, but he resisted all the attempts of the priest to extort a retractation, and died unabsolved rather than leave a dishonoured name to his children.