“I have 14,576 laymen in my service.  You have been told that ecclesiastics monopolize the public service.  Show me these ecclesiastics!  The Count de Rayneval looked for them, and could find but ninety-eight; and even of those, the greater part were not in priests’ orders!  Be assured we have long since broken with the clerical regime.  I myself decreed the admissibility of laymen to all offices but one.  In order to show my sincerity, for some time I had lay ministers!  I entrusted the finances to a mere accountant, the department of justice to an obscure little advocate, and that of war to a man of business who had been intendant to several Cardinals.  I admit that for the moment we have no laymen in the Ministry; but my subjects may console themselves by reflecting that the law does not prevent me from appointing them.

“In the provinces, out of eighteen prefects, I appointed three laymen.  If I afterwards substituted prelates for those three, it was because the people loudly called for the change.  Is it my fault if the people respect nothing but the ecclesiastical garb?”

This style of defence may deceive some good easy folk; but I think if I were Pope, or Secretary of State, or even a simple supporter of the Pontifical administration, I should prefer telling the plain truth.  That truth is strictly logical, it is in conformity with the principle of the Government; it emanates from the Constitution.  Things are exactly what they ought to be, if not for the welfare of the people, at least for the greatness, security, and satisfaction of its temporal head.

The truth then is that all the ministers, all the prefects, all the ambassadors, all the court dignitaries, and all the judges of the superior tribunals, are ecclesiastics; that the Secretary of the Brevi and the Memoriali the Presidents and Vice-Presidents of the Council of State and the Council of Finances, the Director-General of the Police, the Director of Public Health and Prisons, the Director of the Archives, the Attorney-General of the Fisc, the President and the Secretary of the Cadastro the Agricultural President and Commission, are all ecclesiastics.  The public education is in the hands of ecclesiastics, under the direction of thirteen Cardinals.  All the charitable establishments, all the funds applicable to the relief of the poor, are the patrimony of ecclesiastical directors.  Congregations of Cardinals decide causes in their leisure hours, and the Bishops of the kingdom are so many living tribunals.

Why seek to conceal from Europe so natural an order of things?

Let Europe rather be told what it did when it re-established a priest on the throne of Rome.