Elective sovereign by origin, the moment the Pope ascends the throne, he becomes absolute.  Authority and honors proceed from him as from their legitimate source.  Money bears his image and superscription.  Monuments are inscribed with his name.  Laws and decrees are promulgated as voluntary emanations of his sovereign will.  As head of the Church, all spiritual interests are under his protection.  As chief of the State, all temporal interests are subject to his control.  He reigns, not merely like other sovereigns, by the “grace of God,” but by a peculiar privilege and inherent right, as Vicar of Christ.  Resistance to his will is not simply rebellion, but the deeper and deadlier sin of sacrilege.  His interpretation relieves the mind from the agony of doubt; his blessing frees the conscience from the burden of sin.  And how, if earnest-minded and sincere, can he fail to look upon the interests of the State as subordinate to the interests of the Church, and interpret his duties and obligations as the legatee of Constantine by his feelings and convictions as the successor of St. Peter?

In the practical exercise of this authority be feels the want of other eyes to help him see and other hands to help him do.  He cannot read all that is to be read, or write all that is to be written, or even hear and say all that is to be heard and said.  However great his love of detail, there are details which he cannot reach.  However comprehensive his glance, or unwearied his industry, there are objects that lie beyond the compass of his vision, and labor to be performed which no industry can bring within the human allotment of twenty-four hours.

Therefore, reserving to himself the final decision, he distributes the various functions of government among his official counsellors and those from whom new counsellors are to be chosen.  He spreads an elaborate network over all the interests and functions of the State, holding the line in his own hand, and drawing or relaxing it at his own pleasure.  He is still the lawgiver and the judge, dictating according to his own judgment, and deciding according to his own conviction.  Of his laws there is no revision; from his sentence there is no appeal.  The duties of the subject are defined by the rights of the sovereign; and of those rights he is the sole and absolute judge.

Hence a consciousness of power ever present and supreme, extending to all that has been left him of the common relations of life,—­to the hour of business and the hour of repose, to the hall of audience and the garden-walk, and giving equally its deceptive coloring to the thoughts that stir him when borne on the shoulders of men through a prostrate crowd, and those that flit dimly through his brain as he lays a weary head upon a solitary pillow.  And hence, too, he becomes for himself, as well as for others, an object of constant contemplation,—­valuing things as they contribute to his pleasure, and men as they subject themselves to his will,—­not always cruel in heart, even when his acts are cruel, nor unfeeling when he inflicts unmerited suffering and needless pain, but seeming both cruel and unfeeling, because education and habit have dried up within him that fount of human sympathies which Nature has set in the heart of man at his birth, that he might ever bear something about him to remind him of a mother’s tenderness and a father’s pride.