On the 5th inst. Prince Bismarck defended the abolition of
the post of Envoy to the Vatican, by alleging that the war of 1870 had been brought on by the Pope and the Jesuits, who overbore Napoleon III. when he was hesitating—as if Napoleon had been fidele—and that the Papal Nuncio at Munich in 1869, Monsignore Meglia, had said to the Wurtemburg Envoy there that" the Church was free only in America, and perhaps England and Belgium, but that elsewhere her chance of regaining her rightful position rested on revolution." This statement, in itself of little importance, as it has repeatedly been made by Protestants, is, according to the Soir, denied by Monsignore Meglia, who is now in Paris ; but according to the Univers, a much better authority, Monsignore Meglia has made, and will make, no reply. As Herr Varnbiiler, then Premier in Wurtemburg, and a man of the highest character, states that the remark was sent to him by his agent in Munich, it probably was made, but it is difficult to see why it so bitterly offends Prince Bismarck. Everybody has always known that the Vatican cares nothing about forms of government, and would, especially since the fall of the Temporal Power, just as soon rely on democracies as on Princes. To foment revolution and to wish well to revolution are two entirely different matters.
