TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE ITALIAN TREATY WITH FRANCE.
TEE Pope and the Emperor of the French have hitherto been bound together politically by much the same knot as an ill-matched wife and husband. The Pope has done many un- scrupulous things simply because he knew that the Emperor would be held responsible for them, and did not believe that the Emperor would venture to put the Papacy away. Nobody dared repress the wife's violence while there was so formidable a husband to resent insult. And so it has gone on for years, the natural protector feeling himself painfully discredited by the actions which his protection enabled his weaker partner to commit, but hesitating at a separation, and too prudent for a divorce. The wife's family were too powerful, and too power- ful in his own country, to admit of any strong step, unless indeed she should venture on something so presumptuous as to elicit a strong counteracting opinion to keep them in check.
But this is exactly what at length.she has done. Little Cohen's premature faith has been a most unfortunate accession of strength to the Court of Rome. It has betrayed the Pope into one too many declarations of 'non possumus' to the Emperor of the French, and at length persuaded him that something must be done to shake the excessive reliance which Pius has always placed in the strength of weakness. Soft obstinacy is a capital policy for the Holy See ; but even that may be carried too far. The Emperor, no doubt knowing as he does the dangerous strength of the priests in his domin- ions, would not have ventured literally to force the rendition of the kidnapped Cohen unless the child had been a French subject. But he knows the strength of French pride as well as the strength of priestly influence, and he is the last man to let his subjects think that fear of Papal power would induce him to lend French troops for the grati- fication of all the arbitrary and lawless acts of Roman ecclesiastics. Yet that is doubtless the effect, if not the intention of the French occupation. Cohen is an Italian, and Italy would of course have done what France under Louis Philippe and M. Guizot did in the similar case of a French Jew,—have compelled the rendition of Cohen to his parents but for the French protectorate. It is one thing to secure the Popo from the civil control of any other Power, it is quite another to secure him so effectually that he does not care how much he tramples on the civil rights of all except Frenchmen, whether they be his own subjects or not. The Emperor may feel compelled, we incline to believe from the drift (so far as it is known to us) of the treaty he has just acceded to, that he does feel compelled,—to sustain the temporal power of the Pope at least during his own reign. But he does not wish to support the injurious assumption by the Pope of a claim to override civil rights whether within or without his own dominions. In short the Emperor still adheres to the views which he expressed in the memorable letter on the Roman question which he published two years ago, and has at last been driven by the aggressive obstinacy of the Court of Rome to take active steps for realizing the solu- tion which he then only suggested. The one ruling idea of that letter, and we believe the ruling idea of the present scheme, is to secure the spiritual independence of the Pope by sustaining him in an independent secular dominion how- ever small. In May, 1862, the Emperor wrote as follows to M. Thouvenel :— " The Pope, brought to a reasonable view of the state of affairs, would understand the necessity of accepting everything which can bind him to Italy ; and Italy, ceding to the counsels of a wise policy, would not refuse to adopt the guarantees necessary for the independence of the Sovereign Pontiff, and for the free exercise of his power.
"This double object might be attained by a combination which, maintaining the Pope master in his own domain, would remove the barriers which now separate his States from the rest of Italy.
" To be master in his own domain independence must be insured to him, and his rule freely accepted by his subjects. It must be hoped that it would be so—on the one hand, when the Italian Government would take the engagement towards France to recognize the States of the Church and the limitation line agreed upon • on the other hand, when the Government of the Holy See, returning to ancient traditions, would sanction the privileges of the munici- palities and of the provinces in each guise that they would, so to say, govern themselves ; for then the power of the Pope, soaring in a sphere elevated above the secondary interest of society, would be free from that responsibility which is always heavy, and which only a strong Government can stand."
By this view we believe Louis Napoleon still holds firm. The treaty which the Marquis Pepoli has just negotiated with France, secures, it is asserted, the withdrawal of the French troops at the end of two years at latest,—that interval being allowed for the Pope to recruit his own army and set his civil affairs in as much order as he can or will ac- complish,—on condition of Italy engaging to respect and defend from violation by others the Papal frontier, and to resign all ulterior views on Rome as a capital, as la pledge of which she is to accept Florence at once as the capital of the kingdom. Nor is this, we imagine, intended to be a mere step at which Napoleon expects Italy to pause for the present. Nothing is laid more stress on by the semi- official French organs which have expounded the treaty than the absolute condition that the Italian Government shall give up all forward glances towards the ancient capital, and re- concile itself to the Pope's continued rule over the residue of his dominions. More encroachment the Emperor dare not, even if he would, permit. He probably feels that the French Catholics would not endure to have the Pope either subject to the civil dominion of Italy or a fugitive. The hospitable English offer of Malta as an asylum some two years ago was, we imagine, much more acceptable to the Pope himself and his Cardinals than to any of the Catholic Powers, who would no more like to see their spiritual ruler escape entirely from the sphere of their political influence than to see him depen- dent on a rival Catholic State. The Catholic Church is nearly unanimous in demanding some secular rule for the Pope as the condition of impartial spiritual rule, and the Emperor though he does not succumb to the fanaticism of the Empress knows well for how large a power that fanaticism stands in. France.
The momentous question remains,—how far are the Italian Government right in formally abandoning the Italian claim to Rome, and agreeing even to defend the Papal frontier,— knowing, as we believe they do know, that France means to enforce this obligation, and not merely to make it for the sake of form,—in order to throw off the weight of French interven- tion ? It is no light matter to throw over for a generation,— for the life of the Emperor or the duration of his dynasty at all events,—all thought of redeeming the old capital of the republic and the empire from the hands of the priests. It is no trifling thing to have to face an eager people—not with an exhortation to wait and be prudent such as they have so long listened to, but with a surrender of the right to claim Rome, the voluntary assumption of a treaty-obligation with a for- midable Power not to do so. It is no light thing to tell the people that Florence is to be the permanent capital, and that all the great Roman traditions are to adorn not the civil liberty of a new nation but the sacerdotal .despotism of a senile Church. For a great people it is almost easier to surrender the substance of what it regards as its rights, than formally to renounce them.
No doubt a time may come when this treaty, like all other treaties, may lose its practical force, when the successor of Napoleon may cease to insist on its provisions, when Italy may brush it aside as the contract of a past generation of Italians with a past generation of Frenchmen which it is no more incumbent on them to respect than it is on France now to respect the treaty of Vienna. But for a time at least, and probably not a short time if the Italian Parliament accepts it, it must govern the policy of the nation. Is the gain worthy of the sacrifice ?
No doubt the gain is great. The injury to the national sentiment of self-respect in the permanent intrusion of a foreign Power like France into Italy is not trifling. That would be removed. Again, as we pointed out at first, the Pope could not, if depending only on his own legions for support, play tricks—like kidnapping Italian Sew boys—in which his own army would be quite inadequate to sustain him. Italy, in promising to respect the Papal independence and frontier, of course gives up no right which she possesses in relation to any other foreign Power who might aggrieve her. France world not allow her to injure or expel the Pope ; but France must allow her to compel him to do anything on which France herself in her own case would insist. Again there is the by no means trifling chance that the Pope might come to grief in the attempt to control his own subjects with such a mercenary army as alone he could pay, or that he might come to grief in the effort to pay it. The ter- ritories still remaining to the Pope are said to contain nearly 700,000 inhabitants, and his present army is said to number about 10,000 men in all. His revenue,—the large foreign contributions included,—is probably now about 800,0001. a year. Now when the French are withdrawn the Pope can certainly not expect to keep order in a territory so thoroughly disaffected with fewer than 20,000 good troops, which could scarcely cost him less than, if even so little, as 201. a man, or 400,0001. sterling annually, —just half his revenue. Then he will still have a very heavy debt even after Italy has accepted, as it is said that the present treaty binds her to accept, such a share of it as is proportional to the territory and population she has absorbed. The total debt of the Papacy is said to be 24,000,0001., which would in any case leave the Pope saddled with a debt of some five millions sterling at least, or an interest of some 250,0001. beyond the cost of the army. Under these conditions, and without the possibility of foreign aid (for while the treaty compels Italy to respect the Papal frontier, France and Italy enter, we believe, into mutual assurances against the intervention of foreign Powers), a financial or military break-down within this hermetically sealed kingdom would always be on the cards. The situation of the Pope will be exceed- ingly different to what it was when both Austria and Naples were at hand to lend him succour in his difficulties. Italy is pledged not to enhance his diffi- culties, but of course she will not relieve them. The .alternative for the Pope will be either to make himself truly independent or to give up the game, To make himself truly independent he must have a strong, well-disciplined, and therefore well-paid army, at least a tolerably governed people to whom life is not a mere burden and the permanent contrast with Italy too painful to endure, and a revenue equal, or at least very nearly equal to the claims upon it—for the borrowing power will be greatly diminished, if not almost extinguished by the new arrangement. Hitherto the calcula- tion has always been that Italy must in the end accept the Papal obligations; but the moat once fairly drawn about the Papal States, and the present debt fairly divided, Italy would not be expected to become responsible for future accumula- tions. The chance then would not be small that without any aggressive move on the part of Italy, without any quarrel' even with Rome, Rome would drop into her hands before long. The question for the Italian Parliament will be whether these fair but somewhat distant hopes, with the immediate gain of terminating the French interven- tion, are adequate compensation for taking voluntarily an obligation to resign what the Italian people look upon as a right. We understand that it was to some arrangement of this eort that Cavour himself looked as the final solution of the Roman question, believing that if carried out in good faith it must end, perhaps at a distant, but no very distant date in the possession of Rome. The choice certainly lies between some policy of this kind and a mach more actively revolu- tionary movement than the Italian Government seems at all prepared for. It is at least better, we think, than mere waiting, which is the policy at present; and it will liberate the nation's energies for an equally necessary and more serious 'business—the acquisition of Venetia.
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