The encyclical letter just issued by the Pope bears internal
evi- dence that Pio Nono has wholly abandoned administrative govern. ment, and left it all to his Cardinals of the old school. The docu- ment is not only inconsistent with his reforming and regenera • professions, but with the manner of the man. It exults in blin despotism, official ignorance, and falsehood. It denounces the "new trait of bookselling " ; undertakes to put down Socialism; brands as "prostitutes" the ladies—true Sisters of Charity— who tended the wounded during the revolution, and asserts that they excluded priests from the bedside of the dying. Such a far- rago Leo the Twelfth might have conceived and Gregory the Six- teenth signed. Pius harefaiely givenAlp his task : his mind was, not equal to the perplexitieawhich mailed hfin mid-way from the storms of convulsed Euro pe;:ihe mighthave restored some healthi to Roman finance and. a 4Twin's tratian: aaRome.was in: 184V, butt could not rule Rome iir the rough political weather of 184R9; he has uttered a panic-stricken " peccavi," and, retiring into shat- tered and morbid apathy, has left Rome to its fate and the Cardi- nals. The turn of affairs might be more despairing : as the res- toration of a Gregorian regime is impossible, the attempt at it may the sooner bring about a new reaction.
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