The-papacy-its-history-dogmas-genius-and-prospects-wylie

CONCORDAT VTITH TUSCANY. 515mities they may choose to perpetrate, Rome must sfand accountablefor them at the bar of both human and divinejustice.Of the concordats with Spain and Germany we have alreadyspoken. The object of these deeds is to bind thesecountries more firmly than ever to the Roman see.Claimsare put forward, to which these governments would not havelistened in ages termed less enlightened than our own ;if granted, they willand,reduce the people to a pitch of vassalageunequalled by anything that obtained even in the darkages. Of a kindred character is the concordat with Tuscany,*This instrument establishes, for the first time sincethe existence of the Florentine state, the complete subjectionof the State to the Church, in all matters which thelatter may choose to call spiritual : it empowers the Popeto send any number of bulls into the country, and the bishopsto enforce them, subject to no control : it erects an ecclesiasticalcensorship over books and opinions ; and it declaresthat the property of the Church shall be disposed of, not accordingto the laws of the land, but according to canon law.Those sovereign rights which the Seignory handed downand the JSIedici defended, the secular power has conspiredto surrender into the hands of the spiritual. Between theCroats of Vienna and the priests of the Vatican, liberty isextinguished throughout Italy. The Alps and the Pyreneesenclose a region where men walk about in chains. TheLucifer of this pandemonium is the Pope. If he can preventit, never shall a single Bible cross the Alps, and eternaldarkness must be the fate of Italy.France is not so retrograde, only because party and thepress have still some power there. Louis Napoleon has soldhimself and his country to the Pope, that the Pope maymake him President for life : he has gone to the Vatican, asSaul went to the Witch of Endor, that he may obtain bysorcery what he cannot command by talent.Thus it is that• Gazetted in the " Tuscan Monitore" of July 5th, 1851.