He first wished to drink for the salvation of the same, we shall not desist from supplicating Him benignly to hear the fervent prayers which day and night we unceasingly offer for the salvation of the misguided.  No day certainly could be more joyful for us, than that in which it shall be granted to see return into the fold of the Lord our sons from whom now we derive so much bitterness and so great tribulations.  The hope of enjoying soon the happiness of such a day is strengthened in us by the reflection, that universal are the prayers which, united to ours, ascend to the throne of Divine Mercy from the lips and the heart of the faithful throughout the Catholic world, urging it continually to change the hearts of sinners, and reconduct them into the paths of truth and of justice.

“Gaeta, January 6, 1849.”

The silliness, bigotry, and ungenerous tone of this manifesto excited a simultaneous movement in the population.  The procession which carried it, mumbling chants, for deposit in places provided for lowest uses, and then, taking from, the doors of the hatters’ shops the cardinals’ hats, threw them into the Tiber, was a real and general expression of popular disgust.  From that hour the power of the scarlet hierarchy fell to rise no more.  No authority can survive a universal movement of derision.  From that hour tongues and pens were loosed, the leaven of Machiavellism, which still polluted the productions of the more liberal, disappeared, and people talked as they felt, just as those of us who do not choose to be slaves are accustomed to do in America.

“Jesus,” cried an orator, “bade them feed his lambs.  If they have done so, it has been to rob their fleece and drink their blood.”

“Why,” said another, “have we been so long deaf to the saying, that the temporal dominion of the Church was like a thorn in the wound of Italy, which shall never be healed till that thorn is extracted?”

And then, without passion, all felt that the temporal dominion was in fact finished of itself, and that it only remained to organize another form of government.

LETTER XXVIII.

GIOBERTI, MAMIANI, AND MAZZINI.—­FORMATION OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL
ASSEMBLY.—­THE RIGHT OF SUFFRAGE.—­A PROCESSION.—­PROCLAMATION OF
THE REPUBLIC.—­RESULTS.—­DECREE OF THE ASSEMBLY.—­AMERICANS IN
ROME:  DIFFERENCE OF IMPRESSIONS.—­FLIGHT OF THE GRAND DUKE OF
TUSCANY.—­CHARLES ALBERT.—­PRESENT STATE OF ROME.—­REFLECTIONS AND
CONCLUSIONS.—­LATEST INTELLIGENCE.

Rome, Evening of Feb. 20, 1849.

The League between the Italian States, and the Diet which was to establish it, had been the thought of Gioberti, but had found the instrument at Rome in Mamiani.  The deputies were to be named by princes or parliaments, their mandate to be limited by the existing institutions of the several states; measures of mutual security and some modifications in the way of reform would be the utmost that could be hoped from this Diet.  The scope of this party did not go beyond more vigorous prosecution of the war for independence, and the establishment of good, institutions for the several principalities on a basis of assimilation.