“Neither can we refrain from telling you that to use victory well is a greater and more difficult achievement than to be victorious.  If the present day recalls to you any other period of your history, let the children profit by the errors of their forefathers.  Remember that all stability and all prosperity has its main earthly ground in concord; that it is God alone who maketh of one mind them that dwell in a house; that he grants this reward only to the humble and the meek, to those who respect his laws, in the liberty of his church, in the order of society, in charity toward all mankind.”

* * * * *

Shortly afterward another measure, emanating entirely from the Pope, and opposed by the prejudices of the mob, showed that his humane and liberal disposition and enlightened understanding waited for no impulse from without, and for no hope of increased popularity, before doing justice to a long oppressed race.  “The friends of social progress were highly gratified by the decision of Pius IX to raze in Rome the walls and gates which shut up the Jews in the Ghetto.  He had already, at the commencement of his pontificate, softened some of the rigors with which they were afflicted, and had directed that they might spread beyond that ignominious precinct; nor, however great was the outcry about it among the mob, did he forego the idea of bettering the condition of the followers of the Mosaic law.”  He was disposed to give them civil rights; and if he did not think of extending his concessions even to political privileges, yet he would give this as the main reason for it, that, in a constitutional country, everyone who enjoys them may rise to the highest stages of power; whereas a pope could not have any save Catholic ministers.  In the mean time he raised them out of the abjectness of their isolation, although the Roman vulgar censured him for it bitterly, most of all because it took effect in Holy Week.  When it was known in the city that the walls and fastenings of the Ghetto were to be pulled down at night, by order of the Cardinal Vicar, Ciceruacchio hastened with his companions, or subjects, to share in the work; and they shared in it so largely that it seemed as though the thing were effected more as their boon than by the will of the Pope.  Pius IX was vexed at this; whether because noise had been made about what he wanted done quietly, or because it was brought about in such a manner that it might seem the popular party had had more to say to it than the authority of the head of religion.  Rome fully shared the enthusiasm which was awakened throughout Italy by the entrance of the Piedmontese troops into Lombardy, and by the announcement by Charles Albert that he had drawn the sword in the sacred cause of Italian independence.  His proclamation, in the stilted phrase common to such state papers, declared that he relied upon “the assistance of that God who is visibly with us; of that God who has given