In the opinion of the head of the French Republic, the way to be again victorious over anarchy, was to deprive it of all pretext and all cause for its existence.
He knew Rome; he had lived there.

He knew, from personal experience, in what the Papal government differed from good governments.

His natural sense of justice urged him to give the subjects of the Holy Father, in exchange for the political autonomy of which he robbed them, all the civil liberties and all the inoffensive rights enjoyed in civilized States.
On the 18th of August, 1849, he addressed to M.Edgar Ney a letter, which was, in point of fact, a _memorandum_ addressed to the Pope.
_AMNESTY, SECULARIZATION, THE CODE NAPOLEON, A LIBERAL GOVERNMENT_: these were the gifts he promised to the Romans in exchange for the Republic, and demanded of the Pope in return for a crown.

This programme contained, in half-a-dozen words, a great lesson to the sovereign, and a great consolation to the people.
But it is easier to introduce a Breguet spring into a watch made when Henri IV.

was king, than a single reform into the old pontifical machine.