Gerontocracy is still too powerful, even in the youngest governments Besides, we are now at peace, and radical reforms are only to be effected by war.

The sword alone enjoys the privilege of deciding great questions by a single stroke.
Diplomatists, a timid army of peace, proceed but by half-measures.
There is one which was proposed in 1814 by Count Aldini, in 1831 by Rossi, in 1855 by Count Cavour.

These three statesmen, comprehending the impossibility of limiting the authority of the Pope within the kingdom in which it is exercised, and over the people who are abandoned to it, advised Europe to remedy the evil by diminishing the extent of, and reducing the population subjected to, the States of the Church.
Nothing is more just, natural, or easy than to free the Adriatic provinces, and to confine the despotism of the Papacy between the Mediterranean and the Apennines.

I have shown that the cities of Ferrara, Ravenna, Bologna, Rimini, and Ancona are at once the most impatient of the Pontifical yoke and the most worthy of liberty.
Deliver them.

Here is a miracle which may be wrought by a stroke of the pen: and the eagle's plume which signed the treaty of Paris is as yet but freshly mended.
There would still remain to the Pope a million of subjects, and between three and four millions of acres; neither the one nor the other in a very high state of cultivation, I must admit; but it is possible that the diminution of his revenue might induce him to manage his estates and utilize his resources better than he now does.