1/5 CHAPTER II. Here is an interest of the highest order, which ought to silence the particular interests of nations, even as in a State the public interest silences individual interests." These are not my words, but the words of M.Thiers: they occur in his report to the Legislative Assembly, in October 1849. I have no doubt this Father of the temporal Church expressed the wishes of one hundred and thirty-nine millions of Catholics. It was all Catholicity which said to 3,124,668 Italians, by the lips of the honourable reporter: "Devote yourselves as one man. Our chief can only be venerable, August, and independent, so long as he reigns despotically over you. |