Favouritism, the multiplication of sinecures, municipal corruption, and the prosaic inroads of builders and speculators, soon helped to mar the work of political reconstruction, and began to arouse a certain amount of regret for the more picturesque times of the Papal rule.

A sentimental reaction of this kind is certain to occur in all cases of political change, especially in a city where tradition and emotion so long held sway.
The consciences of the faithful were also troubled when the _fiat_ of the Pope went forth excommunicating the robber-king and all his chief abettors in the work of sacrilege.

Sons of the Church throughout Italy were bidden to hold no intercourse with the interlopers and to take no part in elections to the Italian Parliament which thenceforth met in Rome.

The schism between the Vatican and the King's Court and Government was never to be bridged over; and even to-day it constitutes one of the most perplexing problems of Italy.
Despite the fact that Rome and Italy gained little of that mental and moral stimulus which might have resulted from the completion of the national movement solely by the action of the people themselves, the fact nevertheless remains that Rome needed Italy and Italy needed Rome.
The disappointment loudly expressed by idealists, sentimentalists, and reactionaries must not blind us to the fact that the Italians, and above all the Romans, have benefited by the advent of unity, political freedom, and civic responsibility.

It may well be that, in acting as the leader of a constitutional people, the Eternal City will little by little develop higher gifts than those nurtured under Papal tutelage, and perhaps as beneficent to Humanity as those which, in the ancient world, bestowed laws on Europe.
As Mazzini always insisted, political progress, to be sound, must be based ultimately on moral progress.