If that was the aim of the Paris multitude,
which I more than suspect, of their rulers it could not be the
purpose, unless they yielded up their better judgement to the
influence of the rabble, for assuredly, while exposing them to every
embarrassment in their foreign relations, and augmenting their
financial difficulties, they must have seen that it was an enterprise
in which success could give their country little glory, while failure
must cover it with disgrace. But what signifies to France the loss of
such renown as victory bestows? What to her is the forgoing of one
sprig of laurel more in addition to the accumulated honours of her
victorious career? The multitude of Paris rather than France, the
statesmen of the club and coffee-house, the politicians of the salons,
the reasoners of the Boulevards, may retain their thirst for such
additions, such superfluous additions, to the national fame. The
sounder reasoners, the true statesmen, have, I trust, learnt a better
lesson, and will teach her gallant people to prefer the more virtuous
and more lasting glories of peace.
But whatever the Paris mob, in the drawing-rooms or in the streets,
may have desired, I am confident the Government, if left to itself,
had one object only in view, the rescue of Rome from the usurpation of
a foreign rabble, and restoring the authority of the Pope, whom that
rabble's violence had driven from his States. And here let me say a
word which may not be popular in some quarters, and among some of
my noble friends, upon the separation of the temporal and spiritual
authority of the Pope.
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