POPE LEO AND KING HUMBERT.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 5351, 22 May 1878, Page 3

POPE LEO AND KING HUMBERT.

(From tho special correspondent of the London 1 Times). Home,“March 11. The relations between the Mikado at the Vatican and the Tycoon at the Quirinal, between two potentates living together in the same city, facing each other from the windows of their respective palaces, perfectly independent of one another, and yet in a state ,«f perpetual mutual antagonism, were so tew in Europe as to appear almost impossible, and there was a general expectation that the position must of necessity be affected by the death of one of them. But both are dead now, almost simultaneously, and the situation to all appearance remains unaltered ; the stage the same with the only change of the dramatis persona ;—on the one side 1 the heir ot tho victorious King, on the other the successor of tho vanquished Pope. And yet how great is the difference both in the characters of the new adversaries and in the circumstances which have brought them into the lists ! Pius IX. had been a Pope-King ; he had fought for his earthly throne, and though succumbing in tho contest, he had .neither abated his pretensions nor relinquished his hopes of a reversal of his' fortunes.: He was unsubdued in spirit, loud in his protests, unwearied in the rehearsal of his grievances. Leo XIII. accepts his position he utters no complaints j avoids every allusion' to his claims ; in all his words and acts be maintains the most dignified reserve, the most resigned acquiescence in his fallen condition. There is nothing political in bis utterances, nothing kingly in his , attitude he is laying aside his courtly splendor, reducing his household expenditure, dismissing his military establishment—in one word, sinking tho mock; Sovereign into the true Pontiff.. , And yet how much loftier is the mind, how much stronger the temper of the new Pope than was the disposition of the old one I Pius IX. reigned, but never ruled ; De Merode, AntoneUi, Billio, Simeoni, a hundred meaner and more obscure counsellors by turns swayed his weak, vain mind, and determined his wavering conduct, He had no individuality, no thought or will, no speech ot his own j he was the passive instrument, the mere mouthpiece of Hltramontanes and Jesuits; and he had, however reluctantly, however rebelliously, to withstand the promptings and to heed the warnings and biddings' of the ’ designing and overbearing potentates who had rebuilt and propped up his throne. Tho last Pope-King wash slave of Austria or Prance long before ho proclaimed himself tho prisoner of Italy; His successor belongs to himself alone, t He brooks no advisers, asks and expects no human aid. Ho has a will of his own, and follows no other. He writes his own Encyclicals/ * he meditates his own speeches, communes with no man, seeks, no man’s sympathy, manages

his own business,' sees to everything himself, and-suffers no attempt at other men’s interference., , .. His own 1 liir of e-vi.luet was traced long before him'acuewsio.v-:. i.u has no worldly policy;’ his reigp is not,of this world ;„his trust is hot in Princes ; his gendarmes and Swiss guards are only an encumbrance and a vexation to , him ; he has faith in his priestly office—in hie office as guardian of God's truth and herald of -God’s word. The- e is nothing more remarkable, nothing more new, in the annals of the Papacy than Pope Leo’s recent address to the deputations from the .French Universities. He bids Christians fight’ unbelief with its own weapons; to meet the sophisms of man’s science with the ■ sounder arguments of God’s knowledge ; he will set Aaron’s rod against the rods.of magicians; and he pointed to Louvain as the mansion of truth against which the gates of hell will not prevail.. It is unarmed faith, he thinks, the reasoning and not the militant Church which rules Belgium ; and ’ if Belgium, why not one day Prance ? why not eventually also Italy? Spread ..true light among the people ; combat error by dispelling ignorance ; win the masses over to. the eternal, unchangeable truth; base morality on Heaven’s law; bid God’s kingdom come;; make God’s will the people’s will; and what. King or Parliament, asks the Pope, will stand against it 1 What array of civil authority or- of military power will avail against the unarmed authority, the unassuming, yet irresistible ascendancy of the Church ? Such is Popo Leo’s view of his mission so far’ as it can be made out from his precedents as a Bishop and from his first acts as a Pontiff. On the other, hand, we have Victor Emmanuel at rest in the Pantheon and Humbert reigning in his stead., The- former, "a loyal King and a pious one, led throughout his career by e'venta stronger than any man, in a perpetual contrast between his duty to God and his duty to man, came to. Home in spite of himself, and found his, grave,where “he dared not, make'his ;bod.” He/er was the Church robbed by, a more devout son of the Ohnrcli. Pius IX was well aware that, the Subalpine King was the best friend he had in Italy ; and he, the old Pope himself, was; not without a sneaking kindness towards the bluff monarch whose children he had godfathered. Botii felt their inability to withstand the,-tides which swept’ them along past all .resistance. Both were the victims of their respective systems ; the mere toys in the hands of the same inexor-’ able fate. The game was played. by unseen hands,,pver their heads; the - winner was; ns much to be pitied as the loser, and the souse of,their common helplessness established a link of sympathy between them. ; Humbert comes to the throne with clean hands and an untroubled conscience. The Crown “ descends to him with better quiet, better opinion, better confirmation, for ail the soil of the achievement goes with his father into the earth.” He is also free from the old King’s religious scruples and misgivings ; ihe does” not recognise the temporal power as a dogma, nor look on territorial conquest .as sacrilege.- He is a-good, but by no means a bigoted, Catholic, and is strengthened in his freethought by his wife—a Princess of superior intelligence and education, whom the priests have be n foolish enough to malign and insult;' Humbert will hold his own heedless of; excommunication, and will dare any man to touch that iron crown which God has given him. But he is too wise to seek a quarrel whore none is offered to him ; too wise to stand on the punctilio of his stupid Ministers, who, 1 after deserving the world’s praiso ,by, .their behavior towards the Conclave, lost ail the merit of their good jmlioy by refusing to, announce, the new Pontiffs exaltation in their official' Organ, oii the plea that the Vatican' had given them no official information of the event.. King Humbert repaired tire -blunder in his Crown speech, as lie best could,, rby a clear statement’ that “ one Pope had descended into the tomb, and his successor had been elected,” . and announcing that “ respect for religious belief was to bo reconciled with a determined defence of the laws of the State, and the great principlesot civilisation.” - ! The Pope and* the King are, therefore, substantially of one mind ; for all the Popeciaims in his address to the Universities is' the right to teach and to preach and all the. King demands in his speech in Parliament is observance of the civil laws and free scope to humanprogress, The Church gets all she can ; the State holds' all it should ; and if Italy ever becomes; as priest-ridden as Belgium now is, it will be either owing .to the strength' of her religious convictions or to the weakness of her political organization ; it will be neither owing to the Pope’s material strength nor ,to the King’s superstitious submissiveneas, but simply to the people’s own impotence to defend themselves against the use and abuse of spiritual authority. ■ ‘