In this way the Church more and more assumed an attitude of irreconcilable hostility to the ideas that prevailed among the educated classes in Italy. After the occupation of Rome by the Italian government, Pius shut himself up in the Vatican palace and proclaimed himself a prisoner. He first advised and then commanded Catholics to stay away from the polls at national elections, and directed his foreign policy to the end of reestablishing his Temporal Power. This policy, judged by the popular belief in the divine right of nationality and of majorities, is of course wrong; judged by one who regards the interests of the Church as paramount, it may be defended as an attempt to adhere to the old ways under which the Catholic Church had played its extraordinary part in European history. After the occupation of Rome the Italian government passed the Law of Guarantees (May 10, 1871), which guaranteed to the Pope an annual subsidy of somewhat more than 3,000,000 lire a year, and also the personal and diplomatic rights of a sovereign, such as to maintain his court, to receive ambassadors, to have separate postal and telegraph service, to keep the Vatican and Lateran palaces, etc. Pius IX refused to accept the subsidy. Another difficulty, which has confronted the government since the union, has been the discord between the North and South. The northern provinces, especially Lombardy and Piedmont, have been making progress in manufactures and in commerce; whereas, on the contrary, the South, very ignorant and very poor, and devoted to agriculture, wine, grain, lemons, oranges, etc., without facilities for manufacture and without capacity for commerce, has made doubtful advance. Special causes have hindered it. In Sicily, in consequence of long-continued poverty, ignorance, and misgovernment, the secret societies, known as the _Mafia_, have overrun great parts of the island. The original cause of the _Mafia_ was probably self-protection, the lower classes banding together to save themselves from the oppressions of the upper classes who clung to the remains of the feudal system. The landowners, for example, had used their control of the courts to maintain privileges and injustice. As a natural consequence, members of the _Mafia_ deemed it ignoble to revenge wrongs by judicial process, and still more ignoble to give any information to any officers of the government. They settled their own disputes and righted their own wrongs. With the grant of suffrage the _Mafia_ became a political power, and only permitted the election of such candidates as it approved.