"Let it be so," exclaimed several voices at once, "we agree to it." It was necessary, before the proposition could be carried, that it should have a certain number of signatures, and I gladly affixed my name to it. Oh! who can express the satisfaction I experienced at so signal a manifestation of a sincere religious feeling. I saw in it the operation and fruit of the Bible. It is needless to add that it was carried amid general acclamations, and these excellent young men thronged round me afterwards, rejoicing, and exclaiming:--"We have done right; we have exalted Christ and abased the Pope. Glory and honour to the Lord Jesus Christ: to the Pope confusion and disgrace. He has dared to excommunicate us; we, in our turn, will excommunicate him. It is the Church which has the right to excommunicate, and the people constitute the Church." Yet this noble outburst of pure religious feeling has been basely misrepresented, by the enemies of civil and spiritual reform, as the language of profanity. France--traitorous and degraded France--joined in the senseless outcry, with the hypocrisy that has marked all her proceedings under her present most unworthy president; though she must well know how universal, in Catholic countries, it is to put all places of public resort under some saintly protection or other. If in this instance the Romans wisely chose to range themselves under the banner of their Saviour, rather than under that of any one who might be impiously exalted by the priests to share in the honour and worship due to Him alone, they had, at any rate, the example before them of the Florentines, who did the same thing in the time of Savonarola; that unhappy monk, who yielded up, amidst the flames lighted by the Inquisition, the life that he had devoted to unmasking the enormities of the Papal Church, and her instruments the priests. With equal disingenuousness was it pretended to be understood by the same enemies of truth, whether moral or religious, that the motto of the Roman Republic, _Dio e il Popolo_, God and the People, signified The People is God, _Dio è il Popolo_. Thus wickedly did they bear false witness against their neighbour, and seek to confound right and wrong in the minds of those who would otherwise willingly have been led to form their opinions according to the rules of candour and justice.