_Rome, April 29, 1870._—What I mentioned in my last letter as a pamphlet of Cardinal Rauscher’s, is a printed memorial addressed to the Presidents of the Council, bearing the title of _Petitio a pluribus Galliæ, Austriæ et Hungariæ, Italiæ, Angliæ et Hiberniæ et Americæ Septentrionalis Præsidibus exhibita_, and dated April 20th. It states that papal infallibility is beset by many objections and difficulties, which require an examination such as is impossible in a General Congregation. Among them is one of supreme importance, bearing directly on the instruction to be given to the faithful on the divine commandments and the relation of the Catholic religion to civil society. “The Popes have deposed Emperors and Kings, and Boniface VIII. in the Bull _Unam Sanctam_ has established the corresponding theory, which the Popes openly taught down to the seventeenth century under anathema, that God has committed to them power over temporal things. But we, and almost all Bishops of the Catholic world, teach another doctrine. We teach that the ecclesiastical power is indeed higher than the civil, but that each is independent of the other, and that while sovereigns are subject to the spiritual penalties of the Church, she has no power to depose them or absolve their subjects from their oaths of allegiance. And this is the ancient doctrine, taught by all the Fathers and by the Popes before Gregory VII. But if the Pope, according to the Bull _Unam Sanctam_, possessed both swords—if, according to Paul IV.’s Bull _Cum ex Apostolatûs officio_, he had absolute dominion by divine right over nations and kingdoms,—the Church could not conceal this from her people, nor is the subterfuge admissible,(94) that this power exists only in the abstract and has no bearing on public affairs, and that Pius has no intention of deposing rulers and princes; for the objectors would at once scornfully reply, ‘We have no fear of papal decrees, but after many and various dissimulations it has at last become evident that every Catholic, who acts according to his professed belief, is a born enemy of the State, for he holds himself bound in conscience to do all in his power to reduce all kingdoms and nations into subjection to the Pope.’ We need not define more precisely the manifold accusations the enemies of the Church might deduce from this.