It is evident from the facts that have been adduced, that the Catholic church, or the papal monarchy, designates an institution which has politics for its principles, monarchy for its object, and religion for its garb. It is not only political in its nature and design, but it is a political despotism, insulting in its pretensions to the common sense of mankind, and dangerous in its principles to the rights of independent governments. When we consider the monarchial principles with which it is constituted; its blasphemous arrogation of the attributes and prerogatives of the deity; its presumptuous claim to supreme jurisdiction over all other governments; the base forgeries which it has committed in the support of its arbitrary pretensions; its impious scoff at secular promises, contracts, laws, oaths and constitutions; its atrocious sanctions of prevarication, of evasion, and of mental reservation; its disgraceful system of espionage; its system of finance, by which it wrings from beggars their pittance, from the laborer the reward of his toil, from the dying the inheritance of heirs; that it may pile the wealth of the world in secret coffers, to be lavished on bribery, on corruption, on political intermeddling, on fomenting sedition and conspiracies, and ultimately, through the means of their disorganizing agencies, for the subjugation of all governments under its absolute authority. When we behold the blood-stained sword which it has drawn in the support of its frauds and usurpations; the frequent convulsions with which its unprincipled ambition has shaken the world; its triumphs over science, freedom and human right; the rapine, devastated fields, and burning cities which has marked the progress of its career; or when we turn our eyes to its late condition in Italy, and see, in the nineteenth century, under its authority, the inquisition at its bloody work; the study of philosophy banished from universities; no book allowed to be published, or imported, except such as meet the approval of bigoted censors; the government sustained only by suppressing insurrection; the prisons crowded with heretics; political offenders cruelly put to death; the nation struggling for freedom, but bound in the fetters of despotism--good heavens! what a scourge is it, and has it been to mankind. Bigotry and superstition may chaunt its victories; but a land once prosperous, now choked up and oppressed with the ruins of its former greatness; fields once fertile now turned into barren wastes; a people once the most valiant, polished and civilized, now the most debased, rude and imbecile--with ancestors that governed the world, now not able to govern themselves; a commonwealth of kings, now a commonwealth of slaves; where for liberty Cicero plead, Brutus stabbed and Cato died, now a pope curses, an inquisition murders, and prisons reverberate with the groans of patriots and freemen. These, oh patriots! are the eternal monuments that commemorate the progress and