“Your commission,” the report states, “has maturely examined this act, _motu proprio_, in order to see whether the counsels which France believed herself authorized to offer had borne such fruits as to prevent her regretting having interfered in Roman affairs. Well, by a large majority, twelve in fifteen, your commission declares that it sees in the _motu proprio_ a first boon of such real value, that nothing but unjust pretensions could overlook its importance. We shall discuss this act in its every detail. But limiting ourselves, at present, to consider the principle on which is based the Pontifical concession, we say that it grants all desirable provincial and municipal liberties. As to political liberties, consisting in the power of deciding on the public business of a country in one of the two assemblies, and in union with the executive—as in England, for instance—it is very true that the _motu proprio_ does not grant this sort of political liberty, or only grants it in the rudimentary form of a council without deliberative voice. This is a question of immense gravity, which the Holy Father alone can solve, and which he and the Christian world are interested in not leaving to chance. That on this point he should have chosen to be prudent; that after his recent experience he should have preferred not to reopen a career of agitation among a people who have shown themselves so unprepared for parliamentary liberty, is what we do not know that we have either the right or the cause to deem blameworthy.”