(M71) Had there been question only of forming a united Italy, and of introducing such reforms as the time demanded into the States of the Church, and those of the Italian grand dukes, such a cause would have had no better friends and supporters than the Pope and the native princes. But the revolutionary party aimed at more than this, and they hastened to show their hand as soon as they obtained any power. As has been seen, the Holy Father himself complained bitterly of the increase of irreligion and immorality under their ill-omened auspices in Romagna. It was not their policy to reconstitute, but to subvert. No existing institution, however excellent, was sacred in their eyes. Thus speak the archbishops and bishops of the Marches in a remonstrance addressed to the Piedmontese Governor on 21st November, 1860: “We scarcely believe our own eyes, or the testimony of our own ears, when we see and hear the excesses, the abominations, the disorders witnessed in the chief cities of our respective dioceses, to the shame and horror of the beholders, to the great detriment of religion, of decency and public morality, since the ordinances against which we protest deprive us of all power to protect religion and morality, or to repress the prevailing crimes and licentiousness. The public sale, at nominal prices, of mutilated translations of the Bible, of pamphlets of every description, saturated with poisonous errors or infamous obscenities, is permitted in the cities which, a few months ago, had never heard the names of these scandalous productions; the impunity with which the most horrible blasphemies are uttered in public, and the worse utterance of expressions and sentiments that breathe a hellish wickedness; the exposition, the public sale and the diffusion of statuettes, pictures and engravings, which brutally outrage piety, purity, the commonest decency; the representation in our theatres of pieces and scenes in which are turned into ridicule the Church—Christ’s immaculate spouse—the Vicar of Christ, the ministers of religion, and everything held dear to piety and faith; in fine, the fearful licentiousness of public manners, the odious devices resorted to for perverting the innocent and the young, the evident wish and aim to make immorality, obscenity, uncleanness triumph among all classes; such are, your Excellency, the rapid and faint outlines of the scandalous state of things created in the Marches by the legislation and discipline so precipitately introduced by the Piedmontese government. We appeal to your Excellency. Could we remain silent and indifferent spectators of this immense calamity without violating our most sacred duty?” If anything under the government of subversion has saved Italy from utter ruin, it is nothing less than the zeal and devotedness of its pastors. In the remonstrance referred to, they declare that notwithstanding all the contradictions, the trials, the obstacles they have had to encounter, “not