Let me not be charged with making of this state of things an accusation against the Catholic religion. The English, Irish, and American students, who were those with whom I principally came in contact, were ardent and enthusiastic devotees, as earnest in their religious observances as any of the most devoted members of any other church I have known. Indeed, it is my personal experience that so far as regards the younger men, I have never found so many animated by the true apostolical spirit as amongst the students of theology of British and American birth whom I then knew at Rome. At the head of all the Catholics of all nations whom I have ever known are the English, in respect of sincere and ardent devotion to their church, with the minimum of animosity towards other creeds, and the most healthy morality. With the great majority of Italian ecclesiastics, on the contrary, religion is a mere formality, and its influence on the life is inconsiderable and unconsidered. It was, therefore, not because it was a Catholic city that the morality of Rome was so low, but because the energies of the hierarchy were so occupied with the difficulties of the position of a government of priests unused to civil administration and by their own education disqualified for it, that the ordinary functions of government were impossible to it. The situation was made still worse by the Italian constitutional indifference to questions of common morality. As the government of the church lies in the hands of the Italian clergy, it will be forever impossible for a government organized on the principles of the Papal temporal power to be other than that which has been suppressed by Italy. To the majority of the higher Italian ecclesiastics, the church has become merely a political instrument, into the management of which the spiritual interests of the people do not enter, and the efforts of the Catholics of other countries to bring about a reform will never succeed while the power is in the hands of the Italian clergy, which it will be as long as the Papacy is an Italian institution; and as the Pope is Pope merely because he is the Bishop of Rome, it is difficult to see how the situation can be made different.