But beyond the rights of the Supreme Pontiff as sovereign of the Roman state, I cannot apprehend any serious attacks on the papacy; or after the first fury has passed, even on ecclesiastical property. Much hostility for a time will be displayed, no doubt, against the monastic orders, and where they have any property remaining in their possession. It, not unlikely, will be confiscated, and the right of the church to be a proprietor legally denied or not recognized, yet property dedicated to religious uses still will be passably secure under the general law protecting citizens and their rights of property, to make gifts _inter vivos_, and testamenary bequests. The law will gradually become throughout Europe what it is with us. The civil law in the United States knows nothing of the canons of the Church establishing religious orders, or of the vows taken by the religious; it takes no cognizance of the church herself, it recognizes in her no proprietary rights, and gives her no standing in the courts, and yet nowhere is ecclesiastical property better protected or more secure, and nowhere are religious orders more free in person or more secure in property. This proceeds from the right of property secured to the citizens, and the right of the church, and of religious orders, not as proprietors, but, if I may so speak, as recipiendaries, or their right to receive enjoy eleemosynary gifts, grants, and bequests in whatever form made, which the courts protect according to the will of the donors or testators. There may be great inconveniences resulting from the inevitable changes taking place, great wrong is pretty sure to be done. The church has a valid right to be a proprietor, and it is a great crime and a great sin to rob her of any of her possessions; but she can carry on, and in most countries long has carried on, her mission without the law recognizing any proprietary rights. Present appearances indicate that the church throughout the world will be thrown back, as she was in the beginning, on her internal resources as a spiritual kingdom; that she will cease to be the official church any nation--at least for a time, if not for ever; and that she will not henceforth govern or protect her children as civil life communities, states, or empires through their civil rulers, but simply as Catholics, individual members of her communion, through her own spiritual ministry, her bishops and prelates alone, without any official relation with the state. She can then exercise her full spiritual authority over her own members, as the independent kingdom of God on earth, free from all entangling alliances with the shifting policies of nations.