republican flag from the dome of St. Peter's. The pope was a fugitive. Rome was free. To crush this republican movement and restore the runaway pope to his throne, the church needed an agent. The agent must be strong enough to strangle the Italian republic and to recover for the pope his temporal power. Spain was too decrepit to be summoned to the task. Austria had already too much of Italy in her grip; the only nation that could disinterestedly fight for the pope would be France. Observe now the double role which the church was playing: In France she was an ardent republican, in Italy she anathematized the republic as a blasphemy against God. In France she was ringing bells in honor of the rights of man, in Rome she was firing shot and shell into the Italian republicans. In France the republic was of divine origin, in Italy, it was the work of the devil. Let us state it frankly, the church was a republican in France, not from love but from policy. History will confirm our statement. But we have not yet answered why Louis Napoleon was such a favorite with the church. On the eve of the elections in France, Napoleon, who was one of the candidates for the presidency, sent a letter to the _nuncio_ of the pope in Paris, in which he expressed his personal opinion, an opinion which at the time looked quite harmless, that, for the peace of Italy and the prestige of the Catholic world, the temporal power of the pope should be maintained. Few people were reflective enough to suspect that there was in those words a pledge on the part of the candidate to employ, if elected to the presidency, the resources of France in the service of Rome. Naturally enough, not long after his election, the church called upon Napoleon to fulfill his promise. But to make a promise is very much easier than to fulfill it. How was the president going to persuade the French to make war upon a sister republic? It was clearly to the interest of the French to have the republican form of government spread. But it was to the interest of the church to overthrow the Italian republic and restore the pope to the vatican. The French must, therefore, prefer the interest of the pope to the interest of their own country. Americans beware!