Leo XII died pending these agitations. When his successor was elected--as near our own time as 1829--and took the name of Pius VIII, the revolutionary embers needed only a little more stirring to break out into a flame. The success of constitutional government was becoming more and more apparent, and it was evident to the allied sovereigns that unless the current beating against them could be set back, they were in danger of being overwhelmed. As the idea of Church and State united was involved in the entire papal and royal policy, those, therefore, who were struggling after constitutional guarantees of the freedom of the press, of speech, and of religious belief, had no difficulty in understanding that these great natural rights were specially anathematized by the late Pope Leo XII, for the reason that they constituted the fundamental principles upon which that form of government must rest. Consequently, the masses of the people--Roman Catholics and Protestants alike--became more and more united and clamorous for these rights; not only because they were in themselves of inestimable value, but because they had come to realize that the nations which maintained them were advancing in prosperity, happiness, and enlightenment, far more rapidly than those which suppressed and denied them. Pius VIII could not avoid realizing all this, as well as the obligation resting upon the papacy, as the spiritual patron and guardian of monarchism, to arrest the popular tendency towards constitutional government. Accordingly, he had scarcely entered upon his pontificate when, wedded to the policy of retrogression, like his immediate predecessors, Pius VII and Leo XII, he endeavored to ingraft the teachings of the Jesuits more firmly than ever upon the doctrines of the Church. He addressed a circular letter to "the bishops of Christendom"--which, being to the whole Church and concerning the faith, was, necessarily, _ex cathedra_--wherein he pointed out some of the existing errors they were commanded to extirpate. This, according to the Jesuit teaching, was an act of infallibility, and required implicit obedience from all who were faithful to the papacy. It would have been well suited to the Middle Ages. After condemning "secret societies"--overlooking, of course, the Jesuits--and the "fierce republicans," or supporters of popular government, as the "enemies of God and kings," he arraigned them for "breaking the bridle of the true faith and _passive obedience to princes_," and thus opening "the way to all crimes." He insisted that they were endeavoring "to hurl religion and empires into an abyss." And when he reached the culminating point he expressed himself in these words: "We must, venerable brethren, pursue these dangerous sophists; we must denounce their works to the tribunals; we must _hand over their persons to the Inquisitors, and recall them by tortures to the sentiments of the true faith of the spouse of Christ_."[167]