France and Belgium having, therefore, both accepted revolution as a remedy for grievances which could no longer be endured, it excited no surprise when the same sentiment was imparted to other Roman Catholic populations of Europe. The masses were moved, almost everywhere, by the impulse to escape the influences of the old _régime_, and place themselves under institutions of their own creation, responsible only to themselves. The people of the different nations were beginning to understand and to sympathize with each other more than ever before. They were coming nearer together by means of the facilities of intercommunication, for which they were indebted to the spirit of Protestant progress. They were learning, from the marvelous successes of the advancing nations, that the real sources of national greatness were in their own hands, and depended for proper development upon themselves alone. In whatsoever direction they looked, they found evidences to assure them that these same successes could not be obtained without the constitutional guarantee of the right of self-government. And having been brought to the conviction--no matter whether from choice or necessity--that they could more safely confide their temporal welfare to governments of their own construction than to either ecclesiastical or secular monarchs who traced the prerogatives of absolute imperialism to the divine law, they accepted revolution as a just and rightful remedy for their wrongs. When France and Belgium had each broken the scepter of absolutism, their influence was soon imparted to the Roman Catholic populations in the south of Europe; and they, too, brooding also over their wrongs, began to gather up the weapons of revolution and prepare to use them. They moved slowly at first, because the chains which bound them were tightly riveted. But they kept their eyes steadily fixed upon the constitutional governments, and advanced cautiously towards a like fortune for themselves. They could not expect to go at once to the whole extent of establishing popular institutions, in the American sense. Their education and the forms of government to which they had been accustomed, had left them in a condition which made extreme caution indispensable, for fear that by rash and precipitate action the principles of the "Holy Alliance" might become so permanently established that Church and State could not be separated, and they would be compelled to acquiesce in the doctrine of the divine right of kings as an essential part of Christian faith, or make war upon the Church, which they had been taught to revere, and did, in fact, revere. The pope was the recognized spiritual head of the Church, and with that they were content. But he was also a temporal king in the States of the Church, and claimed that the authority pertaining to that position was divinely conferred, and included such spiritual sovereignty over the world as God himself possesses; and that he was thereby made the