Those who see nothing to disapprove in all the conduct of Pius IX, speak of his course at the beginning of his pontificate as "noble." He was, in some sense, entitled to this praise in so far as he professed a desire for reform, although his reformatory measures were not such as reached the root of the existing evils. But the fact that he was accepted as a reformer in any sense by the people, was in itself the cause of serious embarrassment to him--proving how difficult it was to escape the scorching fires which surrounded him. His tendency to reform excited the "alarm" of Austria, whose emperor saw in it a possible departure from the retrogressive policy of Gregory XVI and the "Holy Alliance." Maguire--an earnest defender of the pope--says that this alarm of Austria was occasioned by the knowledge that "the spirit emanating from the Vatican was kindling a new and dangerous fire in the breast of a downtrodden people;"[177] that is, was kindling afresh the fires of revolution. The plain and obvious meaning of this friendly explanation is that the people of Italy had been, and still were, oppressed by the policy of the papacy, enforced, as it then was, by the arms of Austria, and that Austria considered that of Pius IX threatening to the cause of monarchism, because it tended to remove this oppression and excite in the minds of the people an increased desire for constitutional government. He gives as the reason for this the fact that Austria was "the most formidable enemy of reforms, which she had every reason to dread." Why? Manifestly because reform indicated the possible loss of the temporal power by the pope, which would inevitably prove a serious blow to monarchical power, and the possible establishment of popular institutions in Italy. He also says that Naples "viewed with jealousy" the conduct of the pope; and that some smaller monarchical powers also regarded it "with dismay;" and, in addition, that "many of the cardinals" participated in this alarm of the sovereigns.[178] Lambruschini, whose election was defeated by the choice of Pius IX, was undoubtedly at the head of this faction of cardinals, all of whom, says Trollope, were the "bitter, rancorous, and irreconcilable enemies of everything that changed, or showed a tendency to change, anything that had existed under the late pope."[179]