IF the temporal power of the popes has subsisted later than the year 1701, it is principally because no one was concerned to accelerate its inevitable fall. Placed between Milan and Naples, as a barrier to the preponderance of either Austria or the Bourbons over Italy, the feeble States of the Holy See seemed to belong to the political system of Europe, and to contribute to the maintenance of the general equilibrium. Each prince being interested in not suffering another to invade them, all concurred to retard a revolution, which the progress of general knowledge would soon bring about, which would be accomplished of its own accord, from the moment they would cease to prevent it, and which, at a future time, other circumstances perhaps would render more reconcilable with the situation of European affairs. Besides the general cause which we have pointed out, three particular causes have perpetuated, during the eighteenth century, the temporal sovereignty of the Roman pontiffs; at first, the ill-enlightened devotion of Louis XIV. from 1700 to 1715; in the second place, the influence of the Jesuits, as well during these first fifteen years as under the ministry of cardinal Fleury from 1726 to 1743; finally, the wisdom of the two popes, Lambertini and Ganganelli of whom the one governed the church from 1740 to 1758, the other from 1769 to 1774. If, like these two, the other popes of the eighteenth century had known how to manage and circumscribe their power, they would have preserved, perhaps confirmed it: but they aspired to aggrandize it, the spiritual arms have continued to serve as instruments to pontifical ambition; while they have dared to reproduce the silly doctrines of the supremacy and infallibility of the popes; and the Holy See, which might have remained a power of the third order, has fallen even below this rank in aspiring to reassume the first.