There is no doubt that Pius the Ninth, during the first days of his pontificate, followed, in temporal matters, the advice of the French government, which, as far as I have been able to learn, never, since Philip the Fair, has been guilty of giving the Pontiff advice not to his own hurt. France advised the fatal amnesty and some sort of quasi-popular institutions. The former was granted, the latter were promised, and the world was made to believe that for once it had a liberal Pope. There was nothing heard but _Evviva Pio Nono!_ throughout Rome, Italy, France, England, and the United States. Radicals, Infidels, Protestants, and even the Grand Turk, united in one grand chorus of loud and prolonged exultation. It seemed, to those who saw only the external manifestation, that all hostility to the Papacy had ceased, and that all the world were on the eve of becoming Papists. Rome became one perpetual festival. Songs, hymns, processions, benedictions, speeches, addresses, congratulations, became the regular order of the day. Multitudes of Catholics, honest, simple souls, really felt that the day of heresy and schism, of conflict and trial, for the Church, was over. Some shrewd old cardinals at Rome took their pinch of snuff, shrugged their shoulders, and retired to their palaces. We, who knew what agencies were at work, laughed in our sleeve, and, with all the chiefs of the liberal party, called upon all the powers which we had prepared, visible and invisible, to aid in increasing the general intoxication, not doubting but the Papacy was at its last gasp. For we felt sure that if, by flattery, by enthusiasm, by loud, long, and reiterated shouts of _Evviva Pio Nono!_ we could get the Pope fairly to enter the path of reform, or what was, we supposed, the same thing for us, make the Catholic world believe he had entered it, it was all over with the Papacy, therefore with Christianity, law, and social order. No doubt some of the enthusiasm manifested was real, but a great deal of it was feigned, for the precise purpose of imposing upon the public. We were not ourselves for a moment deceived. We felt sure that Mastai was a genuine Pope, that he could hardly be deceived by the demonstrations which must have been painful to him; which, in fact, gave him no rest, and which, under pretence of unbounded devotion to him, were becoming unmanageable, secretly undermining his throne, and growing into a real conspiracy against his freedom of action. We knew well there must come a point beyond which he could make no further concession, and our plan was to get the Catholic populations of Europe so committed to the cause we pretended he favored, that when that point was reached, we could turn the popular enthusiasm against him, and he find himself disarmed and powerless to resist it. In this it is well known that we fully succeeded.