VI.—Character of Pius IX.
All impartial men, Venerable and Beloved Brethren, who are acquainted with the mild and amiable character, and with the eventful and almost romantic history of our venerated and beloved Pius IX., will be slow to judge harshly of anything he has ever said, written, or done. Taken from the bosom of the people who so loved him, though himself of noble lineage, he was raised to the Pontificate amidst the acclamations of the people. He at once threw himself into their arms, and, first of all European sovereigns, he inaugurated free institutions far in advance of the times, as the event proved. He proclaimed a general Amnesty, brought back the political exiles, and, amidst the congratulations of Europe and America, he granted and proclaimed a liberal Constitution to his people, whose idol he at once became.
The scene soon changes, and what was so auspiciously begun and so generously granted, soon terminates disastrously, and the glory of the new Pontiff-King speedily sets in blood, not shed by him—for he never shed any one's blood—but shed by those very men, whose signal benefactor he had been, and who now, in return, repay his goodness with ungrateful treachery and bloody machinations against his throne and his very life. His prime minister is assassinated at the very opening of the chambers under the Constitution; the bloody dagger is paraded in triumph through the streets of the eternal city; the so lately idolized Pontiff is besieged in his own palace by a mob goaded to fury by the conspirators, and the ball, which was probably intended for him, strikes down at his side his amiable and learned private secretary. Dr. Palma; he escapes himself at length in disguise, and he becomes an exile at Gaeta, where the world loves and reverences him in his fallen fortunes, more even, perhaps, than it had done when he was dwelling in the splendid palaces of his Predecessors. His divine Lord and Master was insulted and crucified by the people among whom he had gone about doing good; and it was meet that the disciple should not be above the Master.
