Yet, slowly but surely, events at the Vatican and in Germany alike made for compromise.

In February 1878, Pope Pius IX.

passed away.

That unfortunate pontiff had never ceased to work against the interests of Prussia and Germany, while his encyclicals since 1873 mingled threats of defiance of the May Laws with insults against Prince Bismarck.

His successor, Leo XIII.
(1878-1903), showed rather more disposition to come to a compromise, and that, too, at a time when Bismarck's new commercial policy made the support of the Clerical Centre in the Reichstag peculiarly acceptable.
[Footnote 80: Busch, _Our Chancellor_, vol.i.p.