At last, in 741 A.D.when Italy was not only deserted in her need, but threatened from Byzantium with desolation and heresy, Gregory III.

called in the aid of Charles Martel, that Italy might not perish; and by this law, a law of life and preservation, and through the decree of Providence, the Popes became Italian sovereigns, both in right and fact." On this very lucid and satisfactory account of the origin of the Papal power, S is convinced at once, and is finally dismissed shamefaced, with the unanswerable interrogation, "whether the real object of the Revolution is not to create new men, new nations, new reason, new humanity, and a new God ?" The three abstractions, S, M, D, then re-assemble to recant their errors.
One and all avow themselves confuted, and convicted of folly or worse.

X gives them absolution with the qualified approval, that "he rejoices in their moral amendment, and trusts the change may be a permanent one," and then asks them, as an elementary question in their new creed, "What is the true and traditional liberty of Italy, the only one worthy to be sought and loved by all Italians ?" To this question with one voice S and M and D make answer, "Liberty with law, law with religion, and religion with the Pope." The course of instruction is completed, and if anybody is still unconvinced by the arguments of the all-wise X, I am afraid that his initial letter must be a Z.
So much for the _Independenza e Papa_, as the pamphlet is styled.

I have given, I fear, a somewhat lengthy account of it; not for its literary merits, which are small, but as being the best native defence of the Papacy I have come across.

The dull dead _vis inertiae_ which formed the real strength of the Papacy has been of late exchanged for a petty useless fussiness.