From chill, cheerless, ceaseless rain into bright warm sun-light; from a country fever-haunted, barren, and desolate, into a land swarming with life, rich and fertile as a garden; from a gloomy priest-ridden people, kept down by force of arms, hating their rulers and hated by them, into the presence of a free people rejoicing in their freedom: such has been my change as I passed from the States of the Church into those of Victor Emmanuel.
Surely the moral of these two pictures speaks for itself.

Put aside abstract political considerations, put aside, too, theological questions, and look at broad facts patent to all.

If anybody can see Rome and the Papal States, and still believe that the people are happy or prosperous or faring with good prospects either for this world or the next, I can say nothing more.

His eyes are not my eyes, nor his judgment mine.

For those to whom this ocular testimony is denied, I have written these papers.