Quite Of A Piece With This Is The Said Mr Eustace's Bigotry, In Not Chusing
To Call Lombardy By Its Usual Appellation "Lombardy," And Affectedly
Terming It "The Plain Of The Po." Why So, Will Be Asked?
Why because Mr
Eustace hates the ancient Lombards, and holds them very nearly in as much
horror as he does the modern French; because, as he says, they were the
enemies of the Church and made war on and despoiled the Holy See.
The fact
is that the Lombard princes were the most enlightened of all the monarchs
of their time; they were the first who began to resist the encroachments of
the clergy and to shake off that abject submission to the Holy See which
was the characteristic of the age. The Lombards were a fine gallant race of
men and not so bigoted as the other nations of Europe. Where has there ever
reigned a better and more enlightened and more just and humane prince than
Theodoric?[56] But Theodoric was an Arian, hence Mr Eustace's aversion, for
he, with the most servile devotion, rejects, condemns and anathematizes
whatever the Church rejects, condemns and anathematizes. For myself I look
on the extinction of the Lombard power by Charlemagne to have been a great
calamity; had it lasted, the reformation and deliverance of Europe from
Papal and ecclesiastical tyranny would have happened probably three hundred
years sooner and the Inquisition never have been planted in Spain. I have
made this digression from a love of justice and from a wish to vindicate
the French Republic and Napoleon from one at least of the many unjust
aspersions cast on them.
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