The Constitution was withdrawn. Pius IX. was the first amongst the princes of Europe to set the example of revoking the franchises with so much solemnity accorded. Not that the statute was ever publicly annulled: it was through his famous _motu proprio_ of the 12th September, 1849, which laid down a totally opposite system as the basis of his resumption of the government, that the Romans understood its doom was sealed. The institutions he now promised were to be such “_as should bring no danger to our liberty, which we are obliged to maintain intact before the universal world_.” In those words lies the clue to the Papal policy.
An amnesty was appended to this decree, but as it excluded from its provisions whoever had taken any share in public affairs since the assassination of Count Rossi, numbers of the most temperate politicians in the State, who had given their support to Mamiani during his efforts at an accommodation with the Pope, fared no better than the Mazzinians who had set all constituted authority at defiance. All were equally proscribed. The Romans, jesting, as is their wont, whether in pleasure or in bitterness, compared it to a register of condemnation rather than an instrument of pardon.
In April, 1850, Pius re-entered his dominions. The Romans had looked anxiously for this, and trusting in the benevolence of his character, imagined that he would at least put a stop to the cruelty and injustice exercised in his name. But the Pope who came back from Gaeta had nothing of the Pio Nono of four years back. As if in expiation of his previous errors, and to screen the Church from being again jeopardized by his weakness, he withdrew all attention from secular affairs, and henceforth lived only for the glory of religion. So little did he inform himself of the state of the country, that the few who could obtain his ear unobserved, declare that they found him perfectly ignorant of passing occurrences. Nothing was suffered to reach him save through the medium of his detested minister, Cardinal Antonelli,—his subjects' murmurings and prayers had no other expositor; while the same channel conveyed to them nought save harshness, intolerance, and vindictiveness, as tokens of their sovereign's existence.