Those states which formed the monetary division of Western Europe—France,
Belgium, Switzerland and the Holy See, agreed at this time to refound
their silver coinage. A model was chosen, which Greece, Portugal, Roumania
and some other countries adopted in their turn, and it was understood that
the new coinage for each state should be in proportion to its population.
Hence it behooved the Pontifical State to issue forty millions of livres
or thereby, for a population numbering from three to four millions of
souls, including Romagna and Umbria, which the Pope still claimed. The
Florence government remonstrated against the issue of forty million
livres, on the ground that the Pontiff could not now actually count more
than from 600,000 to 700,000 subjects. Napoleon III., always inclined to
gratify the revolution, summoned Pius IX. to suspend the issue of his
exaggerated coinage, three-fourths of which, it was insisted, should be
cast anew with the effigy of Victor Emmanuel. This interference of
Napoleon was considered inopportune and unacceptable, the operation of
coining being almost completed. Cardinal Antonelli maintained the right of
the Holy See. The French and Italian governments agreed to exclude from
their circulation, and consequently from that of the whole monetary union,
all silver coins which bore the meek and noble likeness of Pius IX. This
they did without offering to the public any explanation. The revolutionary
party, however, were too honest not to supply this want. They at once gave
circulation to the rumor that the coinage of the Pope was of inferior
quality. He was pointed out as a money-counterfeiter by the thousand
organs of the infidel press. The people, grossly deceived, repelled with
indignation, as if it were that of a robber, the likeness of the
representative of justice on earth. The Catholics, meanwhile, observed
with pain that while this storm of calumny was raging, one of their own
number, once a champion of the temporal power, held in the French
government the portfolio of finance. The Pontifical treasury subjected
itself to considerable sacrifices, in order to diminish the losses and
silence the recriminations of those who were compelled to stop its money,
which could no longer be circulated. Chemists, in the interest of truth,
analyzed the depreciated metal, and declared that it was exactly of the
same value as the coinage of Napoleon III. But neither the officious nor
the official press took the pains to publish this fact, and the calumny
remained. The time was even then at hand, as French writers observe with
pain, when France, in her downfallen and exhausted condition, would have
been glad to possess this Pontifical money and dispense with worthless
paper.