The existence of the state can only be justified in defending the rights of its people: using its monopoly on the initiation of force to protect civilians’ indisputable rights from the threats posed against them. Most people incorrectly insist that a degree of enforcing a uniform and disputable morality is the responsibility of the state. The form of government best-suited to enforcing its own morality upon the individual is that guided by the immaterial, and ill-designed for tolerating dissent.

On 20 September 1870, the forces of the Kingdom of Italy, led by General Raffaele Cadorna, breached the Aurelian Walls that encircle the ancient city of Rome: home of the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church. The capture of the city on that day completed the Risorgimento, and put an end to the temporal power of the Roman Catholic Church. The Pope was given a rump state, the Vatican City in 1929 (by that nice fellow Mussolini), but one that is pathetically small: at under half a square kilometre, it’s smaller than Fitzrovia, and a quarter of the size of Regent’s Park.

Seeing the tiny scale of the Vatican, it’s easy to forget that, for over a millennium, the Roman Catholic Church held dominion of vast swathes of Italy, and, in league with the allied Holy Roman Empire and the French and Spanish rulers, held all of Europe under fear. Their two main weapons were fear, ruthless efficiency, and a fanatical devotion to the Pope. (Damn, their three main weapons were…)

When we hear of news of theocracies on the news, it’s almost always of Iran or Saudi Arabia, and always in unfavourable terms (except when it’s on Channel 4 or BBC, when it’s obviously laudatory: which proves that it’s a bad thing). But that belies for how long we, or, rather, our European neighbours, were in thrall to the same phenomenon: oppression at the hands of unthinking and unyielding dictators, enforcing their morality on others without earthly justification. Of all forms of government, the theocracy is the greatest of threats to liberty. On this day in 1870, the world was rid of one of the gravest of all time.