what the Romans now have,-the crumbs. We shall have monks and nuns for our farmers; and under their management, farewell to the smiling fields, the golden harvests, and the opulent cities, of Scotland and England. Our country will again become what it was before the Reformation,-—a land of moors, and swamps, and forests, with a few patches of indifferent cultivation around our convents and abbacies. Vagabondism, lay and sacerdotal, will flourish once more in Britain; trade and commerce will be put down, as savouring of independence and intelligence; indolence and beggary will be sanctified; and troops of friars, with wallets on their backs, impudence on their brows, and profanity and filthiness on their tongues, will scour the country, demanding that every threshold and every purse shall be open to them. This result will come as surely as to-morrow will come, provided we permit the Papacy to raise its head once more among us.

Let no one imagine that this terrible wreck of man, and of all his interests,—of civilization, of industry, of trade and commerce, has happened of chance, and that there is no connection between this deplorable state of matters and the system which has prevailed in Italy. On the contrary, it is the direct, the necessary, and the uniform result of that system. The barbarian hates art because he does not understand its uses, and dreads its power. But the hatred the Pope bears to the useful arts is not that of the barbarian. It is the intelligent, the consistent hatred of a man who knows what he is about. It is the hatred of a man who comprehends both the character of his own system, and the tendency of modern improvements, and who sees right well, that if these improvements are introduced, the Papacy must fall. Self-preservation is the first law of systems, as of individuals; and the Papacy, feeling the antagonism between itself and these things, ever has and ever

will resist them. It cannot tolerate them though it would. Speculatists and sentimentalists may talk as they please; but the destruction of that system is the first requisite to the regeneration of Italy.

Such, then, is the condition of Italy at this day. Were we to find a state of things like this in the centre of Africa, or in some barbarous region thousands and thousands of miles away from European literature, arts, and influences, where the plough and the loom had yet to be invented, it would by no means surprise us. But to find a state of matters like this in the centre of Europe,-in Italy, once the head of civilization and influence, the birthplace of modern art and letters,-is certainly wonderful. But the wonder is completed when we reflect that this state of things obtains under a Government claiming to be guided by a higher than mortal sagacity,-a Government which says that it never did, and never can, err,- -a Government that is supernatural and infallible. Supernatural and infallible ! Why, I say, go out into the street,-stop the first old woman you meet, carry her to Rome,-put a three-storied cap on her head, enthrone her on the high altar in St Peter's,-burn incense before her, and call her infallible,-I say that old woman will be a more enlightened ruler that Pio Nono. The old Scotch woman or English woman would beat the old

Roman woman hollow.

The facts I have stated are sad enough; but the more harrowing picture of the working of the papal system has yet to be shown.

CHAPTER XXVI.

JUSTICE AND LIBERTY IN THE PAPAL STATES.

Justice the Pillar of the State-Claim implied in being God's Vicar, namely, that the Pope governs the World as God would govern it, were He personally present in it-No Civil Code in the Papal States-Citizens have no Rights save as Church Members-No Lay Judges-The Pontifical Government simply the Embodiment of the Papacy-Courts of Justice visited-Papal Tribunals-The Rota-Signatura-Cassation-Exceptional Tribunals-Apostolical Chamber-House of Peter-Justice bought and sold at Rome-POLITICAL JUSTICE--Gregorian Code-Case of Pietro Leoni-Accession of Pius IX.-His Popularity at first-Re-actionCase of Colonel Calendrelli-The Three Citizens of Macarata-The Hundred Young Men of Faenza-Butchery at Sinigaglia-Horrible Executions at Ancona-Estimated Number of Political Prisoners 30,000Pope's Prisons described-Horrible Treatment of Prisoners-The Sbirri -The Spies-Domiciliary Restraint-Expulsions from Rome-Imprisonment without reason assigned-Manner in which Apprehensions are made-Condemnations without Evidence or Trial-Misery of RomeThe Pope's Jubilee.

WE turn now to the JUSTICE of the Papal States. Alas! if in the preceding chapters on Trade we were discoursing on what does not exist, we are now emphatically to speak of what is but a shadow, a mockery. To say that in the Papal States Justice is not, that it is a negation,-is only to state half the truth. Were that all, thankful indeed would the Romans be. But, alas! in the seat of Justice there sits a stern, irresponsible,

lawless power, before which virtue is confounded and dumb, and wickedness only can stand erect.

On the importance of justice to the welfare of society I need not enlarge. It is the main pillar of the State. But where are you to look for justice,-justice in its unmixed, eternal purity,—if not at Rome? Rome is the seat of the Vicar of God. Ponder, I pray you, all that this title imports. The Vicar of God is just God on earth; and the government of God's Vicar is just the government of God. It is the possession and exercise of the same authority, the same attributes, the same moral infallibility, and the same moral omnipotence, in the government of mankind, which God possesses and exercises in the government of the universe. The government of the Pope is a model set up on the earth, before kings and nations, of God's righteous and holy government in the heavens. As I, the Vicar of Christ, govern men, so would Christ himself, were he here in the Vatican, govern them. If the claim advanced by the Pope, when he takes to himself the title of God's Vicar, amounts to anything, it amounts to this,—to all this, and nothing less than this.

The case being so, where, I ask, are you entitled to look for justice, if not at Rome? This is her throne: here she sits, or should, according to the theory of the popedom, high above the disturbing and blinding passions of earth, serenely calm and inexorably true, weighing all actions in her awful scales, and giving forth those solemn awards which find their response in the universal reason and conscience of mankind. If so, what mean these dungeons? Why these trials shrouded in secrecy ? Why this clanking of chains, and that cry which has gone up to heaven, and which pleads for justice there? Come near, I pray you, and look at the Pope's justice; enter his tribunals, and see the working of his courts; listen to the evidence

which is there received, and the sentences which are there pronounced; visit his dungeons and galleys; and then tell me what you think of the administration of this man who styles

himself God's Vicar.

Let me first of all give prominence to the fact that in the Papal States there is no civil code. It is a purely spiritually governed region. The Church sustains herself as judge in all causes, and holds her law as sufficiently comprehensive in its principles, and sufficiently flexible and practical in its special provisions, to determine all questions that can arise, of whatever nature,—whether relating to the body or the soul of man, to his property or his conscience. By what is strictly and purely church law are all things here adjudicated, for other law there is none. That law is the decretals and bulls of the popes. Only think of such a code! The Roman jurisprudence amounts to many hundreds of volumes, and its precedents range over many centuries, so that the most plodding lawyer and the most industrious judge may well despair of ever being able to tell exactly what the law says on any particular case, or of being able to find a clue to the true interpretation, granting that he sincerely wishes to do so, through the inextricable labyrinth of decisions by which he is to be guided. This law was made by the Church and for the Church, and gives to the citizen, as such, no right or privilege of any kind. Whatever rights the Roman possesses, he possesses solely in his character of Church member; he has a right to absolution when he confesses; a right to the undisturbed possession of his goods when he takes the sacrament; but he has no rights in his character of citizen; and when he falls out of communion with the Church, he falls at the same time from all rights whatever. He is beyond the pale of the Church, and beyond the pale of the law. Our freethinkers, who are so ready to