who opened the case against the person accused, and founded his accusations upon the facts proved. He was replied to by the counsel for the prisoner; and, whenever his circumstances did not enable him to retain counsel, some one was always found to defend him, from among the College of Advocates, supported by the Republic for that purpose.

It was usual to produce every thing relating to the circumstances of the trial in court-such

as pistols, swords, and weapons of every descrip

tion; and both the accuser and accused were accompanied to the court by their relatives and friends: a custom which also prevailed, in similar cases, in the antient tribunals of Greece and Rome.

If this popular mode of adjudging criminal matters has been abolished in many of the northern nations, it has principally arisen from the preponderance of ecclesiastical influence; seeing that canonical institutions, that is to say, those that were devised by the Popes for the Inquisition, were more familiar to the people, than any other legal mode of proceeding by the laity.

Two principal events deprived the Venetians of the vast commercial advantages, which, for centuries, they exclusively enjoyed, until they

ever the most happy, and the most flourishing. And yet, there are mortals to be found, who have the effrontery to hold forth in praise of the new system of spoliation and aggrandizement! I, nevertheless, venture fearlessly to assert-and the assertion is the result of a many years' intercourse, in Italy, with men of sound judgment and great sagacity-that these shortsighted politicians will never behold the restoration of general tranquillity in Europe, unless Italy-if not united into a kingdom, like France, Spain, England, Portugal, and other nationsbe again divided into separate governments, as it was before the breaking out of the French revolution.

I challenge the Sovereigns of Europe to shew any sufficient cause why nations, like individuals in a court of justice, should not be permitted to enforce the validity of their claim to independence. Can you, England, who so sensibly feel the blessings of that envied constitution, which secures to you your native rights, and the enjoyment of which rights you are generously endeavouring to extend even to the savage-can you, I ask, continue any longer insensible to the degraded situation, the intolerable sufferings, of the people of Genoa and Venice? If you did not betray them by the

false protestations of your commissioners, you at least flattered them with the hopes, that they should be restored to their lost liberty and independence. At any rate, your respectable military commanders not only declared that they were authorized to guarantee those invaluable blessings, but went so far as to promise the people, that they should be protected by the British, in the possession of their antient, or of any other form of government, which they might consider most conducive to their own happiness. Mieux tard que jamais! It is not yet too late. And, for the honour of my beloved England, I cannot help indulging a hope that, compromised as she thus is, in the eyes of all Europe, in the natural degradation that must ensue, from the continuance of the present system, she will no longer continue quiescent.

Let me also hope, as I before took occasion to observe, that our philanthropists will not confine themselves to the emancipation of the Blacks, but that they will lend their ready assistance in redeeming the five-and-twenty millions of White Christian slaves-Greeks and Italians-now groaning beneath the yoke of foreign oppression. Before I quit this part of my subject, allow me to make one observation, Shakespeare has told us, that "sweet are the uses of adversity;"

and I believe it to be strictly true, that the school of affliction proves a school of wisdom, to all classes of human beings-princes and crowned heads excepted! For, it is a melancholy fact, that, notwithstanding the long exile of the Sovereigns of Italy, in islands comparatively rude and uncultivated, and notwithstanding their almost miraculous return to their own beautiful dominions, they have brought back with them the same prejudices, the same arbitrary notions, and the same religious bigotry, which formerly distinguished all their actions, and to which may alone be attributed the annihilation of their authority, and the present restless condition of their unhappy subjects.

CHAPTER VII.

VENICE.

Niggardly Conduct of the Austrian Authorities in Venice...... Treatment of the Family of Solari......Anecdote of Murat ......The Venetian Bernabotti described.......Venetian Nobility......Libro d'Oro......Prerogatives of the Aristocracy ......The Quaranta.

THE low, niggardly, base, and parsimonious conduct of the Austrian authorities in Italy, is

as disgraceful as it is incredible; as disgusting as it is injurious to their own interests. Whither is fled the noble spirit of Maria Theresa, of Joseph the Second, and of their truly greatminded and princely minister, Kaunitz? It is an easy matter to censure: I will, therefore, adduce facts, in proof of the truth of my assertion.

At the period when the mad-brained Murat invaded the north of Italy, the Marquis Pietro Solari, on his return from Rome with despatches for the Austrian Government, was waylaid by that sanguinary adventurer, and wantonly murdered between Ferrara and Rovigo, within a stone's throw of his brother Jerome's estate, merely to obtain possession of his despatches. The Marquis had been three-and-forty years in the service. Two of his brothers had fallen gloriously in the field of battle, under Joseph the Second and Leopold; and many other members of this antient and noble house-which dates its origin from the great families of Mala Testa, hundreds of years before Counts of Hopsburg, from whom the present imperial family descends, were heard of-for the space of four centuries had shewn their attachment to the House of Austria; and, for their signal achievements were raised, by Joseph the First, to the rank of his Austrian and German nobility,