people were forbidden to present petitions to him, nor was any one allowed to speak to him on business. Thus he returned to Rome no wiser than he set out, to pass seven more years in the guarded halls of the Vatican. In 1846 the Marquis d'Azeglio published his work entitled 'The last Events in Romagna' (Gli ultimi Casi di Romagna), which proclaimed in forcible language, to the whole of Europe, some of the evils endured by the subjects of the Pope. The quiet of the aged Pontiff is said to have been disturbed by this book which penetrated even to his well-watched chamber. His long reign was soon after closed. The present Pope, like most of those who went before him, prefers to parade his position as head of the Roman Church rather than discharge his duties as Sovereign of the Central State of Italy, and he is as completely a puppet in the hands of others as Gregory himself.

The Legates of the provinces are usually Cardinals. The powers of a Legate are defined by law, but he is furnished in addition with a brief or private letter of instructions from the Pope, which enlarges his authority, and renders him almost a sovereign in his province. How jealously each guards his exclusive jurisdiction in the Legation entrusted to him, may be seen from the indignation excited by an order of Cardinal Consalvi, that an account should be given to the court of police at Rome of the sums expended on the police of the provinces. Can it be true,' wrote Cardinal Spina to Cardinal Sanseverino, in 1819, 'that M. Pacca and the Treasurer have agreed to make the Cardinal Legates dependant on them for these funds? I have really not made any reply to either of them. If I require money I shall apply to the "Amministrazione Camerale," which is ordered to supply our demands. I shall not write to the general direction for approbation, and we shall see how they will get out of the difficulty. I am well acquainted with M. Pacca and his ambition. Do not ask me to enter into details. I might pass the bounds of moderation.' The despots who thus engross the highest powers of the state have received no education to fit them even for its inferior offices; their learning, when they have any, is theological, and they have never enjoyed that habitual intercourse with other men, which is the foundation of a knowledge of the affairs of life. They are legislators without acquaintance with law, and almost any act, taken at random, will prove the ignorance of those who made it. Political economy is a dead letter to them, for it is not permitted to be taught in any university in the Pope's dominions. Yet these are the authorities who regulate taxation and the customs; and the result has been exactly what might be expected. Parishes or townships (communi) have been compelled to purchase corn when it reached a certain price,

and

and sell it again at a lower price to the people. The communi were ruined, and in the time of Leo XII. their possessions were sold to liquidate the public debt. On another occasion some flights of locusts having destroyed the scanty produce of the Campagna, near Rome, the legislators ordered the curates to enjoin locusthunts from the pulpits to peasants whom locusts had never troubled, and who had probably never heard of them. In the year of scarcity, 1819, Cardinal Albani was applied to for assistance, and his only aid was to send some turnip-seed, with the recommendation to cultivate turnips. After these specimens of ignorance and interference we hardly need to be told by the Marquis d'Azeglio that

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Trade may be said not to exist in the Central State of Italy, though lying in the direct line lately opened to the commerce of the East, India, and China; with rivers partly navigable, rich in mines, and possessing the most fertile soil in the whole peninsula, and inhabited by a people amply endowed with quickness, forethought, energy, and strength.' The endowment of a Cardinal does not exceed 8007. per annum of our money, yet he lives sumptuously, and sometimes leaves large sums at his death. Venality supplies all deficiencies both with himself and his underlings. He has in his establishment a person called a Mediator, whose duty it is to intercede with his master for favours and to receive gratuities from the petitioner. The corruption is avowed. When Monsignor Polidori was Secretary of State he had made arrangements for farming the taxes, and was promised a large gratuity from certain contractors. Having obtained the grant they refused to pay him the stipulated premium. Incredible as it may sound, he prosecuted them. before the public courts, and produced in evidence against them the iniquitous agreement.

The administration of the law is full of the vilest abuses. There are innumerable tribunals, with undefined jurisdictions, which give rise to incessant contests among the judges, and inflict a vast amount of litigation upon the suitors. The evil exists to an extent that would be incredible, and certainly intolerable to an Englishman. The Segnatura and the Santa Rota are the highest civil courts, and some account of the latter will convey an idea of the sort of justice that is to be obtained in the Papal States. It derives its name from the circumstance that the judges sit in a certain rotation. They are almost all avowedly ignorant of the laws they are to administer, but they are permitted to have an assistant, called il Secreto,' and it is a maxim of the Government that it does not signify how uninformed may be the judge, if he only chooses a clever Secreto.' Strange to say, the persons

who

who preside over this tribunal, must never read, or hear read, any deed which relates to the cause they are to decide, nor must they examine whether any evidence be true or false. They must take every statement from the lips of the lawyers engaged in the case, and no one would credit the licence of unfounded assertions which prevails, who had not an opportunity of reading the pleadings, which are always printed. The sentences are called 'Responsa, and oracular enough they certainly are, and, like oracles, often of dubious interpretation. One well known Responsum,' on a long pending suit, was 'Transactio Fiat.' Neither party was satisfied, and the process was recommenced. After long delays a second responsum came, which was still 'Fiat Transactio.' The Rota has the power to order a case to be reheard as often as it pleases; and the same cause has been decided as many as twenty times. The whole proceedings, pleadings, sentence, and even the lawyers' bill, is in Latin. The reasons for their decision are invariably furnished by the lawyer of the successful litigant, and is transcribed by the judge, who perhaps adds a few words of his own. The goodness of the cause is a secondary matter. The sure course for the suitor is to ascertain which of the Monsignori is to give judgment, and limit all his exertions to winning him over. A gentleman in the provinces who had a lawsuit, involving a large part of his property, sent his son to Rome to make interest. The youth was instructed that the road to the favour of the judge was through the Contessa He pur

chased jewels to the value of 700 scudi (about 1507.), and obtained an interview with the lady. She examined each article, asked the price, and ended by giving him an assurance that his suit should prosper. She kept her promise.

There is a fiction in the Roman law which seems contrived to favour dishonest practices. A person who has a house within the Papal States is supposed always to reside in it, notwithstanding it may be notorious that he has been settled for years in a foreign land. No other intimation of legal proceedings affecting him is required than to affix a notice on the door of this house, or, if house he has none, to the door of the court. A man may thus lose his property by an action of which he never heard. Colonel Ragani, long resident at Paris, having succeeded to a small patrimony, was adjudged to discharge a debt contracted with a perfumer thirty years before. His first information on the subject was after every sixpence of his inheritance had been expended in paying the costs of the suit and in satisfying the demand. The whole was the work of a dishonest attorney to possess himself of the money left by the elder Ragani.

The

The criminal do not yield to the civil courts in the plenitude of injustice. The Sacra Consulta is the highest tribunal in Rome, and commences proceedings against the presumed culprit without giving him any notice. We know a case in which a person was sentenced to twenty years' imprisonment, not only without any trial but without any cause being assigned. He was kept in confinement for seven years, and was only released when the Papal government was alarmed by the progress of the liberals in 1831. A few more examples will exhibit the criminal jurisprudence under some of its aspects. There was an advocate of Bologna who had been prefect of police in 1815, and had been dismissed for theft. Returning one evening to his house he received a slight wound from a sword. He had an associate named Zecchi, with whose wife he was in love, and he determined to make use of the incident to get the husband out of the way. He denounced his friend as having procured an assassin to murder him, and declared that he had recognised one Monti as his assailant. He produced witnesses to support his charge, and Monti was thrown into prison, where he remained two years. Another person then confessed on his death-bed that it was he who had attempted the murder. Monti and Zecchi were released, the false witnesses were condemned for perjury, but the prosecutor, who had been once a demagogue, and had become an adherent of the Pope, was not allowed to be tried. Nay more,' he was made a member of the Legal College, and was afterwards appointed by Gregory XVI. one of the judges of the Court of Appeal at Bologna.

A pistol-shot was fired at Cardinal Rivarola; the Government offered a reward of 3000 scudi (above 6007.) for the discovery of the assassin. Three persons were speedily denounced-Bettoni, a lawyer, and two military officers, Lieutenants Bocci and Piolanti. Bocci was in bed with his wife when the carabineers presented themselves. They would not allow him to dress, but put him in irons as he was, and consigned him, in company with his fellow-sufferers, to a dungeon. There they remained in chains and darkness for eleven months, when a contract made between the informers was discovered, from which it appeared that they had leagued together to procure the large reward which had been offered by Government. Their victims were released, but, such had been their sufferings during their imprisonment, that Bocci fell down dead on the threshold of his own house. Yet only one of the infamous wretches who plotted against them was punished at all, and he came off with a single year's imprisonment.

Luigi Bartolucci, son of a celebrated lawyer in the Roman States, was a retired captain of carabineers. His opinions were known to be liberal, and he had been twice in prison for suspected political offences. He was at Rome at the period when the amusements of the carnival having been forbidden, a proclamation was issued, permitting the people on the last night of the festival, to enjoy their favourite pastime of the moccoletti. The proclamation was drawn up so much in the style of an address to bad children, to whom an indulgence is to be granted, that the Romans, instead of being conciliated, were enraged, and it was believed that some hostile demonstration would take place. Bartolucci, who was passing the evening at the house of Count Ferretti Mastai, a nephew of the present Pope, refused to accompany the guests to the moccoletti, alleging that, if any disturbance took place, he should be accused by the police. The next morning he was arrested, was tried for being concerned in the demonstrations of the preceding night, and was condemned to twenty years' imprisonment. The alibi he proved did not avail him. He remained in confinement for three years, when the efforts of influential persons, and especially of the French ambassador, produced a commutation of his sentence from imprisonment to banishment.

The Austrians in the Legations exceed, if possible, the papal authorities themselves in the rigour and injustice of their proceedings. Signora Zanardi, a lady of Romagna, who was living in Bologna in 1853, held strong liberal opinions, which she openly expressed. She was suddenly arrested, and carried to the Austrian military prison of Santa Agnese in Bologna. The outrage excited an excessive indignation, but indignation there is of necessity confined to the whispers of confidence and produces no redress. She was removed to Ferrara, where she received the 'bancata,' that is, was beaten with sticks. She is said to have borne her sufferings with extraordinary firmness, and no information could be extorted from her. She herself, however, was sentenced to imprisonment, but we are unable to state for what period. A few years since there were some cruel executions for political offences. A youth of eighteen, going out at Ferrara from his father's house, was met by a friend, who asked him if he was going to college. This,' replied the young man, 'is not a day for study, but for mourning." The words were reported to the police; he was tried at Bologna before an Austrian military tri

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These are short bits of candle which the holiday-makers carry in their hands. They are lighted when it gets dark, and each tries to blow out the candle of his neighbour.

bunal