that those should be severely punished in future who should dare to make any further resistance. The sole motive that had induced the king to make choice of the city of St. Angelo, was the pleasing impression that he had received at the time of his passing through it, from the wide extent of the horizon there, owing to its position on a delightful hill! Such is the way in which the petitions presented to the king of Naples are received!! But it will be said, perhaps, that in the particular circumstances of this case, the petitions in behalf of a city which had provoked the royal indignation, were mistaken for sympathy with it, and were considered accordingly as amounting to a participation in its offence.

The incident I am about to relate will show what account is made of the prayers of the people when altogether unconnected with political culprits, and when, moreover, they express feelings of affection and loyalty towards the person of the king. In 1838, the king, on his return from Vienna with his lately married queen Maria Theresa, had publicly intimated that he would pass a night in the city of Chieti. Sumptuous preparations were made, and a magnificent reception was about to be given to the royal guests. But as Leopold, prince of Salerno, the king's uncle, who had preceded him in his journey, had stopped at that city, and had made a liberal use of his wealth in distributions among the poor, the king, who is universally known to be very miserly, dreaded the disadvantageous contrast he would have had to encounter by remaining in the same city, changed his intention, and sent word by the telegraph that he was to pass on without stopping. On this notice being circulated, the municipal authorities, followed by a great affluence of people, went out to meet the royal train, and amid cheers and other marks of respect and gladness, they surrounded the carriage and took off the horses, intending to drag it along with their arms into the city, a distance of about two miles. On this the king, turning to the carriage window with a frown and pale with rage, cried out: Servile wretches!!! Kings give orders to the people, not the people to kings! Gendarmes, drive away this rabble. The people, silenced and confounded, anticipated the order given to the gendarmes, who hesitated to obey it, and retired, repenting of having virtually lied by manifesting sentiments which did not spring from heartfelt conviction. I was present on that occasion, and it was one that gave fresh force to my liberal opinions. But it may possibly be said that here, as the king had intimated what was his pleasure, it was imprudent to oppose him. One last fact, then, will clearly show that even when the people's desires perfectly accord with the royal will, the latter sometimes is offended at prompt obedience, considering it criminal. Strange indeed, yet not the less true! By the treaty concluded between king Otho of Greece and Ferdinand II. of Naples, a decree was published, in which permission was given not only to the Greek colonies established within the kingdom, but also to persons belonging to the Neapolitan nation, should they so desire, to pass into Greece, there to settle and enjoy the advantages which presented themselves to colonists from foreign parts, in consequence of Greece having been left to a certain extent dispeopled by the long and bloody war of emancipation. Many joyfully welcomed this spontaneous invitation on the king's part, and hastened to consolidate their property by selling houses and fields and flocks, even though at a heavy loss, under the presumed certainty of realizing the advantageous

circumstances in which they would find themselves in the hospitable land which they had chosen for their country. On the day fixed for the embarkation it was found that the passports promised to all that had showed a disposition to expatriate themselves, were refused by the ministry in virtue of orders from the king, who, seeing that the number of the emigrants was very considerable, dreaded lest it should strike foreigners as a symptom of discontent, and prove an example to others to pursue the same course. The Greek colonists alone embarked, while those who belonged to the country, with despair on their brows and amid the wailings of their desolate families, were compelled to return whence they had set out, not only with all their hopes dashed to the ground, but with a rancorous feeling of the losses they had suffered. I was a witness of the consternation of some of these wretched families.

These facts ought to convince Englishmen how difficult it is for a free people to pass a judgment on the social condition of other people subject to a despotic regimen. Some imagine that mere good sense suffices for judging of such things, without reflecting that good sense, in order to its passing sound judgments, would need to be fully informed about the laws, about all the habits, and all the various circumstances special to the people of which they desire to judge: and that good sense put forth in examining things under one particular point of view, under the influence of prejudices imbibed from infancy, is incapable of escaping from the circle of ideas that are habitual to it, or of disengaging itself from the trammels by which it is unconsciously held bound. The patronisers of the political and religious state of Italy who write in England, always make an impenetrable shield for themselves by appealing to the good sense of the English, knowing that English good sense will judge according to English notions; whereas Italy ought to be judged as things fall out in Italy, and not at all as they fall out in England. Deplorable error in logic, which induces people to believe to be false what are really true accounts of the religious persecutions and monstrous acts of injustice that are practised in my fatherland, and which leads very many to believe that Rome is now no longer what she once was! An Italian has no want of good sense, yet if an Italian, imperfectly acquainted with the political condition of Great Britain, should be told that the sovereign of England on offending a subject, would be constrained by the voice of the people and by the censures of the daily press, to retract the offence and to apologize for the insult given, he would declare, and with justice, that such a piece of information was contrary to good sense, and this declaration of his would be received there with applause, because the good sense of the Italians is accustomed to see acts of tyranny, and public opinion coerced by the bayonets of the gendarmes. Upon this ground there does not exist the man who will believe that the Pacha respectfully received the bowstring sent him by the Sultan, and strangled himself with his own hands. It is good sense that has taught the nations a proverb that attests the difficulty of judging rightly of others placed in different circumstances from our own-The full belly does not believe in hunger:' [Il satolla non creda al digiuno.] Hence the only possible mode of protesting under a government which makes no account of reasons, is that of efforts to break the chains. In the case of free governments, what is desired of the people is a rational obedience to the laws, and it is right accordingly that when they feel them

selves aggrieved, they should give their remonstrances all the moral force that reason can supply; to employ force would be a monstrous crime. Under tyrants again, who carry caprice and arbitrary power through a whole region, making the employment of reason criminal whenever it is opposed to their mere will, the right of defence becomes sacred. To accuse Italy of criminal efforts to break the yoke under which she groans, were atrocious injustice in an individual, but would be most atrocious and scandalous in nations to which Providence has committed the management of the destinies of Europe and of civilization. The very frequent insurrections that have followed, one after another, in the Pontifical states and in the kingdom of Naples, if not by the success, at least by the heroism of those generous souls who became their victims, have from time to time demanded the attention of all Europe, and have been the loudest protests against oppression. Which among civilized nations has ever raised its voice in favour of the oppressed? Not indeed that Italy expects to have her deliverance brought about by the arms of other nations intervening in the struggles which she has maintained, is now maintaining, and will ever maintain against tyranny; she is conscious of possessing sufficient force of her own to break the yoke of her oppressors. What in the name of equity she demands is, that she should certainly be left alone in the struggle, but that no foreign arms shall come to support her oppressors. She demands that faith be kept with those principles of non-intervention which are trampled upon when Italy is in question, and jealously observed with respect to other peoples. She calls on all free nations not to blaspheme the sacred name of liberty by binding themselves in alliance with despots, and to bear in mind that there is no neutrality betwixt good and evil,— that when the cause of truth is at stake, they who abstain from taking part in its defence, favour and become the partisans of error. These may be unpleasant truths, but it has been my duty to mention them, and it would not be right to prove wanting to what is duty, because of the displeasure that may be felt by those who are in fault. To those then who would make use of religious opinions for political ends, and who will not fail to accuse me of being a revolutionist, I will say that if they desire it, I will willingly engage to discuss their opinions with them through the medium of the periodicals, not being allowed in these pages to enter into such a discussion, and now content myself with repeating to them:-how shall the Italians believe in the Gospel if it is not to be preached to them? how shall it be preached to them without there being liberty to preach it?

From the political and administrative condition of the kingdom of the two Sicilies, I now proceed to examine that of the Pontifical states.

It is with no small gratification that I find myself called upon to write these pages on the political and administrative condition of the papal states, at the present time, when a ray of hope seems shining once more on their population, till now the most wretched in Europe. All appearances concur towards the belief that the accession of Pius IX. to the pontifical throne, may be viewed as the commencement of a new era, the dawn of a fine day, not only to the people that are subject to his temporal jurisdiction, but also to all Italy, and even to the world at large, by reconciling those ideas of progress which are boiling in the breasts of the nations,

with the religious opinions of which Rome is the centre. It is impossible for me to enter at any length on the smiling prospect which the new pontiff is hastening to present to the earth. Many are the reasons that divert me from doing so, but not the last is the obscurity which hangs over the aim of the proposed changes. The sincerity of a man's promises rests on the pureness of his intentions; as long therefore as it is not very clear whether it be the good of the people, or nothing more than the perpetuity of the temporal dominion, that the new Pope sets before him as his objects, it is idle to discuss the reality of the advantages that will redound to the inhabitants from the promised reforms. May not all this pomp of clemency and of a liberal spirit, turn out perhaps to be a stratagem to gain the people's affections, to be made available afterwards in securing their patient acquiescence when a foreign force, secretly invited by the pontiff himself, shall render the promises that have been made, and the hopes that have been conceived, alike nugatory? May not this swift transition from a pope replete with the spirit of the middle ages and with anathemas on his lips, such as Gregory XVI. showed himself to his dying moments, to a pope animated with the spirit of the nineteenth century, and talking of liberty, toleration, and progress, such as Pius IX. shows himself, be possibly one of those profound Jesuit contrivances conceived with the view of dazzling civilized nations, and more especially England, whose conversion, or to speak more correctly, whose riches Rome has for a long while been panting for. She too well knows that an insurmountable obstacle to England's return to Roman Catholicism, is to be found in the despotic principles and the intolerance on which the see of Rome is based, not only as respects religion, but politics also; she too well knows that notwithstanding the mild and flattering appearances which the abettors of Romish polemics would fain attribute to her, facts give the lie to their words, as long as the lamentations of oppressed subjects lead to the belief that the political is no less atrociously cruel than the religious inquisition. It was of consequence that this obstacle should be removed, that people should be induced to believe that with the change of times there would be a modification of the church's discipline, and that the monstrous idea of the past should thus be effaced from their minds. Hence, in order to give greater prominence to the present and a greater stimulus to hopes of the future, it has been thought well to reproduce the idea of the past in the predecessor Gregory, just as a skilful painter deepens the shading of a picture in order to give stronger relief to the figures which he wishes should chiefly catch the eye. Some years of a mild pontificate, it is thought, will suffice for completing the work that began with the Romanizing movement at Oxford, that itself having been a Jesuit machination. Nor need there be any fear that the proselytes gained by such a stratagem will escape from her hands, when Rome is pleased to take advantage of a favourable opportunity for removing the mask, seeing she knows how difficult it is, especially amid the ferment of controversy, for those who have become the advocates of the opposite principle, after having identified themselves with the system, to turn back from it, and expose themselves to the contempt, if not to the hatred of both parties. This scheme will not seem improbable to whoever knows that the now prevailing party in the Roman Church, has inscribed on its vesture: The end justifies the means. This scheme will

seem most probable to whoever may have read Eugene Sue's Wandering Jew. Nor let the fierce and obstinate opposition which Pius IX. meets with in the cardinals and in the retrograde party, detract at all from the weight of these reflections. As for the last, the opposition may be sincere, those who make it being ignorant of the thread of the plot. And as regards the first, their opposition may be part of the farce, got up for the purpose of making the stratagem accredited; this suggests, also, one of the strongest arguments in favour of the probability of such an insidious machination. How can we suppose it possible, that so many men, consummate adepts in the arts of courts, profound scrutinizers of the human heart, wary and astute, at least from long experience of the cunning devices of others, should have deceived themselves with respect to the mode of thinking, and the tendencies of mind and heart, in Giovanni Mastai Ferretti, who had been educated and had grown up under the watchful eye of a policy which scrutinizes the thoughts, who had long lived in Rome and been employed in discharging public functions, who had sat in consistory with them in times rendered difficult by political vicissitudes? This will seem a paradox, an absurdity! And this paradox must be admitted as a fact if the opposition of the cardinals be sincere; otherwise we must admit the still greater absurdity that the Sacred college had unanimously chosen Mastai, knowing him to be disposed to favour liberal opinions!! Be this as it may, it is not my intention to pronounce judgment on the fact; the event will throw light upon it. I confine myself to declaring that while on the one hand love for my country would induce me to believe the new Pope's protestations sincere, on the other hand a secret presentiment, confirmed by the circumstances I have mentioned, makes me repeat the hemistich:

Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes.

Would that these reflections of mine would awaken in the minds of the English wary thoughts, and restrain that excessive confidence with which they abandon themselves to their favourite notion that civilization may find patronage from the Romish system and modify it. Let men be cautious how they trust implicitly to all that is announced about the new Pope, when they reflect that endeavours have been made, I know not whether by a mistake or by a wicked purpose, to accumulate upon him the private virtues of another Ferretti, he too a cardinal, who at the deplorable time of the cholera's raging in Naples, furnished an example of heroical charity by not only distributing all his silver plate for behoof of the unfortunate persons in the hospitals, but also by exposing his own life in offering aid to the dying.

But how on such a principle, with my mind full of such doubts, can I permit myself to indulge in so much gratification and hope? Just because even should the Pope's promises come to nothing, whether from being insincere or from adverse circumstances, the highest advantage will accrue to the pontifical states, to Italy, and to the whole world, from the favourable demonstrations made in his seconding the desires of the people, in his making himself the advocate of toleration, in his awakening hopes of a better futurity. It has hitherto been taught from St. Peter's chair, both in bulls and by deeds, that the wishes of the people were sinful in so far

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