informed men of that epoch were there wanting ecclesiastics of high reputation, to give their support to wise reforms and to become their boldest patrons. Among these I will name only the philosophic Abbot Genovesi, and Monsignor Galliani, both Jesuits. But the concordat cleared the way for greater reforms, for the government interpreting, extending, and even going beyond its stipulations, enjoined lay jurisdiction, restricted the ordination of priests to ten for every thousand inhabitants, denied the validity of papal bulls not accepted by the king, impeded the acquisition of new property by the Church, and pronounced the censures of the bishops to be null when directed against subjects for having obeyed the laws. If contests arose about the proprietory rights of laymen and the clergy, they were always decided in favour of the former. All the licentious acts of the clergy were inexorably punished. Two friars of high degree in their orders, opposed the royal judge in a case of asylum; Charles ordered the criminals to be dragged by main force out of the church, and banished the two friars for ever from the province. A church was pulled down in Abruzzo, because erected without permission from the government, which had forbidden the erection of new churches, because they were already so numerous as to exceed the wants of the population. It refused licences to the Jesuits for founding new conventual houses; it withstood the haughty pretensions of that order, by prohibiting it from making new acquisitions. Although Naples may not have been the first to drive the Jesuits from her bosom, but the fourth after Portugal, France, and Spain, it has the glory nevertheless of being the first to pass laws tending to bridle their pride, as it was also the first among the Roman catholic states to make opposition to the Church, a rule of good government. When, in 1759, Charles passed to the throne of Spain, and his son Ferdinand, a minor who had not yet completed his eighth year, succeeded him under a numerous regency, the Marquis Tanucci prosecuted the reforms that had been commenced. It was established that the king's ministers should see to the disposal of the goods and chattels of deceased bishops, abbots, and beneficed clergymen, and that the revenues of vacant sees should be laid out on works of public utility. Divers monasteries and convents were suppressed, and the property belonging to those establishments was vested in the commune. Tithes were first restricted and then abolished; it was declared by law that monasteries and convents, churches, pious places, confraternities, and episcopal seminaries, comprised under the title of mortmain, should be incapable of making new acquisitions; and by acquisitions were understood any new property, the enlargement of houses and conventual institutions, the dotation of churches and chapels, the endowments of monks and the patrimonies of the priests; and the eleemosynary gifts for festivals, processions, and masses beyond the prescribed limits. The same law prohibited notaries from writing testaments that should convey new acquisitions to them; it prohibited exchanges to prevent evasions of the law. In order to diminish the immense property of the Church, the same law declared that the rent of mortmain lands granted to husbandmen for a limited time under a long lease, or released to the same tenants, shall be equivalent to a feu-duty, and hence, according to the nature of this contract, the Church should have right to the canon alone, the proprietorship belonging to the husbandmen. By other laws, blows were struck at the pretended rights of the

of

pope. Lay jurisdiction was still farther enlarged, while the ecclesiastical was to the same extent diminished. The number of priests was reduced from ten to five for every thousand inhabitants. It was enjoined that only sons should be neither priests nor friars, and that a family having one son a priest, should have no more such. If under Charles it was declared that no bull of the pope should be received without the royal assent, by a new decree it was further established that the old bulls, although they had already and from time immemorial passed into ecclesiastical laws, should be null and void, obtaining all their validity from the king's placets, and being revocable at the discretion of the king and his successors. Recourse to Rome without the royal consent, was prohibited; hence grants of benefices executed by the Roman chancery were annulled by the king: hence a check was put on the pensions granted by the pope upon the revenues of the bishops: the pope was hindered from uniting, separating, or changing the boundaries of dioceses; and, finally, the regulations of the Roman chancery were abolished. Matrimony was defined to be a civil contract by nature and a sacrament by accession, and consequently matrimonial causes to be of lay competency. While by these laws the powers the bishops were increased to the loss of Rome, on the other hand episcopal authority was restricted and lowered. Bishops were prohibited from interfering with public instruction, and while by one law they were deprived of the powers of censorship with regard to the writings of others, they were themselves subjected to the common censorship in the case of their wishing to publish any work of their own. From very ancient times the bishops had the monstrous right of instituting legal proceedings against laymen for leading a dissolute life, and this became a pretext for indulging revenge and an instrument of greater oppressions, by condemning those who had the misfortune to oppose the ambition and greed of the priests to pine in episcopal prisons. Trials for wantonness were forbidden, and the episcopal prisons were shut. Personal immunities, which had been restricted by Charles, were now altogether abolished; the ecclesiastical sportulas were subjected to a tariff; and pious places were released from payments to bishops; various exactions that had been made by the bishops from a very remote period, were revoked for ever, and when they wanted to allege in their favour the right of prescription, the law expressed itself in this most wise maxim: il vescovo come prepotente non prescrive, i. e. prescription cannot be pleaded in favour of a bishop exceeding his powers, a maxim which triumphantly explodes all the sophisms of those who patronize the state of things established by force and not by the people's choice.

Ferdinand, on his arriving at majority, began the acts of his reign with the expulsion of the Jesuits, a bold and energetic measure which nobody lamented. He replied to the threats of Rome by retaking the temporal dominion of Benevento and Ponte-corvo, by disapproving and prohibiting in his states the brief issued by Clement XIII. against the duke of Parma, in which an excommunication was fulminated against all the kings that had banished the Jesuits. Accordingly, under the pontificate of Pius VI., he filled up the vacant archiepiscopal see of Naples against the pope's will, and laughed at his remonstrances. Shortly afterwards he made Francis Serrao, the learned author of many writings against the papal usurpations, and a most

judicious Jansenist, bishop of Potenza, and when the pope refused to consecrate him, Ferdinand declared that he would have him consecrated according to the ancient discipline of the Church, and that he would do the same with respect to all the bishops whom he might choose in future. He refused to submit any longer to the custom that had prevailed in the court of Naples, of presenting every year to the pope a white horse, richly caparisoned, together with seven thousand ducats of gold; a gift dictated by devotion, and which papal pride openly called a tribute due to him as lord paramount of the kingdom. Ferdinand had by this time married Caroline of Austria, sister of Joseph and of Leopold, who gloried in the good laws of her brothers, a powerful incentive in making him follow in his father's footsteps and emulate his connections. The kingdom overflowed with Jansenists, and these gave support by means of their influence on the consciences of the masses, to the efforts of the learned, the ministers, and the magistrates, in diffusing by their authority and by their example the good doctrines of the reforms, while the writings of Filangieri, of Pagano, of Galanti, of Conforti, of Genovesi, formed a good preparation for the minds of those who governed the country.

In expelling the Jesuits the king had promised to introduce better order into the system of public instruction, and he applied himself with ardour to the task. He appointed salaries for teachers of reading and writing in every commune. Schools were erected in every province. The instructions were given publicly, and the professors were elected by public trial. The episcopal seminaries, of which the bishops were only directors, were declared to depend immediately upon the king. The bishops were deprived of all right of interference in public instruction. To a bishop who had raised a complaint against some professors for not observing the rules of the Roman catholic faith, the king caused this reply to be sent, that the sole duty of the masters of the schools was to profess and observe the rules of the Christian faith. Other bishops who claimed it as their right to interfere in instruction, or to cite the pontifical bulls against it, were censured and repulsed.

Thus were reforms carried out until the French revolution came and changed the mind of Ferdinand for the worse, by making it fierce and austere. For a course of about sixty years the kingdom of Naples had been taught to separate from the idea of religion what Rome set up for religion, that is to say, the ambitious designs and the avarice of the clergy. Old ideas came gradually to be buried along with those who had imbibed a prejudice in their favour from infancy when such abuses seemed sacred rights, and two new generations had entered upon a path altogether new. The laws were transfused into the conscience of the people. Besides the longer duration of the reforms in the kingdom of Naples than in Tuscany, where they commenced only in 1775, there are other reasons that explain how the progress of religious ideas is in a certain measure greater in the kingdom of Naples than elsewhere in Italy. The first of these is, that the reforms in the kingdom of Naples were developed step by step, while Joseph II. in Lombardy and Leopold in Tuscany ran too fast. Thus men's consciences received no shock. No condemnatory sentence from Rome reached the ears of the people in Naples; whereas in Tuscany first the sentence fulminated from Rome against the council of Pistoja, and afterwards the retractation

of bishop Ricci, who was chiefly instrumental in carrying through the religious reforms under Leopold, first excited the people to tumult, and afterwards disheartened those who took part in favour of the reforms. In Lombardy aversion to the foreign hand that wanted to plant the good seed there by main force, caused it to be disowned and rejected. In the kingdom of Naples, on the contrary, the love felt by the nation for Charles was extreme, and such as enabled him to do prodigies of valour for a people dispirited by long servitude, when the Germans advancing to the reconquest of the kingdom, were defeated at Velletri. Not less was the affection which they entertained for Ferdinand up to the time that he became a tyrant, so that the French republican army under General Championet, after being everywhere triumphant, found a grave in the Calabrias and the Abruzzi chiefly, and in the other provinces, at the hands of the inhabitants who had armed in defence of the reforming king. The love of the Neapolitan people towards Charles before commencing the reforms, was a sure pledge of success; the love of the people to Ferdinand, after having accomplished the boldest reforms, was a testimony of gratitude to him, and an historical monument attesting to other nations that make a jest of Italian superstition, that Italy, far from disdaining reforms, welcomes them as the greatest benefits, when they come as the gifts of love and wisdom, and when no insurmountable obstacles are placed in their way. From the French invasion till now every thing has been done to bring back the people to the old superstition but in vain, although progress has been in a great measure prevented. The suppression of the wealthy monastic orders which took place under the French government, immensely contributed to enlighten the people with respect to the true character of the monks and friars. Considered till then as persons withdrawn from the world, of an austere nature, and not subject to like passions with other men, they were held in esteem by the common people, notwithstanding that the educated class did not lose occasions of bringing their vices and immoralities to light. The mystery that involved conventual institutions and the spirit of corporation, threw a veil over all the irregularities of the religious orders. When at their suppression the hooded crowd spread themselves about, each returning to live in the world and in contact with society, that veil was removed, and the people could detect the true features of monkery, the spirit of intrigue, selfishness, and hypocrisy, combined with turpitude. This holds with respect to all Italy. Then for the kingdom of Naples in particular, the epoch of the constitutional government was one of immense progress. The clergy, both secular and regular, shared from the first in the general movement, and afterwards seconded it with ardour; so that when, more lately, the excommunication of Pius VII. struck all who had participated in the new order of things, the clergy found themselves involved in the catastrophe. But as the clergy had not only suffered nothing in that political revolution, but had been respected and favoured even so far as to be admitted to form a part of the national representation, seeing that of seventy-two members, of which the parliament is composed, ten were ecclesiastics, the most lively regret and affection for the constitution remained in that enlightened portion of the latter body which could appreciate the advantages of liberty. The excommunication from the pope was of no farther avail than to divert from the good path that part of the clergy which had submitted to the change of govern

ment as a duty of obedience to the powers that be, and as a matter of necessity, that is, the indifferent in the matter of politics, and the few partisans of Rome. The greater part of the clergy, accordingly, remained liberal in mind and desire. Meanwhile the people had a new and most useful lesson as regards religion. As under the constitutional government the clergy had pronounced eulogies from the pulpit and the altar on the new order of things, inflaming their hearers to the defence of the rights of independence against the Austrian arms which were moving towards the frontier, the people became habituated to the idea that liberty as already constituted by wise laws, by universal consent, and by the oath of the king, instead of being opposed to religion, was something holy and inviolable. What effect, then, ought it not to produce on this same people to hear it condemned from the same pulpit and the same altar, as a sin against religion? How were the people confounded at hearing benedictions invoked on the Austrian arms, and at beholding the ferociousness of the king in shedding the blood of citizens, announcing that his oath, most solemn and free, had been annulled by the pope? What was not the people's horror on hearing eulogies from the mouth of the clergy in favour of the king's tyranny and breach of faith involved in the violation of his oath, and the publication of the pope's excommunication as a rule of the catholic faith? Italian good sense could not avoid the conclusion that either the clergy had deceived them at first, or were deceiving them then. The whole force of catholicism, as understood at Rome, consists in unbounded credit being given to the teaching of the clergy as the organ of the church's infallibility, and consequently in removing all circumstances that might suggest a doubt as to the purity of ecclesiastical instruction. Rome knows that doubt is naturally followed by a desire for knowledge, and knowledge by the fall of superstition. While therefore, on the one hand, the church excited doubts in men's consciences, on the other the church itself, that is, the liberal portion of the clergy, did interest itself, and still interests itself, in resolving these in favour of liberty, and hence against Rome, because Rome has condemned liberty, and ever does so.

The matters that have been discoursed upon thus far, will enable the reader to perceive that in Italy it is now a century since people began to distinguish in what religion really consists, and to separate the idea of the popedom from that of catholicism; and that from the expulsion of the French downwards, they have begun to separate the political from the religious idea. Previous to the Jansenistic reforms, Rome tyrannised over the governments and the peoples of Italy; subsequently to those reforms, the governments shook off the yoke of Rome and prepared the people's consciences for a like result; since the formation of the holy alliance betwixt the king and the pope, fusing the two systems, religious and political, into one, the people, placed in the dilemma of renouncing every idea of social amelioration if they obeyed the dogmatic bulls of the popes, or of renouncing all religious conviction if they wished to follow the impulse of philosophy and of good sense, have taken the third way opened up for them by Jansenism, that is, of distinguishing the right from the abuse; and having been taught how to distinguish the church from the popedom, protest every day, submitting to Rome in spiritual things, but recalcitrant to its instructions as respects politics. On traversing Italy from point to point, this