will not be unaccompanied by the re-establishment of those representative institutions which could not be withheld without prejudice to the country.

"The Council is persuaded that the best guarantee for order and progress will be found in the consolidation of constitutional liberty, and it invokes, with loyalty and confidence, the preservation of the Statute, as the best pledge of civilisation and concord.

"Finally, the Council confides the carrying into effect of these desires to the municipal authority, which will be its successor."

The Pontifical Commissioner and the Austrian General conferred together in their turn, and resolved that a fine of 2000 scudi should be imposed on those who had passed the resolution, and that each should be responsible for all; it was accordingly paid. Ravenna, Forli, Ferrara, and the other cities, which were on the point of selecting deputies, to go to Gaeta to petition for free institutions, abstained from doing so, being warned by the example of Bologna, that even the liberty of petition was denied, and sent a merely complimentary deputation.

As Gaeta had deputed a Prelate to act as Commissioner Extraordinary to govern the four Legations, so it sent other Prelates to other parts of the State, to fulfil the same office, and these Commissioners nominated Pro-Legates over the administrative departments: most of them were laymen, some temperate in their views, others servile; but they were all of them magistrates without power, subject to the prelatic Commissioner, and to the caprices of foreign soldiers.

A uniform system was everywhere pursued; a state

of siege, as they called it; Censorship; the Police half military, half civil, but more or less severe, in the dif ferent provinces of the State, according to the character and habits of the various foreigners who occupied them, and sometimes in the same province, according to the humours of the different commanders. The Austrians did not interpret or administer the "state of siege" with the moderation shown by the French, but made a regulation, that crimes, transgressions, and OMISSIONS should be visited either with summary judgment, or subjected to trial by courts-martial; they gave warning, that summary judgment DID

NOT RECOGNISE ANY PENALTY EXCEPTING THAT OF

DEATH, and that it took cognisance of, and judged as high treason, every action directly aimed at forcibly changing the form of Government, or causing, or increasing dangers from without, directed against the State; the detention, concealment, conveying away of arms and ammunition; participation in insurrection, in sedition, with arms or without; unlawful enrolments, or attempts to induce desertion; any resistance or violence towards the soldiery; theft or pillage. The courts-martial punished by imprisonment, varying from a month to one or more years, and by the imposition of fines the circulation of proclamations or revolutionary writings; any outrage whatever against the soldiers, the wearing of any revolutionary or party badges, which were not either Austrian or Pontifical; the singing of revolutionary songs, every kind of political demonstration, all disobedience to the orders of the soldiers, public meetings, or being present at any political demonstrations, disregard of police regula

tions, transgressions against the Censorship of the press, hospitality shown to refugees without denouncing them, defacing or pulling down the Papal arms. Deeds followed words; blood, proclamations: seven individuals, during the months of June and July, suffered the extreme penalty of the law, under sentence passed by the Austrians; two had been convicted of theft, three of false informations, two of the concealment of arms: on the 8th of August, Bassi, the Barnabite monk, and Livraghi suffered death. Gorzhowski sent them to the scaffold, drawn in a cart like assassins, without any form of trial, not even military, and without the consolation of the Viaticum, which Bassi earnestly entreated; the ecclesiastical power did not interfere, they died like Christians and brave men, and were buried like beasts, in a field. The people revered Bassi as a martyr, strewed garlands of flowers over the ground which covered his bones, and honour his memory to this day.

On the 2nd of August, the Cardinal Triumvirs annulled all the laws and regulations which had been in force since the 16th of November, 1848; all the Municipal Councils, and all the public officers nominated after the 16th of November, and instituted a Court of Censorship, to inquire into the character and conduct of the Government employés in every department. The next day they guaranteed the full value of the Treasury Bonds issued by the Pontifical Government, but at the same time they reduced, by 35 per cent., the value of those issued by the Provisional Government and the Republic, at which all the citizens complained bitterly,

and still more the public functionaries and the creditors of the State, who had been paid the very day before in paper money, at its nominal value. The Government answered the murmurs and complaints which were universal in the city, and which went so far as to impute bankruptcy to the State and bad faith to the Ministry, by saying in the "Diario" that many States had acted in the same manner, and that the Pope merited gratitude and praise, not reprehension and blame, for his moderation in not having exercised the full power which he possessed of annulling and destroying all the paper money of the Republic. The Directors of the Roman Bank were plunged into great anxiety, because the proclamation, issued by the Cardinals, left it doubtful whether the sum which they had advanced, under gentle violence, to the Republic, would be guaranteed to them, and they knew Cardinal Della Genga was of opinion that the notes of the bank ought to share the fate of the other paper money. Therefore Feoli and the brother of Cardinal Antonelli, who were Directors of the bank, went to Gaeta and succeeded in obtaining a promise that the Cardinals would notify, in the course of a few days, that the notes of the bank would have a compulsory circulation for the whole year, at the nominal value; and thus this paper money, which, nevertheless, had been issued by the Republic, was fully legalised, through the many and close relations which the Directors of the bank had with Cardinal Antonelli, the Director of the Government. The value of the base money was not

* Vol. iii. p. 262.

reduced, but the Cardinals arranged that it should be called in at the end of a month, because, though there was a great want of coin, it could not be permitted that money, stamped with the arms of the Republic, should circulate any longer. The Court of Censorship then provided, that, assisted by the many offshoots which had been sent into the provinces, the character, opinions, and conduct, not only of the functionaries, but also of the pensioners of the Government, and of all the Municipal magistrates and officers, should be investigated, and it introduced into the Central Council two prelates, two assessors of police, two lawyers, and three officers of the Segretaria of State, who were secretly to investigate and pronounce sentence without assigning any reasons, or hearing any justification.

At the same time, another Court of Inquiry was established for crimes committed in times past, against religion and its ministers, the majesty of the sovereign, public and private safety; this body, like the Court of Censorship, was composed of men, amongst whom, if there were some who were estimable for their integrity, there were none who had not distinguished themselves by illiberal acts and opinions; added to which, many of them had private offences to revenge, and private ends and advantages to seek. Much time did not elapse before the promises given by the French to the officers and soldiers who had consented to enter into the Pope's service, were annulled; for the Cardinals ordered that all who had entered the army, or who had been promoted since the 16th of November, 1848, should be dismissed and deprived of their rank, and they also subjected the others to an examination