room for the consideration of that subject. The facts we have stated will enable the reader to form an opinion on the people and their government. We must briefly allude, however, to the present question about the Legations. We wish we had some more authentic documents to guide us than the random effusions we have read here and there, with much declamation and few facts. Even M. Sismondi's pamphlet is extremely vague in its reasoning. He says that the people of Bologna and the Romagna" demand only to maintain, under the sovereignty of the pope, the rights, the liberties, and privileges which they were possessed of when they formed part of the kingdom of Italy." We will not cavil here on the words liberties and representative constitution, which M. Sismondi employs when speaking of Napoleon's reign, but we will at once admit that the subjects of the kingdom of Italy were possessed of a regular and intelligible code; that the courts of justice and their proceedings were open to the public; that the people were equal before the law, bore an equal share of taxation, and were all admissible to the honours and emoluments of the state; that they elected their municipal magistrates, and were allowed freedom of opinion on all but political matters. These were undoubtedly great benefits, although purchased at the price of the conscription, of an inquisitorial system of police, and of occasionally arbitrary decrees from St. Cloud, duly registered and enforced by the authorities at Milan. These benefits the people of the Legations have lost since their restoration to the pontifical power, while the weight of taxation has remained nearly the same. To Napoleon's political inquisition has succeeded that of the priests, both on political and religious matters. The interference of the vicarial courts and of the parochial clergy in domestic concerns, in questions between husband and wife, father and children, is felt as peculiarly obnoxious. But the administration of justice, its dilatoriness, the indistinctness of the powers of the various courts, the multiplicity of appeals, and especially that to the pope himself, or rather his auditor, who can, by a rescritto, annul all the decisions that have been given, and send the affair in question again before new judges, these form the great, the really substantial, complaints against that government. Again, the higher situations and offices of the state are filled exclusively by ecclesiastics. Not being given to exaggeration, we shall not venture to assert that positive abuses of power and acts of flagrant oppression are very common, (we rather think they are not, especially at Rome,) but the power is known to exist, and this is enough to frustrate the purposes of the

* Des Esperances et des Besoins de l'Italie, No. VI. on our list. VOL. XI. NO. XXI.

F

!

laws. It is a system of perpetual tutelage, in which the laymen are kept as minors by their clerical guardians and governors.

The inhabitants of the southern provinces are by long custom reconciled to this system; their habits and ideas have, through many generations, shaped themselves to it; they look, generally speaking, upon the authority of the Pope and his delegates, even in temporal matters, as having been transmitted from a higher power; and those who entertain doubts on the subject are content to live as their fathers did, in a country where the population is not crowded, towns few and small, provisions cheap, and where the climate naturally disposes people to listlessness and repose, Rome is comparatively prosperous in times of peace, when the Papal court resides there, and the neighbouring provinces partake of the benefit, and follow the lead of the metropolis. The government, finding no opposition, holds the reins slack, and society contrives to go on in tolerably good humour. There is, in short, some sympathy existing there between the governors and the governed. Twice in 1831 the people of Rieti repulsed the Bologna insurgents, and prevented their advance upon Rome. But the case is totally altered, when we pass into the northern provinces. After crossing the Apennines, we may find in the fine province of the Marches some remaining attachment and subserviency to Rome, especially among the rural population; but when, proceeding along the Adriatic coast to Rimini, we enter the Romagna by a narrow neck of land between the Apennines and the sea, with the mountain of San Marino standing in the gap, we meet with a new country, new climate, new people, new dialects and new habits. It was the country of the Cispadane Gauls, separated even of old from Italy Proper by the Rubicon. The inhabitants of the Legations have greater affinity with their Lombard neighbours than with the Romans. Their country merges into the vast plain of the Po; its waters run into that common estuary. Bologna, a large and wealthy city, proud of its learning, has been often at variance with the Popes, who, till the time of the French revolutionary invasion, allowed it some remains of municipal independence. It was the first to proclaim the republic in 1796, and after that epoch the Legations followed the fortunes of North Italy till 1814, when they were militarily occupied by the Austrian armies, and afterwards, and not very readily,* given to the Pope, more than a year after he had been restored to the possession of his other states. A whole generation had grown up who had no recollection of the Papal government, and yet that government silently abrogated the former municipal rights of

See Giordani's curious Letter to the delegate Giustiniani on the occasion, in the twelfth volume of his Opere, published in 1821, about the words given and restored.

the Bolognese, and placed them on the same footing with the rest of its subjects. We believe this system will be found impracticable. The four Legations, Bologna, Ferrara, Ravenna and Forli, contain nearly one million of inhabitants; while the Marches and the Southern Provinces number about one million and a half.

From the Papal government, however, unless absolutely coerced, we expect but little flexibility in adapting itself to the changes of the times. Had we thought otherwise, the work second on our list would have convinced us of our mistake. After perusing" the Historical Memoirs of Cardinal Pacca's Ministry, and his Deportation and Imprisonment at Fenestrelle," we have risen with feelings of uncommon depression. We respect a sincerely conscientious man, whatever be his creed; and we abominate the petty tyranny which Napoleon displayed towards the aged and virtuous pontiff, Pius VII. But as long as the court of Rome maintains its tenacity to what it considers its super-human rights, it will remain exposed, itself and the country it rules, to a return of similar calamities. In reading Cardinal Pacca's Memoirs nothing has struck us more forcibly than the feature of perfect unchangeableness of mind and ideas among the Roman hierarchy. Semper eadem. Every thing alters around, in the social as well as the political world: old empires are shaken to their foundations, all traces of the past are swept away; principles and theories unbeard of a century ago become paramount; and still, the Court and Clergy of Rome remain the same. Buried in the atmosphere in which they have been bred, the Roman prelates and princes of the church, when looking out from the windows of their Consistory Hall on the Quirinal, see nothing but a submissive believing world at their feet; they still consider Rome as Caput Mundi; the Papal benediction from the balcony of St. Peter's is given Urbi et Orbi; and if in the midst of all this, couriers should arrive, bearing strangely worded despatches, importing not only alarming secessions from the spiritual authority of the Pope, but even more urgent news of rebellion and foreign aggression, these are considered as passing storms, which the bark of St. Peter will weather, as it has already weathered others still more terrific. Such is the constant reply, and those who sincerely believe in the doctrine are certainly among the happiest in their minds. Of the external world they are childishly ignorant. Wrapped up in the study of the canon law, the decretals, the bulls, briefs and motoproprios, they see no sound reason why people should dissent now from these emanations of an authority above that of all sovereigns and assemblies. Hence their surprise when violently removed from their own sphere, as in 1798 and 1809, at finding themselves roughly used by unbelievers, of the extent of whose

unbelief they had no previous idea. Yet even then, while shut up in a coach under an escort, and with a mustachioed gend'arme for a companion, they still think themselves objects of veneration to the world. They see women and children kneeling before them as they pass, and they believe that all France is still Catholic to the core. In reading Pacca's Memoirs we might almost fancy ourselves carried back to the twelfth or thirteenth centuries, at the time of the quarrels between the Popes and the German Emperors. But, alas for Rome! how different the spirit in the two epochs!

Apart from the tone of the work, there is considerable information to be derived from Pacca's book about the events of the period it refers to. We learn several particular deeds of the French at Rome which did not come within M. de Tournon's jurisdiction, but proceeded from orders direct from Paris, such as the imprisonment of Colonel Bracci, because he refused to incorporate his troops with those of the French, against the positive orders of his sovereign, who was still residing in his capital, nominally at the head of the government, (vol. ii. p. 209;) the arrest of the Marquis Patrizi, who was confined first at Civita Vecchia, then at Fenestrelle, where Pacca met him, and lastly at Chateau d'If, because he refused to deliver up his two sons to be educated in France, agreeably to an order from Napoleon, which was enforced on several of the most distinguished families of Rome, (vol. i. p. 202); the imprisonment and subsequent death, in the Castle of Fenestrelle, of Count Cassini, a Piedmontese officer in the Russian service, who was arrested while travelling in Italy, in time of peace between Russia and France; and other similar anecdotes of Napoleon's liberal and constitutional government. We have a full account of the state prisons and the treatment of their inmates, with the names of those who were confined for years at Fenestrelle with Pacca, bishops, curates and laymen, Italians, Frenchmen and Spaniards, for having spoken or written letters reflecting on the emperor's conduct, (vol. i. pp. 188-197.) There are also many particulars about Pius VII. and Napoleon at Fontainebleau: we are glad to find that the story of the latter having struck the aged Pope is positively contradicted by Pacca. There is an honest minuteness in the Cardinal's statement which, independent of his character, vouches for the correctness of his facts.

We had written thus far when the publication in the newspapers of a diplomatic correspondence between the English and Austrian Ministers at Rome, dated last September, and of a note

from Prince Metternich to the English Ambassador at Vienna, dated July, both on the subject of the Legations, has induced us to resume the pen. The Papal Government, it appears from these documents, has refused from the beginning two points among the concessions suggested to it in favour of its subjects:1st. The admission of the principle of popular election as a basis of the communal and provisional councils.

2d. The formation of a Council of State, composed of lay persons, besides the Sacred College, or, according to Prince Metternich's commentary, in opposition to the latter.

As to the first point, we have already seen that communal and provisional councils exist, and have always existed, in the Roman States. By the motoproprio of Leo XII. sect. 159, the members of the said councils were, in the first place, named by the Pope, and their office declared hereditary, the vacancies that might occur afterwards by the extinction of families to be filled by the councils themselves. The question raised since concerning their election and removal appears to us to resemble, in principle at least, that between the open and close vestries in England, and when we observe how long the latter has been agitated, and the select vestries have been defended in an old constitutional country, we cannot wonder at the innovation being opposed by an absolute and ecclesiastical government such as the Pope's. It were difficult to deny that the principle of popular election is in direct contradiction with the spirit, and must, if admitted, necessarily clash with the power, of the Papal theocracy. The question is, whether an essential part of the system can be altered without changing the whole. Moreover, Prince Metternich observes, that "all the other Italian Governments protested against the admission of the principle of popular election, which is altogether alien to their institutions ;" and their protests, backed by Austria, as Sovereign of Lombardy, form of themselves a formidable obstacle.

With regard to the second point, namely, the formation of a Council of State, or central board, composed of laymen, for the purpose of revising all the branches of the administration, such a council must evidently do away with many of the attributes of the various congregations, or boards of Cardinals or prelates, if not with the congregations themselves. In fact, if meant to be permanent, it would secularize the Papal Government, and abolish the theocratical superiority which the College of Cardinals claim as their exclusive right. Were a Pope to show himself inclined to consent to this, he would be told by his electors, the Cardinals, that he cannot dispose of the patrimony of the church; that he cannot part with any attribute of a power, in which, as an elective functionary, he has only a life interest. It is not an easy thing