CHAP. III.

THE PROVINCES: THOSE NEAR ROME.

REASONS OF THEIR JOYOUS

-

EXCITEMENT AT THE OUTSET. CRITICAL REMARK THEREON.-
THEIR MORAL AND INTELLECTUAL CONDITION.
UMBRIA AND THE MARCHES.

PROVINCES OF ROMAGNA. RESULTS OF DE

TECTED PLOTS, ABORTIVE INSURRECTIONS, AND THE EUROPEAN CONFLAGRATION OF 1848. ISSUE OF THE WAR WHEN REPUDIATED BY ROME. INERTNESS OF THE PARTY OPPOSED TO REVOLUTION FROM DISGUST. RESULTS OF CLERICAL GOVERNMENT. THE PREVAILING DISGUST. THE RETURNED EXILES. EFFECTS OF PROSCRIPTIONS AND MISGOVERNMENT.― NARRATIVE RESUMED; EFFECTS OF THE NEWS FROM ROME IN THE PROVINCES. -NEWS OF THE REPULSE ENCOUNTERED BY THE DEPUTATION. PROPOSALS OF THE REVOLTERS. THE COUNCIL PANTALEONI, CANINO, GALLETTI.

OF DEPUTIES.

MOTION OF

PANTALEONI. APPOINTMENT OF A COMMITTEE. -REFLECTIONS.
THE WORKMEN MAINTAINED AT THE PUBLIC CHARGE; THEIR
UNRULINESS.
TOTAL COLLAPSE OF AUTHORITY.

ACCURSI.

OF THE MINISTRY.-DEBATE IN THE COUNCIL OF DEPUTIES ON THE 11TH OF DECEMBER.

TEXT OF A LETTER FROM THE REPORT AND SCHEME OF THE COMMITTEE.

DECISION THEREON. NOMINATION OF A SUPREME GIUNTA.

ALTHOUGH I have stated, as opportunity has offered, how and on what grounds the Provinces came to take part in the movement of the Capital, and in what manner they differed, as to temper and circumstances, both from her and also from each other; yet it is well to sum up in our recollection these separate notices and remarks, before we lose the traces of

them amidst the din of Revolution. That is at all times and in all places uniform, and disguises the specific features of each several people, since the minds of all are at such periods given over either to furious passion, or to panic, and violence becomes the only lord; one that never changes in nature or aspect, either for time or place.

The Provinces in the neighbourhood of Rome, very little refined or civilised, thrilled with delight in those jubilees of peace which the name and the boons of Pius IX. had prompted. There was in this a sentiment of religion, an inborn instinct of liberty, an exultation in their Latin descent, a love of spectacle, a southern impulse of poetry, a gush of natural emotions, operating upon races more under the influence of feeling than of reason. History ought to distinguish with care between that spontaneous glow of the public mind, and artificial demonstrations; between the joyous stir at the outset, and the subsequent galas got up with a view to insurrection; nay between unpremeditated popular risings, and rebellion prepense. Those prophets after the fact, and censors, who impute to deep-laid ill-design no less the early scenes of the reign of Pius, than the convulsions which succeeded, those who cannot discriminate between the several stages of the life of a people, raised to fever-heat by so many and such weighty and unwonted causes, cannot be competent judges. And such writers as without knowing either the geography or the history, or the manners of Italy, imagine they are displaying their refined perspicacity by imputing

whatever may have made a noise to a knot of sectarians, show themselves to be just as wise as the old women, who, when anything goes wrong, set it down. to witchcraft.

In the Provinces to which I now refer, there were either but few and obscure sectarians, or none at all; and the inhabitants were so devout, ignorant, and boorish, that but for the influence of such a number of extraordinary causes, no sect would have been able to make head or prosper, or try its hand at change. But after, with their child-like spirits and dense understandings, they had tasted of political intoxication; after the lethargy of some among the nations had been dispelled by the obstreperous frenzy of others, by the crash of thrones, and by the orgies of all Europe; after demagogues had been seen patronizing kings, and kings playing the part of demagogues, it was an easy matter to turn instincts and emotions, ignorance and heat, to account, for purposes of subversion such as few had dreamt of before.

Nor was any great art or rare astuteness requisite in order to pique curiosity, to trade upon credulity, to attract by novelty; most potent incentives to the multitude, and that, too, a multitude which, within a few short months, had witnessed the Pope and the Kings in the attitude of flatterers of the people, coaxing them with indulgences, the larger in proportion as they had been longer withheld; and had also not seldom seen menaces of resistance quailing before symptoms of violence, and dreaded or desired convulsion ending in mere frolic. And since

in proportion as a people is trained to acquiescence and to servitude, it the more readily accommodates itself to change of masters, while in proportion as its knowledge is small, its credulity and fanaticism will be great; it accordingly fell out, that when power was transferred from the palace to the streets, it was there hailed with the customary obsequiousness of slaves. No just judgment can be formed of the people of the Roman States, especially of those who are near the Capital, by comparing them with the inhabitants either of the great European capitals, or of the most civilized countries of Italy. Those French writers who cast the whole world in the mould of Paris, and model the Italian villager after the restless operative of France, do but vent fables while they think they are writing history. In the villages and wretched little towns of Comarca, of Marittima and Campagna, and of La Sabina, there is more pomp of worship in honour of the Saints than of the Lord Christ: practices of devotion abound, but not the intelligent fear of God, nor the strength of love: that moral sense which is developed by sound religion and by civilization, is rare: there is the quarrelsome courage that belongs to high-mettled races, but by no means what is termed civil fortitude, which, acquired by the habit of freedom, refines, and I might say Christianises, the native fierceness of strong-handed men. In the majority there is gross ignorance, and consequently no kind of social intelligence you have the wiseacres of the Church and the Corporation, as ignorant as the totally untaught,

and more vulgar, thanks to that smattering of pagan knowledge which is the fruit of the garbled instruction, miscalled classical; the story of the two Bruti and the two Gracchi; Lycurgus the paragon of legislators, a few fables about the Homeric divinities, and some crabbed sentences from the Tragedian of Asti.* Among the populace, there is not an idea of civilized life, not a notion of political existence : their notion of the State and the Government is confined to the tax-gatherer and the policeman, that of Religion well nigh summed up in a God who judges, and a Devil who destroys. Such was the moral picture of no small number of the Pope's subjects, when caught in the whirlwind of 1848. Yet the heady innovators would have them made on the instant into so many heroes; the clergy, who had trained them to that abject state, would have liked to make of them so many crusaders and martyrs and we for our parts hoped they might prove capable of that resolute moderation, which is the climax of the freeman's virtues; while foreigners find fault because neither the heroes, nor the martyrs, nor the moderates, were forthcoming!

Passing further from the Capital, we meet, in the Marches and in Umbria, a different character in the people, connected with a superiority in their economical condition, and a higher movement of civilization. There we find neither the vast possessions with which entails and bequests in mortmain† invest the Roman

† In the Scotch phrase "mortifications." TR.