has bountifully bestowed quickness, foresight, energy, strength and boldness; has two such harbours as Ancona and Civita Vecchia empty.” There was universal misery—the want of food, of clothing, of shelter. The prisons were full of state prisoners who had in any way given umbrage to the priests. There were spies at every corner; and every confessional contained a spy, who could extract from a man’s nearest relation, revelations, or suggestions which were worked to his destruction. With regard to the prisoners, sometimes their very existence was forgotten. If ever the person accused was brought to trial—we speak of political offenders—he was never confronted with the witnesses who appeared against him—the names were never revealed to him. The court which had pre-determined his ruin, assigned to him a nominal defender—his most dangerous adversary. Torture was used to extract confession, as may be seen in an edict published by Cardinal Antonelli, on the 30th of July, 1855. Besides what was done by the immediate agents of the Pope, Austria took a great share of bloody work off his hands. Papal subjects were taken in batches before the Austrian courts-martial, and dealt with according to the amenities of Austrian military law. It has been clearly established, and the English Consul at Ferrara at the time knew the facts, that in the beginning of the year 1853, political prisoners of the Pope were tortured by the Austrian jailors. They were beaten, they were starved; they were bent in the form of hoops; they were informed that a firing party was waiting for them; they were kept without sleep, and in the middle of the night their keepers would come in and shake a hook and a halter before their eyes. The country was governed by foreigners,—Spaniards, Frenchmen, Germans. The collection of the common taxes cost 31 per cent; of the revenue derived from salt and tobacco, 46 per cent.; from the lotto, 62 per cent. In nine years’ time, between 1848—57, 1,000,000l. was paid to foreign troops for keeping down, and—occasion arising—butchering the Pope’s subjects. From 1814 to 1857, the sum of the papal revenues had amounted to 75,500,000l.: all of which has been wrung from the wretched inhabitants of the country, being other than priests, and the owners and holders of ecclesiastical property. There is no commerce—no trade, no manufactures in this unfortunate country; and as taxation scarcely touches the principal landed proprietors, the condition of less considerable persons may be imagined. The river Po threatens continually to overflow.
The acknowledged project of the French Ruler is to reduce the Pope to the condition of the Ecclesiastical Emperor of Japan—leaving Victor Emmanuel to be the actual Sovereign of Italy. What his real projects may be he scarcely knows himself. At the present moment it is clear that the presence of the French troops in Rome, and in the Patrimony of St. Peter’s, constitutes the chief—nay, the only obstacle to the liberation of Italy from Reggio to the Mincio. It is a fearful stab in the back from a sovereign who claims to be the Liberator of Italy. So long as the Pope is at Rome, Rome will be the centre of ecclesiastical intrigues extending throughout the Peninsula. So long as the Pope is at Rome, there will always be a pretext for foreign interference. So long as the Pope is at Rome, the spell of Italy’s long slavery is not wholly dissolved. The possession of Rome, in a moral sense, would be worth three successful battles to the Italian cause. As a temporal prince, the Pope has been found wanting, and should be numbered with things which have been, and which must be no more. When this end is achieved, we may have done with the subject; as we have done with the atrocities of the Bourbon at Naples and in Sicily. Happy will that moment be when the Pope and his successors can say with truth to their assailants—“De mortuis.”
ERIN GO BRAGH.
