would accept—especially those of rural policemen.

There can be no such thing as political rigours
in a country which is under the personal
superintendence of the Vicar of Jesus Christ on earth.
Oh no! The type-metal trumpet says (ironically,
we fear) that the Popes have always been good-
natured and indulgent, to the very verge of
senility and dotage. Nevertheless, Sixtus V., a
great Pope, was a still greater executioner.
This man of God hung a Pepoli of Bologna for
having given him a kick instead of a bit of bread,
at the time when he was a monk and a mendicant.
Gregory XVI., our contemporary, granted
to a minor a dispensation of age, in order that
he might legally offer his head to be cut off.
Four years ago, the punishment of the rack was
restored to its pristine vigour, by the gentle
Cardinal Antonelli. The Pontifical State is the
only one in Europe which retains the barbarous
custom of setting a price on the head of human
beings.

Some nine or ten years ago, Pius IX.
re-entered his capital, like the master of a house
who gets into it by breaking open the door.
The Holy Father and his companions in exile
were not inspired with a very lively gratitude
towards the revolutionary chiefs who had driven
them out. A man has been a man for several
years before he was a prelate or a cardinal,
and there will always remain a slight spice
of human feeling: which was probably the reason
why, when the amnesty (counselled by
France, and promised by the Pope) was
proclaimed, two hundred and eighty-three
individuals were excluded from this general measure.
It is a great misfortune for these two hundred
and eighty-three persons that the Gospel should
be an old and obsolete book, and the forgiveness
of injuries gone out of fashion. The Pope's
clemency has pardoned fifty-nine of these exiles
during the course of nine or ten years. But
was it a pardon to call them back provisionally,
some for a year, others for six months? Is a
man placed under the surveillance of the police
pardoned for good and all? Must not an
unhappy wretch, who is forbidden to exercise his
former profession while he enjoys the liberty of
starving in his native land, often regret the days
of his exile?

One of these fifty-nine recipients of the
pontifical clemency is an Advocate—at least he was
so till the day when he obtained his pardon.
After describing the inoffensive part which
he played in eighteen hundred and forty-eight,
the hopes he had founded on the amnesty,
the despair he felt on finding himself
excluded, his life in exile, the resources which he
created by giving lessons in Italian, like the
illustrious Manin and many others, "I might
have lived happily," he said; "but one fine day
I was seized with home-sickness, and I felt that
I must revisit Italy, or die. My family exerted
themselves; we knew the protégé of a cardinal.
The police dictated their conditions, and I shut
my eyes and accepted them all. They might
have told me to cut off my right arm as the
price of my return, and I would have cut off
my right arm. The Pope signed my pardon, and
published my name in the journals, so that everybody
might know how good he was. But the
bar is closed to me; and I cannot earn my
living by teaching Italian in a country where
everybody knows Italian." As he uttered these
words, the bells in the neighbourhood rang the
Ave Maria. He turned pale, seized his hat, and
rushed out of the room, exclaiming, "How
unlucky!  I have forgotten how late it is. If the
police get there before I do, I am a ruined man!"
His friends let out the secret of his sudden
alarm. The poor man was kept subject to the
precetto, the "precept ;" that is, to certain
regulations imposed by the police. Every evening,
at sunset, he was obliged to return home,
and to remain there till daybreak. The police
had the right to break into his residence at any
hour of the night, to make sure of his presence.
Under no pretext whatever, might he go outside
the town, even in broad day. The least infringement
of the regulations exposed him to
imprisonment or a fresh exile. The Pontifical
States are peopled with persons subjected to the
precetto; some of them are malefactors who live
under surveillance at home, for want of room in
the prisons; the others are suspected persons.
The total number of these unfortunates is not
published in the national statistics; but it has
been ascertained, from an official source, that
there are two hundred in Viterbo alone, which
is a town of fourteen thousand souls.

The insufficiency of the prisons explains many
things, and notably the liberty of speech which
reigns throughout the country. If the government
were to take it into its head to arrest all
those who detest it openly, there would be
neither gendarmes enough, nor gaolers enough,
and, above all, not enough of those peaceful
mansions whose protection and salubrity—
according to the Eminentissimo Cardinale Milesi
—prolong the lives of their inhabitants. The
citizens, therefore, are allowed to talk at their
ease, provided always they do not gesticulate.
But not a word is lost in a state whose
overseers are Roman priests. The government
keeps an exact list of those who are ill-disposed
towards it. It avenges itself when it can, but
it does not run after vengeance. It watches for
opportunities: patient, because it believes itself
to be eternal. If the rash babbler fills a modest
clerkship, a revisional commission quietly stops
his salary, and gently drops him in the street.
If his means are independent, the authorities
wait till he stands in need of something; of a
passport, for instance. For the last nine years
a certain Roman man of business has been
soliciting permission to travel. He is rich and
active: he is engaged in a line of commerce
which is especially lucrative to the government;
a journey in foreign countries would complete
his information and increase his business
connexions. For nine years he has requested an
audience of the head of the passport department,
and nobody would favour him with an
answer.