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THE POPE AND THE ITALIAN QUESTION.

Two months have elapsed since we wrote a few words under the same title which we place at the head of this article. The day of the Possesso, on which a complete statement of the reforms meditated by Pius IX. was promised to be given, has passed. And we say frankly at the commencement, that we do not think it our duty to recal or to modify the doubts we expressed respecting the tendency of the measures, and the extent of the intentions of the Pope. There are men who, looking on the popular manifestations of the Roman states as mere expressions of gratitude, conclude that the Pope must have done prodigious things. But we, who think we have good grounds to see in them the manifestations of the popular wishes, and a means adopted to bind the Pope, if possible, to walk in the new path-we are forced to reject these easy hypotheses, and confine ourselves to a calm and rigorous appreciation of the facts. Now hitherto the facts show us in him, to whom the crown of regenerating Pope is somewhat too hastily adjudged, neither a great and holy thought, nor a plan fixed on for its realization, nor the energy necessary to attain the aim. His bearing appears to us rather fated than chosen ; his vacillating uncertain step, that of a man beaten about between fascination and terror, rather than that of the just advancing with firm step to the accomplishment of his mission under the motto, Do thy duty, let what may happen. There is much in him of the Louis XVI., nothing of the Charlemagne.

Three commissions have been formed: one is to occupy itself with the civil and criminal codes; a second to inquire into the improvements that may be introduced into the organization of the municipalities; and a third, whose business is to draw up regulations respecting mendicity. Some commutations have taken place of the sentences of those who, notwithstanding the general amnesty, still choke

up the prisons, condemned for having fired on the armed force at the time of the attempt at insurrection; that is to say, those who having taken part in the insurrection with the same intentions as the rest, had the misfortune to be first exposed to the attacks of the government soldiers, probably foreigners. That is all. No secularisation of offices; no political constitution; no laws respecting the press; no representative principle. The high functionaries of Gregory XVI. almost all retain their offices; the Swiss condottieri still parade before their doors. At Bologna-at Bologna only, and with a view to temporary circumstances, the increase of robberies by the armed bands, and the inability of the Government to insure the safety of the citizens by night—a few patrols of an urban guard have been authorized; authorized after repeated refusals, and when, in spite of these refusals, the citizens were beginning to arm themselves. Besides, those urban guards exist in the kingdom of Naples; they were authorized in the Roman states for special purposes by Gregory XVI.; and those who see in them the germ of a national guard, for the whole country know nothing either of what the country demands, or of what Pius IX. has been forced to concede.

Of all these acts, and of those which we indicated in our former article, the only one capable of producing real benefit, is the establishment of railroads.

We do not say this with reference to material interests; internal commercial activity in the Roman States there is scarcely any, and a few fragments of lines will not be sufficient to revive it. When we hear it said that the enormous taxes, which now directly or indirectly weigh the peasant to the earth, have disappeared― when industry has been emancipated from exclusive privileges, from giving caution money, from the vexations of the customhouse, and from the coalitions formed at Rome with the participation of public functionaries against

every provincial manufactory that rivals with the metropolis-when the employment of capital is guaranteed by the permanent tranquillity of the country-when, above all, the whole great Italian market is open to the producers of the State, and the lines can extend unbroken from one end of the Peninsula to the other;* then, but only then, we shall begin to have faith in the effects of railroads on the material wellbeing of the population of Italy. At the present day it is the moral result we look at; the more rapid circulation of ideas, the fusion of the provinces with each other, and of all with the capital, the unification, as far as may be, of a country whose ever open wound is anarchy;—this, we repeat, will be the real immediate advantage of railways in the Roman States, but it will be a very great one. There, as in all other parts of Italy, it is only faith that is wanting, faith in a collective effort the mutual esteem which is its foundation. Every internal increase of contact must powerfully assist in creating it.

We do not attach much importance to the formation of the commissions mentioned above. Such commissions were formed by Gregory XVI., after the insurrection of 1831, and by other Popes at their accession; they produced no results. There exists an element of dissolution in the Roman States, capable of rendering all written reforms inefficient-this is the administration. It is, perhaps, the only country in Europe where a change of men is more important than a change of measures. Every foreigner who wishes to form a correct estimate of the value of the events which take place there, should begin by well understanding the special position we speak of.

It has been said, and it must be repeated, what constitutes the misfortune of the other States of Italy, of the nations subject to Austria, and of Poland, is despotism: what constitutes the misfortune of the Roman States is anarchy. Elsewhere, the evil consists in the want of good laws;

there, in the non-execution of any laws whatever. In every country ruled by an absolute and all-powerful will, you may at least point to every good project which that will forms as a positive progress; in the Roman States the best designs may remain sterilethe best laws become a dead letter. The Pope orders, and nothing is done. "His electors, the Cardinals"-let us be permitted to cite what we have written elsewhere, for we might change the words, but not the things—“ each eligible after him, and feeling themselves his equals, substitute their pleasure for his, every one in his sphere. The Bishops, also partaking in this divine character, and in irresponsible authority, exercise a wide and almost entirely independent power. The same, too, with the chiefs of the Holy Inquisition. The Ecclesiastics, holders of the principal offices, incompetent from past habits and studies to undertake their administration, discharge their duties by the aid of inferior employés, who in turn, feeling their position as uncertain, as dependent on a necessarily short-lived patronage, are guilty of every possible malversation, and aim solely at self-enrichment. Beneath all, the weary people, borne down by all, reacting against all, are initiated into a corruption, the example of which is set by their superiors, or avenge themselves as they may, by revolt or the poignard. Such, abridged, is the normal state of Papal Italy. And in such a system, there is not, there cannot be, any place for social interests, but place for the interests of self alone. The priests, who govern, have nothing in common with the governed; they may have mistresses, they cannot have wives; their children, if they have any, are not legitimate, and have nothing to hope for but from intrigue and favouritism. The love of glory—the ambition of doing good—the last stimulant left to individuals where every other is wanting -exist not for them. . . How should men devote themselves to amendments, that can be in force only

At the present time, Naples is hostile and stands aloof. Trieste Lloyds, and others, but lately announced on occasion of a controversy about a book by the And the Austrian journals, as the counsellor Petite of Turin, that the Piedmontese lines would never obtain their junction with the Lombardo Austrian railways.

a few years-that must pass away under each new Pope, ere they can bear fruit? How should the auditors, assessors, or secretaries, through whom the Ecclesiastics are driven, by their want of political aptitude to govern, labour for good, when the glory would all go to their chiefs? Why should they not labour for evil, when the dishonour will fall there also ? Fear has no hold on the subalterns, for, not acting in their own name, they have nothing to dread save from their patrons. Fear has no hold on the heads, for, as to some, their power, and the part taken in the election of the reigning Pope, as to others, the apostolic constitutions, or the traditions of the Church, establish an irresponsibility in fact or in law.*"

Such is the organization, or rather the disorganization of the States of the Pope. And what can be done with such an administration ? You may form the finest financial plans in the world. How will you ensure their execution with a Treasurer-General who renders no account, who may rob the country with impunity, and whom, if the robbery is discovered, you cannot, according to the apostolic constitutions, deprive of his office, but by the public scandal of raising him to the rank of Cardinal? You may issue the strictest charge to the Governor of Rome to be just and impartial, why should he obey? He can but gain by not executing your orders; he also can only lose his office in exchange for a Cardinal's hat. You cannot take from these men whom you despise, whom you know to be vassals of the genius of evil, their position immediately beneath yourself, except by placing them by your side, introducing them into your councils, by giving them a voice in the election of the Pope who is to follow you with sovereign power to destroy your work. You cannot force your legates to obedience; if they be at all bold, they will answer you, quoting we know not what old texts, that you cannot remove them from the place of their malversation before three complete years have elapsed. You cannot

brand by trial and public condemnation all those priests who use and abuse, -your religion would suffer. A priest in the pillory! a priest at the gallies! What would the people think? What would be said by his penitents, whose agitated conscience the sacred word of that man, of that robber, calmed but a few days since?

For this state of things, for this school of corruption, which has been teaching for ages, and whose doctrines have filtered from the clergy into the laity, there is but one remedy-the secularisation of all offices, the choice of the employés by the country whereever it is possible, their responsibility, and the superintendence of society by a free press. Without that nothing will be done.

Illusions may last for some time longer, but they will end by posting on the doors of the Papal palace, what the wits wrote over the door of the hall of the Parliament at Naples in 1820, Scusate le ciarle-excuse the chattering.

Will the Pope do this?

Of this measure, there would be two inevitable consequences. The first is, the introduction into office, into the direction of the wheels of government, of men devoted not only to the party of local reforms, but also to the NATIONAL party. They form a majority in the Roman States; they would get the upper hand, and would give form to the tendency of the country towards that object. The second is the resistance of Austria, even by force of arms. Already, if we are to believe well informed persons, an Austrian note, founded solely on pre-visions of the future, has been handed to the Secretary of State, Gizzi, threatening this opposition, and insolently referring to the fate of Cracow. But, however that may be, there is not the shadow of a doubt that Austria would interfere by arms, if ever such measures as we have enumerated were taken. A free press, in whatever corner of Italy it may be established, raises the question of life and death for Austria and her Italian possessions. She must put it down, were it even at the price of a war.

* Italy, Austria, and the Pope. London: Strange, Paternoster Row.

Now, in this war, the Pope would stand alone, opposed not only to Austria, but to a coalition of the absolute powers with her. The politics of principles are represented at this time by none of the governments of Europe; and the only existing politics, those of interests, have terminated in this—that there is now in Europe an alliance to do ill, while there is none to do good. The only means, therefore, remaining to the Pope for his defence would be an appeal to the enthusiasm of the populations of the Peninsula, a summons to an Italian crusade against the foreign invader.

We need not even remark, that the direct consequence of a direct common action of Italy would necessarily be a fusion hostile to the local sovereignty of the Roman States; but putting that on one side, is Pius IX. a man energetic enough to dare these necessities for the sake of the public good?

We think he is not. All that we know betrays in him either the absence of a fixed plan, or the want of energy to carry it out. He proclaims the blessing of forgiveness, and mutilates it by irrational exceptions. He organizes, by his circular of 24th August 1846, a school for the poor who have no trade, and, as if alarmed at his own boldness, he concludes the circular by a motiveless declaration of hostility to the modern theories tending to a secular and national government. He makes one step in a path diametrically opposite to that of Gregory XVI.; and he leaves in the government those satellites of the latter, who are the most violent partisans of absolutism, Marini, Della Genga, Vanicelli, Freddi; Lambruschini is entrusted with the conduct of a politicoreligious negotiation with the Czar; and even that living scandal, the barber Gaetanini, preserves his place of sotto cameriere in the Papal household. He allows the learned of the States to repair to the scientific Congress; and he forbids the meeting to be held at Bologna. We could multiply the instances of hesitation, of weakness, of inconsistency, in the conduct of Pius IX.; but these will be sufficient for any man who understands human nature to

decide whether this is the man destined to accomplish a decisive step towards the solution of the Italian question.

Is there, then, no hope for poor Italy, and has the accession of Pius IX. done nothing for her?

The fate of Italy does not depend upon any man, king, pope, or other. It depends upon the Italian peopleit depends upon the virtues, upon the union, upon the firm and constant will of the men who have devoted themselves to the national cause. Neither will the accession of Pius IX. be without its use. When an opinion is well advanced, and the time approaches for the national development of a country, one would say that nothing can be done intentionally or not, without providentially turning to the advantage of that development. We could willingly compare the Guelphic ebullitions by which Messrs Gioberti, Balbo, and others, pretend to amalgamate at this day the ideas of Papacy and national liberty, to those philosophical essays which strove, in the face of nascent Christianity, to reconcile the new spirit to the Pagan creeds; there will not be more permanency in these than in those. But upon the masses the well-meant but vacillating intentions of Pius IX. will have produced a double good. They have called forth a unanimous and imposing manifestation of opinion which has revealed Italy to itself; they will cure the Italians, at no very distant time, of their last illusion.

There is a ballad by Goethe, in which a sorcerer's pupil has overheard, by listening at the door, the formula by which his master obliges a stick to serve him as a lacquey, and to pour a pail of water on the dirty floor. He profits by his master's absence, and hastens, in thoughtless pride, to employ the formula. The stick obeys— it fills its pail, and hastes to pour out the contents. The scholar is in raptures-he glories in his feat, and thinks himself almost the equal of his master. But behold, the stick re-appears at the door with the replenished pail, and continues its office. The scholar becomes uneasy—the stick returns the floor is inundated. Enough, enough, cries the frightened adept; he

loads with reproaches and abuse the imperturbable stick. Of the two formulas, which by turns command activity and repose, he, alas! knows only the former-he has never even thought of learning the second. Seized with rage, he grasps a hatchet, and cuts the rebel stick into two-into three pieces. Oh woe! the fragments re-appear, each bearing a pail; the evil is trebled -the unhappy scholar is on the point of drowning, when the master returns and saves him.

The position of Pius IX. appears to us to be precisely that of the wizard's pupil. The spirit whose manifestation he has to a certain extent evoked, will not stop where it shall please him to check it force itself, if ever he should come to use it, will redouble rather than

suppress its action. This spirit is a national spirit; we must not mistake on that point. At Rome, at Ancona, at Spoleto, at Bologna, cries of Italy, of independence, of down with Austria, mingle with the applause given to the supposed intentions of the Pope. The scientific congress held at Genoa last September, assumed a decidedly political character from its very first sittings; and Genoese professors were heard proudly recalling to mind the centenary commemoration of the expulsion of the Austrians by the people in 1746, and declaring that Genoa

would be always ready to answer to an appeal of Italy against the foreigner. In Tuscany a National subscription boldly opened to send a testimonial to the Italian legion of Monte Video, was covered with thousands of signatures. We are spectators of the awakening of a nation. God, who willed a quarter of a century ago to deliver Greece from the crescent, is now working out a new destiny for her sister, Italy. In such spectacles there is always, for those who see the finger of God in the pages of the world's history, something solemn, something sacred, which demands all our attention, and as far as possible all our active sympathies. And in the individual case we are dealing with, there is something especially important for Europe and for humanity. On that classic Italian soil, where the ruins of two worlds overlay each other, the religious question is inseparable from the national; the cry of political liberty is necessarily identical with that of liberty of conscience. At Rome is tied the Gordian knot which occupies us all; and should the Italian NATION awake, that knot will be, must be cut. That is the reason why, referring no more to Pius IX.-unless it be to confess that we have been mistaken-we shall always follow with love and hope in this periodical, the progressive development of the Italian question.

THE MARTYR'S CHILD.*

Oh, the sunrise! the sunrise! hath wondrous power,
To gladden all living things,

It breaks on the chill night's mirkiest hour,

Like a smile from the King of kings!

"Tis earliest June! and the earth hath thrilled
With the earnest of summer given,

And the very city's self is filled

With the breath and the beam of heaven!

The touching circumstances upon which the above ballad is founded, are well told in the interesting "Life of James Guthrie," from the pen of the Rev. Thomas Thomson, contained in a recent volume of the issues of Cheap Publications, by the Committee of the General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland. After narrating the martyr's last parting with his wife on the morning of his execution, it is stated, " Another of those tond ties that hold the heart to the world had also to be loosed, for he bad a son named William, about four or five years old-so young, indeed, and therefore so ignorant of the dismal tragedy that was approaching, that James Cowie," (Mr Guthrie's servant. precentor, and amanuensis)" could scarcely detain him from playing in the streets on the day of his father's execution. Guthrie, whose soul yearned over his boy, so soon to become an orphan, took him upon his knee, and gave him such advices as were suited to his capacity. He bade him to become serious-to become religious-and to be sure to devote himself to that honest and holy course in which his father had walked to the death. Willie,' he said, they will tell you, and cast up to you, that your father was hanged; but think not shame of it, for it is upon a good cause." After the execution," the head was set up on

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