The Roman Question Part 6

"You're right, but the sight of Rome is worth all it costs."

Shades of the travellers of the olden time--delicate, subtle, genial spirits--what think you of conversations such as this? Surely you must opine that your footmen knew Rome better, and talked more to the purpose about it.

Across the table I hear a citizen of London town narrating to a curious audience how he has to-day seen the two great lions of Rome,--the Coliseum, and Cardinal Antonelli. The conclusion he arrives at is, that the first is a very fine ruin, and the second a very clever man.

A provincial dowager of the devotee cla.s.s, is worth listening to. She has toiled through the entire ceremonies of the Holy Week. She has knelt close to the Pope, and declares his mode of giving the Benediction the most sublime thing on earth. The good lady has spared neither time nor money in order to carry home a choice collection of _relics_. Among other objects of adoration she has a bone of St.

Perpetua, and a real bit of the real Cross. Not satisfied with these, she is bent on obtaining the Pope's palm-branch, the very identical palm-branch which his Holiness has carried in his own sacred hand.

This is with her a fixed idea, a positive question of salvation. The poor old soul has not the smallest doubt, that this bit of stick will open for her the gates of Paradise. She has made her request to a priest, who will transmit it to a Monsignore, who will forward it to a Cardinal. Her importunity and her simplicity will, doubtless, move somebody. She will get the precious bough, and she is convinced that when she arrives at home with it, all the devotees in the province will burst with envy.

Among these batches of ridiculous travellers, you are certain to find some ecclesiastics. Here is one from our own country. You have known him in France. Does not he strike you as being somewhat changed? Not in his looks, but his manner. Beneath the shadow of his own church tower, in the midst of his own flock, he used to be the mildest, the meekest, and most modest of parish priests. He bowed low to the Mayor, and to the most microscopic of the authorities. At Rome, his hat seems glued to his head. I almost think--Heaven forgive me!--it is a trifle c.o.c.ked. How jauntily his ca.s.sock is tucked up! How he struts along the street! Is not his hand on his hip? Something very like it. The reason of this change is as clear as the sun at noon. He is in a kingdom governed by his own cla.s.s. He inhales an atmosphere impregnated with clerical pride and theocratic omnipotence. Phiz! It is a bottle of champagne saluting him with the cork. By the time he has drunk all the contents of the intoxicating beverage, he will begin to mutter between his teeth that the French clergy does not get its deserts, and that we are a long time in restoring to it the property taken away by the Revolution.

I actually heard this argument maintained on board the steamer which brought me back to France. The princ.i.p.al pa.s.sengers were Prince Souworf, Governor of the province of Riga, one of the most distinguished men in Europe; M. de la Rochefoucauld, attached to the French emba.s.sy; M. de Angelis, a highly educated and really distinguished _mercante di campagna_; M. Oudry, engineer of the Civita Vecchia railway: and a French ecclesiastic of a respectable age and corpulence. This reverend personage, who was nowise disinclined to argumentation, and who had just left a country where the priests are never wrong, took to holding-forth after dinner upon the merits of the Pontifical Government. I answered as well as I could, like a man unaccustomed to public speaking. Driven to my last entrenchments, and called upon to relate some fact which should not redound to the Pope's credit, I chose, at hazard, a recent event then known to all Rome, as it was speedily about to be to all Europe. My honourable interlocutor met my statement with the most unqualified, formal, and unhesitating denial. He accused me of impudently calumniating an innocent administration, and of propagating lies fabricated by the enemies of religion. His language was so sublimely authoritative, that I felt confounded, overpowered, crushed, and, for a moment, I asked myself whether I had not really been telling a lie.

The story I had related was that of the boy Mortara.

But I return to Rome and our travellers in the trumpery line. Those we overheard before are already gone. But their places have been quickly filled. They follow one another, like vapours rising from the ocean, and they are as much like one another as one sea-wave is to its predecessor. See them laying-in their stocks of Roman _souvenirs_ at the shops in the Corso and the Via Condotti. Their selections are princ.i.p.ally from the cheap rosaries, coa.r.s.e mosaics, and gilt jewellery, and generally those articles of which a lot may be had for a crown-piece. They care little for what is really good in its way; all they want is something which can be bought nowhere but at Rome, and which will serve to their descendants as the evidence of their visit to the Eternal City. They haggle as if they were at market, and yet, when they get back to the 'Minerva,' they wonder they have so little to show for their money.

If they took home nothing worse than their cheap rosaries, I should not find fault with them; but they carry opinions and impressions.

Don't tell them of the abuses which swarm throughout the kingdom of the Pope. They will bridle up, and answer that for their parts they never saw a single one. As the surface of things is smooth, at least in the best quarter of the town--the only quarter these good folks are likely to have seen--they a.s.sume, as a matter of course, that all is well. They have seen the Pope and the Cardinals in all their glory and all their innocence at the Sistine Chapel; and of course it is not on Easter Sunday, and in the eyes of the whole mult.i.tude, that Cardinal Antonelli occupies himself with his business or his pleasures. When Monsignore B---- dishonoured a young girl, who died of the outrage, and then sent her affianced bridegroom to the galleys, he did not select the Sistine Chapel as the theatre of his exploits.

You must not attempt to extract pity for the Italian nation from these foreign pilgrims of the Holy Week. The honest souls have marked the uncultivated waste which extends from Civita Vecchia to Rome, and they have at once inferred that the people are idle. They have been importuned for alms by miserable-looking objects in the streets, and they conclude that the lower cla.s.s is a cla.s.s of beggars.

The cicerone who took them about, whispered some significant words in their ears, and they are persuaded that every Italian is in the habit of offering his wife or his daughter to foreigners. You would astonish these profound observers immeasurably, if you were to tell them that the Pope has three millions of subjects who in no way resemble the Roman rabble.

Thus it happens that the flying visitor, the superficial traveller, the communicant of the Holy Week, the guest of the 'Minerva,' is a ready-made foe to the nation, a natural defender of the clerical government.

As for the permanent foreign visitors, if they be men enervated by the climate or by pleasure, indifferent to the fate of nations, strangers to political chicane, they will, in the natural order of events, become converted to the ideas of the Roman aristocracy, between a quadrille and a cup of chocolate.

If they be studious men, or men of action, sent for a specific object, charged to unravel certain mysteries, or to support certain principles, their conversion will be undertaken in due form.

I have seen officers, bold, frank, off-hand men, nowise suspected of Jesuitism, who have allowed themselves to be gently carried away into the by-paths of reaction by an invisible influence, until they have been heard swearing, like pagans, against the enemies of the Pope.

Even our own generals, less easy to be caught, are sometimes laid hold of. The Government cajoles them without loving them.

No effort is spared to persuade them that all is for the best. The Roman princes, who think themselves superior to all men, treat them upon a footing of perfect equality. The Cardinals caress them. These men in petticoats possess marvellous seductions, and are irresistible in the art of wheedling. The Holy Father himself converses now with one, now with the other, and addresses each as "My dear General!" A soldier must be very ungrateful, very badly taught, and have fallen off sadly from the old French chivalry, if he refuses to let himself be killed at the gates of the Vatican where his vanity has been so charmingly tickled.

Our amba.s.sadors, too, are resident foreigners, exposed to the personal flatteries of Roman society. Poor Count de Rayneval! He was so petted, and cajoled, and deceived, that he ended by penning the _Note_ of the 14th of May, 1856.

His successor, the Duke de Gramont, is not only an accomplished gentleman, but a man of talent, with a highly cultivated mind. The Emperor sent him from Turin to Rome, so it was to be expected that the Pontifical Government would appear to him doubly detestable, first, from its own defects, and then by comparison with what he had just quitted. I had the honour of conversing with this brilliant young diplomatist, shortly after his arrival, when the Roman people expected a great deal of him. I found him opposed to the ideas of the Count de Rayneval, and very far from disposed to countersign the _Note_ of the 14th of May. Nevertheless, he was beginning to judge the administration of the Cardinals, and the grievances of the people, with something more than diplomatic impartiality. If I were to express what appeared to be his opinion, in common parlance, I should say he would have put the governors and the governed in a bag together. I would wager that, three months afterwards, the bag would contain none but the governed, and that he would think it only fit to be flung into the water. Such is the influence of ecclesiastical cajoleries over even the most gifted minds.

What can the Romans hope from our diplomacy, when they see one of the most notorious lacqueys of the Pontifical coterie lording it at the French Emba.s.sy? The name of the upright man I allude to is Lasagni; his business is that of a consistorial advocate; we pay him for deceiving us. He is known for a _Nero_,--that is, a fanatical reactionist. The secretaries of the emba.s.sy despise him, and yet are familiar with him; tell him they know he is going to lie, and yet listen to what he says. He smirks, bends double, pockets his money and laughs at us in his sleeve. Verily, friend Lasagni, you are quite right! But I regret the eighteenth century--there were then such things as canes.

CHAPTER IX.

ABSOLUTE CHARACTER OF THE TEMPORAL POWER OF THE POPE.

The Counsellor de Brosses, who wished no harm to the Pope, wrote in 1740:--"The Papal Government, although in fact the worst in Europe, is at the same time the mildest."

The Count de Tournon, an honest man, an excellent economist, a Conservative as to all existing powers, and a judge rather too much prejudiced in favour of the Popes, said, in 1832:--

"From this concentration of the powers of pontiff, bishop, and sovereign, naturally arises the most absolute authority possible over temporal affairs; but the exercise of this authority, tempered by the usages and forms of government, is even still more so by the virtues of the Pontiffs who for many years have filled the chair of St. Peter; so that this most absolute of governments is exercised with extreme mildness. The Pope is an elective sovereign; his States are the patrimony of Catholicism, because they are the pledge of the independence of the chief of the faithful, and the reigning Pope is the supreme administrator, the guardian of this domain."

Finally, the Count de Rayneval, the latest and least felicitous apologist of the Papacy, made in 1856 the following admissions:--

"_Not long ago_ the ancient traditions of the Court of Rome were faithfully observed. All modifications of established usages, all improvements, even material, were viewed with an evil eye, and seemed full of danger. Public affairs were exclusively managed by prelates. The higher posts in the State were by law interdicted to laymen. In practice the different powers were often confounded. The principle of pontifical infallibility was applied to administrative questions. The personal decision of the Sovereign had been known to reverse the decision of the tribunals, even in civil matters. The Cardinal Secretary of State, first minister in the fullest extent of the term, concentred in his own hands all the powers of the State. Under his supreme direction the different branches of the administration were confided to clerks rather than ministers. These neither formed a council, nor deliberated together upon the affairs of the State. The public finances were administered in the most profound secrecy. No information was communicated to the nation as to the mode in which its revenues were spent.

Not only did the budget remain a mystery, but it was afterwards discovered that the accounts were frequently not made up and balanced. Lastly, munic.i.p.al liberties, which are appreciated above all others by the Italians, and which more particularly respond to their real tendencies, had been submitted to the most restrictive measures. _But from the day on which Pope Pius IX. ascended the throne_" etc. etc.

Thus we find that the _not long ago_ of the Count de Rayneval is an exact date. It means, in good French, "before the election of Pius IX.," or again, "up to the 16th of June, 1846."

Thus also M. de Brosses, if he could have returned to Rome in 1846, would have found there, by the admission of the Count de Rayneval himself, the worst government in Europe.

And thus the most absolute of governments, as M. de Tournon calls it, still existed in Rome in 1846.

Up to the 16th of June, 1846, Catholicity owned the six millions of acres of which the Roman territory consists; the Pope was the administrator, the guardian, the steward; and the citizens of the State seem to have been the ploughmen.

Up to this era of deliverance, a systematic despotism had deprived the subjects of the Pope, not only of all partic.i.p.ation in public affairs, but of the simplest and most legitimate liberties, of the most innocuous progress, and even--I shudder as I write it--of recourse to the laws. The whim of one man had arbitrarily reversed the decisions of the courts of law. And lastly, an incapable and disorderly caste had wasted the public finances without rendering an account to any one, occasionally even without rendering it to themselves. All these statements must be believed, because it is the Count de Rayneval who makes them.

Before proceeding, I maintain that this state of things, now admitted by the apologists of the Papacy, justifies all the discontent of the subjects of the Pope, all their complaints, all their recriminations, all their outbreaks previous to 1846.

But let me ask this question. Is it true that, since 1846, the Papal Government has ceased to be the worst in Europe?

If you can show me a worse, I will go and announce the discovery at Rome, and I rather fancy I shall considerably astonish the Romans.

Is the absolute authority of the Papacy limited in any way but by the individual virtues of the Pope? No.

Does the Const.i.tution of 1848, or the _Motu Proprio_ of 1849, set limits to this authority? No. The first has been torn up, the second never observed.

Has the Pope renounced his t.i.tle of administrator, or irresponsible guardian of the patrimony of Catholicism? Never.

Is the management of public affairs exclusively in the hand of prelates? As much so as ever.

Are the higher posts in the State still by law interdicted to laymen?

Not by law, but in fact they are.

Are the different powers still confounded in practice? More so than they ever were. The governors of cities act as judges, and the bishops as public administrators.

Has the Pope abandoned any portion of his infallibility as to worldly matters? None whatever.

Has he deprived himself of the right of overruling the decisions of the Courts of Appeal? No.

Has the Cardinal Secretary of State ceased to be a reigning Minister?

He reigns as absolutely as ever; and the other ministers are more like footmen than clerks to him. They may be seen any morning waiting in his antechamber.

Is there a Council of Ministers? Yes, whereat the Ministers attend to receive the Cardinal's orders.