The Roman question

Preface

It was in the Papal States that I studied the Eoman Question. I travelled over every part of the country ; I conversed with men of all opinions, examined things very closely, and collected my information on the spot.

My first impressions, noted down from day to day without any especial object, appeared, with some necessary modifications, in the Moniteur Universel. These notes, truthful, somewhat unconnected, and so thoroughly impartial, that it would be easy to discover in them contradictions and inconsistencies, I was obliged to discontinue, in consequence of the violent outcry of the Pontifical Government. I did more. I threw them in the fire, and wrote a book instead. The present volume is the result of a year's reflection.

I completed my study of the subject by the perusal of the most recent works published in Italy. The learned memoir of the Marquis Pepoli, and the admirable reply of an anonymous writer to M. de

4 PREFACE.

Rayneval, supplied me with my best weapons. I nave been further enlightened by the conversation and correspondence of some illustrious Italians, whom I would gladly name, were I not afraid of exposing them to danger.

The pressing condition of Italy has obliged me to write more rapidly than I could have wished ; and this enforced haste has given a certain air of warmth, perhaps of intemperance, even to the most carefully matured reflections. It was my intention to produce a memoir, — I fear I may be charged with having written a pamphlet. Pardon me certain vivacities of style, which I had not time to correct, and plunge boldly into the heart of the book. You will find something there.

I fight fairly, and in good faith. I do not pretend to have judged the foes of Italy without passion ; but I have calumniated none of them.

If I have sought a publisher in Brussels, while I had an excellent one in Paris, it is not because I feel any alarm on the score of the regulations of our press, or the severity of our tribunals. But as the Pope has a long arm, which might reach me in France, I have gone a little out of the way to tell him the plain truths contained in these pages.

Contents

I. The Pope as a Kixg, ... 7

II. Necessity of the Te^tpoeal Powee, . . 14

III. The Pateimoxy of the Tempoeal Powee, . .19

Chapter I. The Pope As A King

The Roman Catholic Church, which I sincerely respect, consists of one hundred and thirty-nine millions of individuals — without counting little Mortara.

It is governed by seventy Cardinals, or Princes of the Church, in memory of the twelve Apostles.

The Cardinal-Bishop of Rome, who is also designated by the name of Vicar of Jesus Christ, Holy Father, or Pope, is invested with boundless authority over the minds of these hundred and thirty-nine millions of Catholics.

The Cardinals are nominated by the Pope ; the Pope is nominated by the Cardinals ; from the day of his election he becomes infallible, at least in the opinion of M. de Maistre, and the best Catholics of our time.

This was not the opinion of Bossuet ; but it has always been that of the Popes themselves.

When the Sovereign Pontiff declares to us that the Virgin Mary was born free from original sin, the hundred and thirty-nine millions of Catholics are bound to believe it on his word. This is what has recently occurred.

This discipline of the understanding reflects infinite credit upon the nineteenth century. If posterity does us justice, it will be grateful to us therefor. It will see that instead of cutting one another's throats about theological questions, we have surveyed lines of railway, laid telegraphs, constructed steam-engines, launched ships, pierced isthmuses, created sciences, corrected laws, repressed factions, fed the poor, civilized barbarians, drained marshes, cultivated waste lands, without ever having a single dispute as to the infallibility of a man.

But the busiest age, the age which the best knows the value of time, may be obliged for a moment to neglect its business. If, for instance, it should remark around Rome and its Bishop a violent agitation, which neither the trickery of diplomacy nor the pressure of armies can suppress ; if it perceive in a little corner of a peninsula a smouldering fire, which may at any moment burst forth, and in twenty-four hours envelope all Europe, this age, prudent from a sense of duty, on account of the great things it has to accomplish, turns its attention to the situation of Rome, and insists upon knowing what it all means.

It means that the simple princes of the middle ages, Pepin the Brief, Charlemagne, and the Countess Matilda, behaved with great liberality to the Pope. They gave him lands and men, according to the fashion of the times, when men, being merely the live-stock of the land, were thrown into the bargain. If they were generous, it was not because they thought, with M. Thiers, that the Pope could not be independent without being a King ; they had seen him in his poverty more independent and more commanding than almost any monarch on the earth. They enriched him from motives of friendship, calculation, gratitude, or it might even be to disinherit their relations, as we sometimes see in our own time. Since the

THE POPE A5 A KLN'G. 9

days of the Countess Matilda, the Pope, haviDg acquired a taste for possession, has gone on roundiDg his estate. He has obtained cities by capitulation, as in the case of Bologna ; he has won others at the cannon's mouth, as Rimini : while some he has appropriated, by treachery and stealth, as Ancona. Indeed so well hare matters been managed, that in 1859 the Bishop of Home is the temporal sovereign of about six millions of acres, and reigns over three millions one hundred and twenty-four thousand six hundred and sixty-eight men, who are all crying out loudly against him.

What do they complain of ? Only listen, and you will soon learn.

They say — that the authority to which, without having either asked or accepted it, they are subject, is the most fundamentally absolute that was ever denned by Aristotle ; that the legislative, executive, and judicial powers are united, confounded, and jumbled together in one and the same hand, contrary to the practice of civilized states, and to the theory of Montesquieu ; that they willingly recognize the infallibility of the Pope upon ail religious questions, but that in civil matters it appears to them less easy to tolerate ; that they do not refuse to obey, because, all things considered, man is not placed here below to follow the bent of his own inclinations, but that they would be glad to obey laws ; that the good pleasure of any man, however good it may be, is not so good as the Code Napoléon ; that the reigning Pope is not an evildisposed man, but that the arbitrary government of one man, even admitting his infallibilitv, can never be anvthing but a bad government.

That in virtue of an ancient and hitherto ineradicable practice, the Pope is assisted in the temporal government of his States by the spiritual chiefs, subalterns, and spiritual employés of his Church : that Cardinals, Bishops, Canons,

10 the eoma2x ;tz-i::::.

Priests, forage pell-mell about the country; that one sole and identical caste possesses the right of administering both sacraments and provinces ; of confirming little boys and the judgments of the lower courts ; of ordaining subdeacons and arrests ; of despatching parting souls and captains* commissions ; that this confusion of the spiritual and the temporal

e ruinates among the higher offices a multitude of men. : z : filent no doubt in the sight of God. but insupportable in that of the people : often strangers : ; the country, sometimes to business, and atwsys k those It rnicp t J e ties — Lieh are the basis of every society without any special knowledge, unless it be of the things of another world ; without children, which renders them indifferent to the future of the nation ; without wivf which renders them dangerous to its present; and to conclude, unwilling to hear reason, because they beii sic themselves participators in the pontifical infallibil:

That these servants of a most merciful but sometimes Krren God, simultaneously abuse both mercy and justice; that, full of indulgence for the indifferent for their friends, and for themselves, they treat with extreme rigour whoever

had the misfortune to become obnoxious to power ; that they more readily pardon the wretch who cuts a man's throat, than the imprudent citizen who blames an abate,

That the Pope, and the Priests -^ho assist him, not having been taught accounts grossly mismanage the public finai : whereas maladministration or malversation of

the public finances might have been tolerated a hundred ago, when the expeiiSTS :: public worship and of the papal court were defrayed by one hundred and thirty-nine millions of Catholics, it is a widely different affair now, when they have to be suppor: "__- S individu:.

That they do not complain of paying tax; - uiae it it

a universal- wished practice, but that they wish to see

THE POPE AS A KTXG. 11

their money spent upon terrestrial objects ; that the sight of basilicas, churches, and convents built or maintained at their expense, rejoices them as Catholics, but grieves them as citizens, because, after all, these edifices are but imperfect substitutes for railways and roads, for the clearing of rivers, and the erection of dykes against inundations; that faith, hope, and charity receive more encouragement than agriculture, commerce, and manufactures; that public simplicity is developed to the detriment of public education.

That the law and the police are too much occupied with the salvation of souls, and too little with the preservation of bodies ; that they prevent honest people from damning themselves by swearing, reading bad books, or associating with Liberals, but that they don't prevent rascals from murdering honest people ; that property is as badly protected as persons ; and that it is very hard to be able to reckon upon nothing for certain but a stall in Paradise.

That they are made to pay heavily for keeping up an army without knowledge or discipline, an army of problematical courage and doubtful honours, and destined never to fight except against the citizens themselves ; that it is adding insult to injury to make a man pay for the stick he is beaten with. That they are moreover obliged to lodge foreign armies, and especially Austrians, who, as Germans, are notoriously heavy-fisted.

To conclude, they say all this is not what the Pope promised them in his motu proprio of the 19th of September ; and it is sad to find infallible people breaking their most sacred engagements.

I have no doubt these grievances are exaggerated. It is impossible to believe that an entire nation can be bo terribly in the right against its masters. "We will examine the facts of the case in detail before we decide. TVe have not vet arrived at that point.

You hare just heard the language, if not of the whole 3.1Ï- . B people, at least of the i _ _e most

energetic, and the most inter-rs:::^ part of the nation. Take away the eonser- : I^- : ~- — '■-'-'■ say 'hose who L

an interest in the government, — and the unfortunate creatures whom it has utterly brutalized. — and there will remain n me but malcontent ;

The malcontents are not all of the me complez Some politely and Tainly ask the Holy Father, to reform abuses: this is the moderate par:y. C - propose to then ~ :>t; a thorough reform of the government: they are called radicals. révolu: sfee — rather an inju-

.5 term. This latter category is not precisely nice as to the measures to be resorted to. It holds — itfa the Sod of Jesus, that the end ; osf in e s :"_-.; i_t _- Z' : _: Z lea" -: --'.-.£ with the I it will begin by cutting

his throat; and if foreign :entate? such criminal

T m rate party ::self plainly, the Mazzi-

nisii Mmaly. Europe must be w : to under-

stand the one : ve: not to hear the other.

All the States which desire peace, public order, and civilization, entreat the Pope to correct some abuse or other. "Have pity they ay if not upon ycur subjects, at least upon your nek 5 from the eonnagratk b

As often as this intervention is renewed, the Pope sends for : State. The said Secretary of State i

Cardinal who reigns over the Hoi 7 7 : in temporal mat- - eTen : .- Holy Fathf 1 reignt Ft : r a hundred and

ty nine millions of Catholics in spiritual ma:: The

Pope confil be source of his em-

barrassment, and asks him whs: . be done.

rzz 7 ::z ^ a kts'G. 13

The Cardinal, who is the minister of everything in the ~ithout a moment's hesitation, to the old s:vereign : — " In the first place, there are no abnses : in the next place, if there were any. we must not touch them. Z reform anything is to make a concession to the malcontent I : give way u U prove that we are afraid To admit : is to double the strength of the enemy, to open the gates to revolution, and to take the road to Gaeta. where the accommodation is none of the best. Don't let us leave home. 1 know the house we live in ; it is not new, hut it will last longer than your Holiness — provided no attempt is mad ? - : repair it. After us the deluge wéVe got no children .

•■ All very true." replies the Pope. u Bit the Bora agi, who is entreating me to do something, is an el a of the

Church. He has rendered us great services. He still protect- istantly. What would become of us if he abandoned us

Don't be alarms says the Cardinal. " I'll arrange the matter diplomatically." And he sifa „:>wn. and wi an invariable note, in a diplomatically tortuous style, which may thus be summed up : —

■■We wan: tout soldi::? arid not vour advice, seeing that we are infallible. If you were to show any symptom of doubting that infallibility, and if you attempted to force anything upon us, even our preservation, we would fold our wings around our countenances w :uld raise the palms of martyrdom, and we should become an object of compas-: _ to all the Catholics in the universe. You know we have in vour country forty thousand men who are at liberty to say everything, and whom you pay with your own money : : plead our cause. They hall preach to your subjects, that you are tyrannizing over the Holj Father, and we shall set your country in a blaze without appearing to touch it.' 5

CHAPTER 'IL

NECESSITY OF THE TEMPOEAL POWEE.

11 For the Pontificate there is no independence but sovereignty itself. Here is an interest of the highest order, which ought to silence the particular interests of nations, even as in a State the public interest silences individual interests."

These are not my words, but the words of M. Thiers : they occur in his report to the Legislative Assembly, in October 1849. I have no doubt this Father of the temporal Church expressed the wishes of one hundred and thirty-nine millions of Catholics, It was all Catholicity which said to 3,124,668 Italians, by the lips of the honourable reporter : " Devote yourselves as one man. Our chief can only be venerable, august, and independent, so long as he reigns despotically over you. If, in an evil hour, he were to cease wearing a crown of gold ; if you were to contest his right to make and break laws ; if you were to give up the wholesome practice of laying at his feet that money which he disburses for our edification and our glory, all the sovereigns of the universe would look upon him as an inferior. Silence, then, the noisy chattering of your individual interests."

I flatter myself that I am as fervent a Catholic as M. Thiers himself; and were I bold enough to seek to refute him, I should do it in the name of our common faith.

I grant you — this would be the tenor of my argument —

NECESSITY OF THE TEilPOEAL POWEB. 15

that the Pope ought to be independent. But could he not be so at a somewhat less cost ? Is it absolutely necessary that 3,124,668 men should sacrifice their liberty, their security, and all that is most precious to them, in order to secure the independence which makes us so happy and so* proud? The Apostles were certainly independent at a cheaper rate, for they did nobody harm. The most independent of men is he who has nothing to lose. He pursues his own path, without troubling himself about powers and principalities, for the simple reason that the conqueror most bent on acquisition can take nothing from him.

The greatest conquests of Catholicism were made at a time when the Pope was not a ruler. Since he has become a king, you may measure the territory won from the Church by inches.

The earliest Popes, who were not kings, had no budgets. Consequently they had no annual deficits to make up. Consequently they were not obliged to borrow millions of M. de Rothschild. Consequently they were more independent than the crowned Popes of more recent times.

Ever since the spiritual and the temporal have been joined, like two Siamese powers, the most august of the two has necessarily lost its independence. Every day, or nearly so, the Sovereign Pontiff finds himself called upon to choose between the general interests of the Church, and the private interests of his crown. Think you he is sufficiently estranged from the things of this world to sacrifice heroically the earth, which is near, to the Heaven, which is remote? Besides, we have history to help us I might, if I chose, refer to certain bad Popes who were capable of selling the dogma of the Holy Trinity for half-a-dozen leagues of territory; but it would be hardly fair to argue from bad Popes to the confusion of indifferent ones. Think you, however, that when the

Pope legalized the perjury of Francis the First after the treaty of Madrid, he did it to make the morality of the Holy See respected, or to stir up a war useful to his crown ?

When he organized the traffic in indulgences, and threw one-half of Europe into heresy, was it to increase the number of Christians, or to give a dowry to a young lady ?

When, during the Thirty Years' War, he made an alliance with the Protestants of Sweden, was it to prove the disinterestedness of the Church, or to humble the House of Austria ?

When he excommunicated Venice in 1806, was it to attach the Republic more firmly to the Church, or to serve the rancour of Spain against the first allies of Henry IV. ?

When he suppressed the Order of the Jesuits, was it to reinforce the army of the Church, or to please his master in France ?

When he terminated his relations with the Spanish American provinces upon their proclaiming their independence, was it in the interest of the Church, or of Spain ?

When he held excommunication suspended over the heads of such Romans as took their money to foreign lotteries, was it to attach their hearts to the Church, or to draw their crown-pieces into his own treasury ?

M. Thiers knows all this better than I do ; but he possibly thought that when the spiritual sovereign of the Church and the temporal sovereign of a little country, wear the same cap, the one is naturally condemned to minister to the ambition or the necessities of the other.

We wish the chief of the Catholic religion to be independent, and we make him pay slavish obedience to a petty Italian prince ; thus rendering the future of that religion subordinate to miserable local interests and petty parish squabbles.

NECESSITY OF THE TESEPOEAL POWEE. 17

But this union of powers, which would gain by separation, compromises not only the independence, but the dignity of the Pope. The melancholy obligation to govern men obliges him to touch many things which he had better leave alone. Is it not deplorable that bailiffs must seize a debtor's property in the Pope's name ? — that judges must condemn a murderer to death in the name of the Head of the Church ? — that the executioner must cut off heads in the name of the Yicar of Christ ? There is to me something truly scandalous in the association of those two words, Pontifical lottery / And what can the hundred and thirty-nine millions of Catholics think, when they hear their spiritual sovereign expressing, through his finance minister, his satisfaction at the progress of vice as proved by the success of the lotteries ?

The subjects of the Pope are not scandalized at these contradictions, simply because they are accustomed to them. They strike a foreigner, a Catholic, a casual unit out of the hundred and thirty-nine millions ; they inspire in him an irresistible desire to defend the independence and the dignity of the Church. But the inhabitants of Bologna or Viterbo, of Terracina or Ancona, are more occupied with national than with religious interests, either because they want that feeling of self-devotion recommended by M. Thiers, or because the government of the priests has given them a horror of Heaven. Yery middling Catholics, but excellent citizens, they everywhere demand the freedom of their country. The Bolognese affirm that they are not necessary to the independence of the Pope, which they say could do as well without Bologna as it has for some time contrived to do without Avignon. Every city repeats the same thing, and if they were all to be listened to, the Holy Father, freed from the cares of administration, might devote his undivided atten-

18 THE EOArAX QUESTION.

tion to the interests of the Church and the embellishment of Rome. The Romans themselves, so they be neither princes, nor priests, nor serrants, nor beggars, declare that they have devoted themselves long enough, and that M. Thiers may now carry his advice elsewhere.

Chapter III. The Patrimony Of The Tempoeal Powee

The Papal States Lave no natural limits : they are carved out on the map as the chance of passing events has made them, and as the good-nature of Europe has left them. An imaginary line separates them from Tuscany and Modena. The most southerly point enters into the kingdom of Naples ; the province of Benevento is.enclosed within the states of King Ferdinand, as formerly was the Comtat-Yenaissin within the French territory. The Pope, in his turn, shuts in that Ghetto of democracy, the republic of San Marino.

I never cast my eyes over this poor map of Italy, capriciously rent into unequal fragments, without one consoling reflection.

Nature, which has done everything for the Italians, has taken care to surround their country with magnificent barriers. The Alps and the sea protect it on all sides, isolate it, bind it together as a distinct body, and seem to design it for an individual existence. To crown all, no internal barrier condemns the Italians to form separate nations. The Apennines are so easily crossed, that the people on either side can speedily join hands. All the existing boundaries are entirely arbitrary, traced by the brutality of the Middle Ages, or the shaky hand of diplomacy, which undoes to-morrow what it does to-day. A single race covers the soil ; the same languagf n 3f :ken from north to south: the people are all united in a common bond by the glory of their ancestors, and the recollections of Roman conquest, fresher and more vivid --:.- :'- . _:.::-:.'.« :: ~'ii :.•/.::-.-.:_:'_ .:l:::;

These considerations induce me to believe that the people of Italy will one day be independent of all others, and united :.~ :-__- :z-rnsf>£s .7 izt ::r:-e :: _ . :rn*:'_T ;.-_! 'J.r.::~ :~ : powers more invincible tkan Èlm ria.

Bu: I id mm à mes mouioas, and to their shepherd, the

Fhe kingdom possessed by a few priests, covers an extent, in round numbers, of six millions of acres : sording to the statistics published in I v '.' 7 - - r - or ? now Cardinal,

country in Europe is more richly gifted, or possesses greater advantages, whether for agriculture, manufacture

I ravened the Apennines, which divide it about

equally, the Papal dominions incline gently, on one side to the Adriatic, on the other to the Mediterranean. In each :: :lese se-is :i - . - exifllfr.: - ::- -: _-_:.-

cona; to the west Civita Yeeehia» If Panurge had had _iL::i: ir_l [.-:::. '■' - : :"_::, :l Li» ^:.^_:.jiil:„v. zizzi'-—. he would infallibly have built himself a navy. The Phoeni- ~.zi . - .- ^ _:i::.is vrerf r_:: ; : ~ .-.. :~ A river, tolerably well known under the name of the Tiber, waters nearlj the -hole country to the west. In former days - . _inistered to the wants of internal commerce. Roman historians describe it as navigable up to Perugia. the present time it is hardly so as far as Rome ; but i: bed were cleared out, and filth not allowed to be thrown in, ~>uld render great fee, and would not overflow so

often. The country on the other side is watered by small

PATRIMONY OF THE TEMPOEAL POWER. 21

rivers, which, with a little government assistance, might be rendered very serviceable.

In the level country the land is of prodigious fertility. More than a fourth of it will grow corn. Wheat yields a return of fifteen for one on the best land, thirteen on middling, and nine on the worst. Fields thrown out of cultivation become admirable natural pastures. The hemp is of very fine quality when cultivated with care. The vine and the mulberry thrive wherever they are planted. The finest olive-trees and the best olives in Europe grow in the mountains. A variable, but generally mild climate, brings to maturity the products of extreme latitudes. Half the country is favourable to the palm and the orange. Numerous and thriving flocks roam across the plains in winter, and ascend to the mountains in summer. Horses, cows, and sheep live and multiply in the open air, without need of shelter. Indian buffaloes swarm in the marshes. Every species of produce requisite for the food and clothing of man grows easily, and as it were joyfully, in this privileged land. If men in the midst of it are in want of bread or shirts, Nature has no cause to reproach herself, and Providence washes its hands of the evil.

In all the three states raw material exists in incredible abundance. Here are hemp, for ropeinakers, spinners, and weavers ; wine, for distillers ; olives, for oil and soap makers ; wool, for cloth and carpet manufacturers ; hides and skins, for tanners, shoemakers, and glovers ; and silk in any quantity for manufactures of luxury. The iron ore is of middling quality, but the island of Elba, in which the very best is found, is near at hand. The copper and lead mines, which the ancients worked profitably, are perhaps not exhausted. Fuel is supplied by a million or two of acres of forest land ; besides which, there is the sea, always open for the transport of coal from Newcastle. The volcanic soil of several provinces produces enormous quantities of sulphur, and the alum of Tolfi is the best in the world.' The quartz of Civita Yecchia will give us kaolin for porcelain. The quarries contain building materials, such as marble and pozzolana, which is Roman cement almost ready-made.

In 1847, the country lands subject to the Pope were valued at about £34,800,000 sterling. The province of Benevento was not included, and the Minister of Commerce and Public Works admitted that the property was not estimated at above a third of its real value. If capital returned its proper interest, if activity and industry caused trade and manufactures to increase the national income as ought to be the case, it would be the Rothschilds who would borrow money of the Pope at six per cent, interest.

But stay ! I have not yet completed the catalogue of possessions. To the present munificence of nature must be added the inheritance of the past. The poor Pagans of great Rome left all their property to the Pope who damns them.

They left him gigantic aqueducts, prodigious sewers, and roads which we find still in use, after twenty centuries of traffic. They left him the Coliseum, for his Capuchins to preach in. They left him an example of an administration without an equal in history. But the heritage was accepted without the responsibilities attached to it.

I will no longer conceal from you that this magnificent territory appeared to me in the first place most unworthily cultivated. From Civita Vecchia to Rome, a distance of some sixteen leagues, cultivation struck me in the light of a very rare accident, to which the soil was but little accustomed. Some pasture fields, some land in fallow, plenty of brambles, and, at long intervals, a field with oxen at plough : this is what the traveller will see in April. He will not