The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1876-11-21 00:00:00

CARDINAL_ ANTYMELLI.

The celebrated French Journalist, M. Edmond
About, thus biographies the late Cardinal Antonelli :
" Antonelli was born in a den of thieves. His native
Sonnino is more notorious in the history of crime than
all Arcadia in the annals of virtue. This nest of
vultures, hidden in the southern mountains, lay close
to the Neapolitan frontier. Roads, impracticable to
mounted dragoons, winding through thickets and
brakes; forests impenetrable to the stranger • deep
ravines and gloomy caverns—all combined to iorm a
desirable landscape for the convenientx: of crime. The
houses of Sonuino,old,ill.built, flung pell nail one upon
another, were in fact nothing bette r than depats of
pillage and magazines of rapine. The population,
alert and vigorous, had for many centuries prsctised
armed robbery., and gained its living at the muzzle of
! the carbine. New-born infants inhaled contempt of
the law with the mountain air, and sucked the love of
stealing with their mother's milk. Almost as soon as
they could walk, they donned the leather mocausin
with which they learn to run fearlessly along the
giddiest precipice. When they had acquired the art
of pursuing and escaping, of taking without being
taken, the knowledge of the value of different coins,
the arithmetic of the division of booty and the
principles of the rights of nations, 38 practised among
the Apaches or the Cominaches, their education WIN
deemed complete. They required no teaching to learn
how to apply the spoil, and to satisfy their passions in
the hour of victory.
In the year of grace 1806 this sensual, hrtitel,e
impious, superstitious ignorant, and cunning me
endowed Italy with a little mountaineer know as
Giacomo Antonelli.

"Hawks do uot hatch doves—an axiom in natural
history which ham no need f lemonstration. Had
Giacomo Antonelli been gifted at his birth with the
slim& virtues of an Areadiem shepherd, his village
would have disowned him. The influence of certain
events modified his conduct, although they failed to
modify his nature. If he received his earliest lessons
from successful brigandage, his next teachers were the
gendarmerie. When he was hardly four years old, the
discharge of es high moral lesson shook his ears ; it was
the French troops who were shooting brigands in the
outskirts of Sonnino. After the return of Pius VII.,
he witnessed the decapitation of a few neighbouring
relatives who had often dandled him on their knees.
Under Leo XII. it was still worse. Those wholesome
correctives—the wooden horse and the supple-jack--
were permanently establisned in the village square.
About once a fortnight the authorities razed the house
of some brigand, after sending his family to the galleys
and paying a reward to the informer who had
denounced him. St. Peter's Gate, which adjoins the
' house of the Antonellis, wee ornamented with a
garland of human heads, which eloquent relics grin ned
dogmatically enough in their iron cages. Thus the
young Gkioomo was enabled to reflect upon the
Inconveniences of brigandage before he had tasted of
its sweets. Some men of progress had already engaged
in industrial pursuits of a less hazardous nature than
robbery—friends of his. His own father, who had in
him the stuff of a Gasparone or a Poseidon, instead of
exposing himself on the highway, took to rearing
bullocks; helthen b..Vallle an Intendant, and afterwards
was made a Municipal Receiver, by which oc,upa-
dons he acquired more money at consideraisly less
risk. . _

"The young Antonelli hesitated for some time aa
to the choice d a calling. His natural vocation war
that of the inhabitants of Sonnino in general —to live
in plenty, to enjoy every sort of pleasure, to make
himself at home everywhere, to be dependent upon
nobody, to ride others, and to frighten them if neces-
sary, but, above all, to violate the laws with km *ty.
With the view of attaining so lofty an end without
exposing his life, for which he ever had a moot
particular regard, he entered the Great Seminary of
_ _

our land of scepticism a young man enters the
seminary with the hope of being ordained a priest
Anton°Si entered it with the opposite intentions. For
in the capital f the Catholic Church, young Levitt*
of ordinary intelligemse become magistrates. prefects,
councillors of State, and ministers, while the pluoced
ones are thought g0.,•1 enough for the ;•riesthood.
" Antonelli so distinguished himself that he escaped
the Sacrament of Ordination. He has never sail
mans ;he has never ...denied a penitent. I will not
swear he has ever conbessed himself. He gained what
was of more value to him than an the virtues—the
friendship of Gregory XVI. Ile became a prelate, a
magistrate, a prefect. Secretary-General of the In-
terior, and Minister of Finance. A Finance Minister,
if he 'mows anything of his business, can lay by more
money in six months than all the brigands of Sonnino
in 20 years. Under Gregory XVI. he had been a
reactiontst to please his sovereign. On the accession
of Pins IX., for the same reason he professed Liberal
MORS. A red hat and a ministerial portfolio were the

recompense of his new convictions ;tel proved to the
inhabitants of &amino that ÜbeLlism itself i, more
profitable than brigand/vv. What a practical !mum
For these nunintainenrs ! One of them clothed in

purple an.l fme linen, rifling in his gilt coach, passed
the barracks, and their old friends the dragoons pre-
senting arms instead ..f firing long shots at them.
The murder of Count itossi gave Antonelli serious
cause for reflection. A man does not take the trouble
to be born at Sonnino in order to get assassinated ;
quite the contrary. He placed the Pope--and him-
self--in safety, and then went to Gaeta to play the
Part of Secretary of State is portant.. From this
exile dates his omnipotence over the will of the Holy
Father.

"Since then no more contradictions in his political
life. They who formally accused him of hesitating
between the welfare of the nation. and his own personal
. . .

interest are reduced to silence. lie resolves—t:i restore

the absolute 1;eloi the Pope In order that he
do with it what it pleases him. On his return to
Rome he continues for ten years to reign over a timid
old man and an enslaved people, opposing a passive
resistance—what has been called a losing game—to all
the counsels of diplomacy, and all the demands of
Europe. Clinging tenaciously to power—reckless as
to the future—misusing present omortunities, and (lay
by day increasing his fortune after the manner of
Sonnino."
"In the year of Face 1859 he is fifty-three years of
age. It frame slight, but robust, and his constitu-
tion that of a mountaineer. The breadth ,d his

forehead, the brilliancy of his eyes, his beak-like one,
and all the upper part of his face, inspire a certain
awe. But his heavy jaw, his long fang-like teeth, and
his thick lips, express the gneseest appetites. lie
gives you the idea of a minister grafted on a swage.
When he assists the Pope in the ceremonies of the
Holy Week, he is magnificently disdainful and
insolent. From time to time he turns to the diplo-
matic tribune, and looks without a smile at the poor
.unhaseadors whom he cajoles from morning to night.
But when at an evening party he engages in close
conversation with a handsome woman, the play of his
countenance shows the direction of his thoughts. The
thoughts of the imaginative observer are at once
tarried to a roadide in a lonely forest, in which the
pri Ajecta are prostrate pootilions, an eve r-tunied
carriage, trembling women, and a select party of the
' inhabitants of Sonnino !

"lie lived In the Vatican immediately over the
Pope, and the Romans naked punningly which warn
uppermost, the Pope or Antonelli.
-"Hatred for a man pros es nothing, even if it were
the hatred of Apostles. The French, who claim to be
a just people, insulted the funeral procession of Louis
XIV. It occasionally detested Henri IV. for his
economy, and Napoleon for his victories. No stake.
mall should he judged upon the testimony of his
enemies. 'rho only witneaies to which :muy weight
should be attributel are the greatness and the pros-
perity of the country he governs. Such evidence
would only be ruinous to Antonelli. The nation
repmached him for all the evils which it suffered
between 1844 and 1849. The public wretchedness
and ignoranue, the decline of the arts, the entire
supproadon of liberty' the ever present curse of
frelgu occupation, all fell upnt his head because he
al. me was responsible for all.
" Antonelli has been compared to 3.lazirin. They
! had in common the fear of death, inordinate love of
money, a strong family feeling, utter indifference to
, time people's welfare,. contempt for ',mankind, and some
other accidental points of ressurbhune. They were
born in the same mountains. One obtained great
influence over a womsn's heart, which the other
possessed over an old man. They both talked French
comically without being sensible to any f the delicate
11 niceties of the language. But there would be manifest
injustice in placing the two Canlinais in the KUM)
rank. The selfish Ma:win dictated the treaties of
Wwitpletlia and the 1103C0 of the Pylenees ; be founded
by diplomacy the greatness of Louis XIV., and tnan-
aged the affairs of the French monarchy without in
any war imeciucting his own.
• Antonelli made his fortune at the expense of time
nation, the Pope and the Church. Mararin may be
compared to a skilful but raecally tailor who dresses
his customers well, while he contrives to cabbage
sundry yards f their cloth. AntoneW can only be
compared to the Jews of the middle ages who
demolished the Coliseum for the sake of the old iron
in its walls."