The Press.
London, England, 1858-12-11 00:00:00

THE PRE S S, DECEMBER 11,1858.

earth ? Why, then, do his thunders sleep here—
unless it be that this Popish creed has found a
grace and a favour in his eyes which no con-
ceivable amount of iniquity and sin can out-
weary ?' And day by day, my friend, did this
view gain new strength within, as new corrup-
tion revealed itself without. What sickening
horror it was that finally achieved my entire
conversion, I cannot—l dare not—relate to thee.
Let it suffice that that conversion is achieved—
in further testimony whereof I bid thee here-
with to my simple table, there to renew our twice
holy friendship over a generous flask of Aleatico
and a pork chop."
That this, or something akin to this, must be
the line of reasoning adopted by those seceders
from Protestantism to Catholicism, who take the
trouble to reason at all, may fairly enough be pre-
sumed. At any rate no conscientious eliminative
process seems to have any other residual argu-
ment at all worthy of the name. But it may
not unreasonably be urged that the force of this
argument, albeit still obvious, is considerably
below the standard of Boccaccio's times. The
physical aspect of Rome—spite of the present
Pope's inconsistent disregard of his predecessor's
warning Bull ag,ainst gas illumination—retains,
indeed, much of the mediaeval character. The
accumulated dirt of ages still imparts a venerable
tint to her narrow streets, her mouldering monu-
ments and sombre palaces ; unctuous and
odoriferous Friars, black, white, and brown, still
jostle the shrinking passer-by on her scant
trottoirs ; ghastly confraternities, in hooded
masks, glide mournfully along the darksome
alleys ; glittering processions, heavy with gold
and drowsy with incense, thread their intermin-
able way through squalid kneeling crowds ; and
miserable shops, far filthier in their exterior and
little less demoralizing in their contents than the
receptacles of the erst unpurified Ilolywell-street,
supply to a populace at once superstitious,
bigoted, infidel, and depraved, the congenial food
of monkish legends, modern miracles, and dream-
books for the Papal lottery.
But in her moral aspect Rome has, thanks to
the irksome surveillance of Protestantism,
decidedly improved. The ineffable demoraliza-
tion which sullied the hierarchical above every
other class of her inhabitants, from the days of
noccaccto down to the Kerdrmation, is certainly
no longer a general characteristic of the Romish
Priesthood, however flagrant (and we speak
from personal knowledge) in individual instances.
Even here, however, quite enough remains
whereon to hang the argument, evidently
borrowed from Boceaccio's Jew by the modern
pervert. A brief glance at some of the considera-
tions which may fairly be turned to this account
will not perhaps be so out of place here as might
at first sight be supposed.
And, generally speaking, the notorious Euro-
pean fact that moral light in all its constituents—
intellect, progress, national prosperity, wise
toleration—reverses, where Rome is taken as a
centre, Nature's great law, and diminishes in
intensity directly, instead of inversely, as the
squares of the distance, must prove, for the
reasoning pervert, consolatory and encouraging.
Consolatory and encouraging, too, must be the
recent recollection that, when outraged humanity
protested, with one voice, against that lawless
Government, so terribly characterized by Mr.
Gladstone as " ignoring the existence of a God,"
the pervert's " Vicar of Christ " pressed to his
heart that Government's directing tyrant, and
showered upon him benedictions, as the Church's
worthiest and most faithful son !

Was it equally consolatory when, in 1854, the
weak-minded and infirm old man who fills the
Papal Chair, with the complicity of a few dozen
middle-aged gentlemen in petticoats, more or less
weak-minded and incapable than himself, deli-
berately proceeded to revise the revelations of
the Almighty,—to contradict the recorded con-
victions of Rome's own canonized saints, and,
approaching their creed still nearer to Marianism
—estranging it still further from Christianity—
to proclaim, as a new dogma, the Immaculate
Conception ?

But whatever feelings this blasphemous and
open forgery of a codicil to the Saviour's Testa-
ment may have created, it is pretty certain that
the indignation roused through the length and
breadth of Europe by the recent Mortara case
must prove eminently satisfactory to the "reason-
ing" pervert. In throe familiar with Rome and

pohelritimicaml,utianbtelieleperteutaeln,siaonnds toall tllO (spiritual,
wh•iacihiolsmwtedce
peculiar conditions of medieval Europe
her to erect, instances of this kind can awaken no
surprise. That feeling, however, may legitimately
wait upon the perusal of a p ph in which
the Giornale Officiale di RomaaTaide THE PRESS
of the 13th ult.) refers to this disgraceful affair.
In this paragraph the universally acknowledged
sacredness of that tie which binds together parnt
and child is directly characterized as one of "the
" Pagan prejudices of modern society" ! A
doctrine like this seems utterly beyond all nerd
of comment—the sense of every Christian sect
in Europe has, indeed, already appreciated and
condemned it. But it is worthy of remark that,
by thus establishing an absolute opposition
between the natural and the revealed law of
God, Rome is directly falling into that Mani-
chean heresy which, when the persisting will was
backed by the evanescent power, she made the
pretext for so many ruthless and sanguinary
persecutions !
In the above instances we have looked at
recent Roman history from the moral and reli-
gious points of view. An article in La Press(' of
the 20th ult. suggests a cursory glance at her
political, or, to speak more particularly, her
financial position.
For very many years the state of the Roman
finances has been notoriously deplorable. But it
is only since 1847 that any but a conjectural
estimate could be made of the amount of their
disorder. On the 20th of November in that
year, under the impulse of that wild attempt to
reconcile the Popedom and civil liberty which is
fresh within the memory of us all, Monsignor
(now Cardinal) Morichini, then Minister of
Finance, presented to Pius IX. a Report "On
the State of the Pontifical Finances ; " whence it
appears that, from 1828 up to the date in ques-
tion, there had been a constant excess of expen-
diture over income, fluctuating between a mini-
mum of 168,401 scudi (about 36,0001.) and a
maximum of 4,518,0.53 scudi (about 1,060,000!.)
Now, under circumstances of this kind. the duty
of a State is as clear as that of an individual—
while the sacredness of that duty is enhanced in
the former case by all the excess of the interests
of a few creditors over the interests of a whole
people.
Let us see now how this duty has been ful-
filled—how this Government, which pretend' to
be the direct earthly representative of Him 'who
enjoined as the complement of piety to " sell all
and give to the poor "—watches over the welfare
of the flock intrusted to its charge. And here we
shall content ourselves with simply quoting from
our French namesake and contemporary :

According to a statistical account published by Cardinal
Miles', when Minister, there are in the Roman States more
paid. functionaries than soldiers. The support of the
various churches for the lest ten years is equal to that
of all the other extraordinary expenses in the budget.
The Church of Ostia alone stands in the account for
seven millions, and that is only a third-rate town. The
commission for putting an end to mendicity has swal•
lowed up, since 1827, no less than forty millions. This
would be a trifle, if the commission had only shown
some signs of existence. All that is known of it, how-
ever, is, that the cardinal-president had for his share of
the alms 60,000 f. a year. Wbat, then, has become of
all the millions, since any one who has spent hat one
hour in the Eternal City must be satisfied that it is the
Eldorado of mendicity ? The ni.)st probable supposition
is that a part of the same which leave the Pontifical
Treasury wander awat from their proper destination,
and the same is, unfortunately, too much the case with
those which ought to find their way into it. The mon.
main property, which represents a value of more than
500 millions, pays to the State neither registration not
legacy dues. The Treasury does not under this head
lose less than one million a year. M. Rossi, during his
short Ministry, obtained a promise, in order to partlY
indemnify the Government for this loss, that the clergy
should pay down at once a sum of twenty millions, and
that such property should thereafter be exempt from any
charges. This promise was among the many which the
clergy forgot at the period of the flight to Gaeta, and
the estates in question continue to increase about two
millions a year. The palaces of the Roman princes, in
the rating for taxes, are set down at the most paltry
sum, and a great number of properties--estimated is
1.,51 at 90 millions—escape taxation altogether. The
collection of even the smallest sums entails on the State
enormous expenses, and the sources of public revenue
which are elsewhere profitable are in the Roman. States
next to nothing. The salt and tobacco monopolies, the.
clamps and registration of journals, produce but ver)
trifling sums. The alrninistration of the domanial pro-
perties pay 169,250 f. into the State Treasury, wh•l3,
however, pays for that sum not less than t'40,527f., being
a loss to the Holy See of 471;277r. There is an alum
mine -*bleb of itself is worth its weight in gold. It
brings to the State 64,293 f., and the salaries of the per'