The Express.
London, England, 1851-01-13 00:00:00

THE EXPRESS, MONDAY EVENING, JANUART 13, 1851.

FATHER GAVAZZI'S SECOND ORATION.

"THE PAPAL SCEPTRE."-

established in other ecnntriee. He maintained
that this scheme wu hurried into execution by the
underlings of Austria and Rusbia at Rome. The
sympathy Wiseman has manifested in his late pam-
phlets for the " unarmed Haynau " wu a significant
symptom of the tendencies which the new " mitred
phalanx " was expected to foster among the faithful
in perfidious Albion. To create a divison in the heart
of England was an object dear to the despots of the
world ; but the Father trusted in the good sense and
manly bearing of the English nation fur the utter
discomfiture of this armada of "invincible" ignorance
and unteachable bigotry.
The animated, earnest delivery, and fervid utter-
ance of several pueages in his address drew forth
bursts of sympathising applause throughout the hoar
and a half during which he spoke.

Yesterday, before a crowded aud entbusiutic audi-
tory at the Princess's Concert Hail, the elcquent Bar-
nabite tier resumed hi, course of Italian strictures

on the present po►ition and attitude of the Popedom.
lie was frequently interrupted by the irrepressible
outbursts of emotion and sympathy which his ener-
getic and manly denunciations of present and pad
Iniquities, in his retrospect of the papacy, elicited from
an assembly of enlightened foreigners arid educated
Englishmen. A brief abstract of his address is of
course all we can attempt to furnish. No Italian
lectures since Ugo Foecolo's discourses, some thirty
years ago, seem so worthy of the hold they have
taken of the public mind as powerful utterances of
genius and nationality.
- '

The scope of Christianity's divine founder was gloriously
comprehensive, and the scheme of his church wu catholic in
the largest and truest sense of that word. The great mass
of ma• kind was to be incorporated in a regenerate body, the
head being Christ, the eiviour of all. The clergy who in
after times called themselves, by insolent monopoly, " the
church," were but the servants and funwionaries in that

great assembly of the faithful, the constitution of which coo-
taint d a lerge it,fusion of the popular and elective
principle from the earliest time. The popes, as
well as the deacons and presbyters, were appointed
by general suffrage in meetings of piety and prayer.
The post of pontiff in Rome, so elsewhere, wee but the
preliminary to martyrdom. Blest and glorious ages of our
Common faith, all bail ! for, alas, we have since fallen upon
evil days ! Pope Mamellinus from his prison governed the
church of God, when Diocletian from his bloody throne
ruled the Roman worl What was the "chair of Peter,"

then ? Was it the bit of rotten upholstery which modern
imposture exalts in the noblest temple of Christendom to a
piunacle of shameless fraud ? Wee it • couch of repose or •
seat of royalty ? Or was the primitive pontificate inefficient
because uaaided by the trappings of rank, and Its head un-
crowned with • tiara ? Was it sceptre in hand that Leo
confronted Attila, the "coulee of God? Was it by any tem
pond predominance that Ambrose "weird the Christian em-
peror. Theodosius, at the porch of (lad's church, and bade
him depart till he had atoned in sackcloth and ashes for the
massacre of Thessalonica. Matters have assumed a somewhat
different aspect since then. The Te Deem, that glorious com-
position of this vary Ambrose, is now ehaunted in Christian
churches by popes and cardinals for hecatombs of the slain,
for the butchery of whole towns and dir.ricts, for the bom-
bardment of cities (inching Messina, Palermo, and sacred
Rome), provided the temporal interests and emolument' of
churchmen are thereby recovered or upheld.
Alter a sketch of the rise, crafty conception, and
fatal progress of the temporal power, the forgeries by
which it was established, and the fraudulent transac-
tions which marked it from the origin, the Father
continued :
And thus grew up the monstrous phenomenon we now
behold : the church of Christ • den of dark intrigue and •
cavern of alma:lineal barter; changed from the simplicity of
its early days into that Babylonian aggregate of ambitious
struggling., envy, hatred,trickery, cant, general and par
weal corruption, " the Court of Rome." Thus brae
the Benefits and the spurious spawn of sacerdotal nepotism ;
thus came the Antonini, to rule in the present interregnum
of Papal imbecility, as the Banns Olympias ruled in the
days of Papal profligate. Thus the Nardonis, the Freddie, and
Minardis, icfamous Janissaries of the system, are let loose in
our days, and traverse a trembling city, marking out their
victims for the Papal galleys and the Piped prisons. Thus
is the germ of ehristian feeling crushed in the bosom of our
young men, and the hopes of what religion promises beyond
the grave obliterated from the memory of toe old by the
spectacle of religion's ministers practically refuting what
they still impudently preach in God's desecrated temples.
Against these abominable doings holy men from time to
time have raised the voice of remonstrance and fulminated
the bolts of indignant eloquence. Did Herod tremble before
John ? No ! but the Baptist's head was served up is a dish
for a harlot's jubilee. Savonarola was burnt in' the square
of Florence by the miserable Medici, at the instigation of
the brutal Bugle earl the martyr, Arnoldo, was burnt
in • street of Rome by Pope Adrian the Fourth, to
whose tender mercies he was delivered up by the
Imperial butcher Berbera's*. The ashes of Arnoldo
were thrown into the Tiber as thane of Wicliff were flung
into the Severn. But like " bread cut upon the water,,"
the day will come for the principles those ashes represent to
vivify an awakened g e ion. These were the famous
middle ages held up to our reverence by the swindlers of
church history. The so-called " ages of faith "by the Mon-
talembert school were these. For the blessings et the scep-
tered Popedom, toe French Univers refers the simpletons who
are gulled by that wretched rag to those model mediaeval me-
mories. All2lll to ashes! dot to dust !darkness to darkose !
This was the appropriate period when immunity from
civil tribunals was claimed by a dissolute and rampant priest-
hood ; when the greatest and wisest of your Plantegents as
well tithe Hapsburg and Capetian dynasties were bearded
and rough ridden over by the Innocents (!) of Italy. To
held their horse's bridle was but • personal indignity to the
monarchs igrehle enough for those who patiently endure
in, but to tramp's under foot the common principles of
law and justice was an insult flung in the face
of all mankind. Then came the mur-aer of .Beckett
which was eueningly turned to account in those days
as that of Pellegrino Rebel in our own ; monarchy was made
to pay a penalty to the Pope for the one, democracy for the
other; the king and people were equally unconcerned in
either perpetration. But the vulpine vigilance of the Vatican
can extract a profit from every vile and rill sinous occurrence.
Vespasisa laid on • tax caned urine vertigo?; so every
human infirmity, every crime in the catalogue 01 sins,
has been • nest egg of pelf and peculation to
the " apost ilio chancery." In the general degra-
dation of the human race and the universal prostration
of European lands our Italy, the seat and centre of this fool
usurpation, was utterly scorched and blasted by its deves•
tating influence. No hops of nationality for the peninsula
from the non? this curse fell on our country. The Popes
have brought transalpine hordes down upon us from the
outset,—Cbarles d'Anjou, Norman ativenturers, German
lansquenets, Sluttish cut throats, the outcast' and refuse of
every run have been let loose, by papal intrigue, or open invi-
tation to sack, slay, violate, and plunder among us lathe name
of Christ, front the days of Manfredi and the murdered
Corradino down to those recent deplorable days when that
&poste* Italian, Mastai, blamed the butchers of Sicily and
their king, Bombs; blessed Oudinot for strangling the
Roman Commonwealth with • tricolour rope ; and would
bless the Prince of Darkness himself for replacing on his head
that tiara which I hold wu originally planted on the
brows of " Christ's Vicar" [in the bitter derision
of his doctrine] by the common enemy of mankind.
This monstrous intermarriage between the kingly function
and the service of God's altar has more publicly offended
the moral sense of the human race es society has prog d
and the dark delusions of past centuries been dissipated by
the noon day of civilisation. To be a good priest is difficult
enough to the infirmity of mortals; to understand kingcraft
in all its branches is a gift few can boast ; to combine both
sacerdotal and regal excellence is • perfectly hopeless
pretension. Hence, either the priest is merged altogether,
and • Julius the Second levels his artillery its propreis per-
sona on my native Bologna, or the king disappears in the
grovelling, idiotic, and timorous devotee, OA In the person
of Pio Nono. A court, foreooth, is requisite to placo the
patriarch of Christendom on a level with princes; was a
court required to place them on
a Ave. with the Emperors
of Rome ? did they not maintain Christianity against
"giants in those they
and could they not do so
now when paltry pigmies sit on European thrones,
I protest I have more respect for the grand Lhama of Thibet
ea a more excusable object of blunt, downright homage,
from congenial and kindred barbarians, than for such a grim
jumble of carnifez and pontifen hangman and high priest
as the present occupant of the Vatican and the Castle of St.
Angelo (the arched causeway connecting palace and prison
has been just rebuilt) presents to the nineteenth century,
Must the bark of Peter be rowed by galley slaves ? Must
the fisherman's ring be the signet to seal death warrants?
Must the functions of Nero be performed by the successor
of his supposed victim ? They chow you in Rome the
Mamertine dungeon, where Cstiline's confederates were
immured; where Jugurths, Zenobis, and a host of Clue-
thous prisoners were let down. Peter was thrown, they
tell you, into that monumental cavity, at the foot of the
Capitol, wend with Tonna Resnik:l: and the memory of
minor captives is merged in the monopoly of marvel which
that cir' umstance establishes for this prison-hole.
That Peter was once • prisoner we have warrant is holy
writ ; that an angel drew him forth to light and liberty we
read Is the Acts of the Apostles. But where do we gather
that he, In his turn, became a gaoler, and kept the keys not
of h , but of • bridewell ? Where is the angel of free-
dom that is to lead forth to life, and light the lofty spirits
—the pars waled patriots, the generous and intrepid men
whom this abhorred system keeps rotting in the treble-
barred las uhouses that ars filled to suffocation with such noble
captives throughout the " Patrimony of Peter;" for eo central
Italy is ludicrously as well as ignominiously designated.
Down to the dot—dower to uttermost abyss with this soul-
destroying and mind.debasing and itfidel.creating system.
What aims does our native country present to the eye of
alm intelligence, to the lover of human rights, to the
student of Christ's gospel ? Away with an imposture that
paralyses while it degrades. Away with the night bag that
I equate, on the breast of Italy, checking the current of its life-
bl.xid, and clogging all the functions of national vitality,
hideous as it is oppressive, and clumsy as it is calamitous,
bombes and rampyre annbined in one abominable compound
abonstrouldifformity.
Father Gavazzi proceeded to describe the nature
et the " Roman court," its fatal interference with
spiritual things, its dandified abbalini, its simpering
prelates, its intriguing monsignori, its brutified Swim
Mlorcetaries, its bloated cardinals rolling in ginger-
bread gilt coaches, its " widows in peril " (redone
perielleanti), the venality and fiunkeyism pervading
Abe whole aggregate of worldly and vicious men who
presume to be the organs of the Holy Ghost on earth,
sad dispense its inspirations to mankind. Never
wore the elements of corruption more grossly visible
than at the resent moment, when all the carrion
crows of Italy and elsewhere have crowded to feast
on the carcase of the murdered commonwealth, and
divide the spoil resulting from exile and confiscation
and ruin of 30,000 citizens.
His peroration was a vigorous onslau,;ht on the late
papal attempt to bring England down to the same
of grovelling serfdom which the system has