The Express.
London, England, 1861-12-26 00:00:00

ROME AND NAPLES.

The Papal Budget of expenses for 1862 is offi-
cially stated at ten millions of scudi (53,000,0001 r.)
fora population of 500,000 souls. This heavy sum
is chiefly owing to the cost of the Papal army,
which consists of 10,000 men, being, to the popula-
tion as Ito 500. The same proportion applied to
France would give an army of 1,800,000 men.

A letter from Rome of the 17th has the follow-
Mg :

Chiavone is here seder the surveillance of the Frisch
police, and consequently unable to make any more in-
=unions on the territory of Victor Emmanuel. There
was a rumour last week that the famoua chief had been
arrested at Home and loaded with chains. Some person
would have it, on the contrary, that he had escaped from
the vigilance of the French polies, and rejoined his old corn.
pinions in arms. It is now known for certain that Chiavone
has not left Rome, nor is he in chains. He is in a house
known to the French and Roman gendarmerie, rendered
quite powerless to serve the reactionist party, but, at the
same time protected by the French police. What his
future fortune may be we cannot may, but there is
good reason to think that his career as chief
of • band is over, at least for some time to coma
While Chiavone thus disappears from the scene, the
French government strictly enforces respect for the sea-
trility of the Pontifical territory, and prevents the states of
the Holy See from becoming a hotbed of troubles and re-
actionary conspiracies. This determination of the French
government is so evident that the Onerratore Romano,
alluding to the subject in an article entitled " What Pied-
mont wants of France," demands that the principle of
intervention, claimed by Piedmont, shall be respected in
the struggle which the Neapolitans maintain against their
new masters. France does not intervene beyond the limits
of the Roman territory; she violates no principle, but her
army of occupation spares no effort to preserve the French
government from absurd reproaches, and to prevent al'
kind of intervention from whatever quarter it might
proceed.

AUSTRIA.

A letter from Vienna of the 20th states :

Stupor and consternation—there are no other words which
can describe the impression produced by the sad revelations
of our Minister of Finance. It is well proved that the din.
estrous campaign of 1859 not only cost us one of oar finest
previa:ea, but caused a deficit of 200 minima of twins; that
the following year, 1860, red the present one, that is to say,
two years of armed peace have led to a deficit, the former of
65 millions and the latter of 1091 millions, and that for
next year it is estimated in round numbers at 110 millioes.
What would it then be if from the footing of armed peace
we were obliged to pass to that of war. It is thus that we
may sum up the statement which has been laid before the
Chamber by the minister. The two items the most expen-
sive for the State—the army with the navy, and the public
debt—figure in the expenses one for 108 millions and the
other for 106, making together 214 millions, or more than
two-thirds of the receipts for 1862, estimated at 296 i mil-
lions. What is the most desolating in all this is that the
heed which points out to us the wound, does not indicate
the remedy to be applied to it.
Apropos of the discustion on the law for the
protection of the privacy of letters, the Vienna
Press gives the following particulars respecting the
organisation of the Austrian "Black Cabinet" :
Originally letters were to be opened only in those spatial
elm which the cypher cabinet in the Foreign-office notified
to the proper "lodgiste," after permission granted to that
effect. What sin " lodgists" ? the reader may sek. They
are subordinates in the postal service, independent of their
superiors, and placed, even without the latter suspecting it,
in the most important post-offices, by the Minister for
Foreign Affairs, expressly for the purpose of opening sas-
peeled letters. They take a special oath before
the president of the cypher cabinet, and receive
extra pay out of the secret service money. The
place to which one or more of these functionaries are
attached is called a "lodge," end the whole of the lovely
institution—a new and improved edition of the Black
Cabinet as it was in Bach's time—is copied from the French
pattern. In Bach's time the foreign and home ministries
and the police long contended for the command over this
interesting lodge service. 1/ we are not mistaken, the
Ministry of Police was the victor in this contest ; more
recently, however, the lodge has again become one of the
attributions of the Foreign-office. Of all the lodges, that
of Vienna is, for obvious reasons, the moat important and
the busiest of all; but those of Verona and Venice
also do a good stroke of work, sod the names
of the lodgista in the mown lands that enjoy their
services are only known to the respective governors and
directors of police. The business of the lodgist is this : he is
to open letters directed to certain addresses which are indi-
cated to him, or the letters of certain persons without re-
gaol to the address, and he is either to copy those letters
or deliver the originals to the governor. The opening of
letter without leaving a trees of the operation requires not
only very special implements, but also a very skilful band.
The operation can only be performed in the post-office, and
it must be done in such a scanner that it shall be quite un-
known to the other employes, that the delivery of the letters
to the persons addressed shall suffer no delay, and that they
shall not be able to detect any token of the letters having
been opened. When • governor wants to know the
contents of • letter sot previously denounced, be applies
by telegraph to the cypher cabinet in Vienna ; and the
latter, with the assent of the higher powers, sends him the
requisite authority. It is not to be wondered at if the con-
duct of this sort of business is a good deal marked with
c ,price, and if badly opened letters are destroyed instead of
being sent to their addresses sealrd with the official seal.
It often happens that a poet director, or even the ministry
to which the postal service belongs, has no conception of the
nature of the lodges and the functionaries who offer wri-
tes. in the form of opened letters to the secret all-
knowingness of the government. It has even happened to
functionaries of this class to be dismissed for purloining
letters, because they were prevented by the special oath
they had taken from clearing themselves of the charge.
They do not lose their breed for all that. thire has ►lways
been taten that these prieste of the state mysteries shall
have a handsome allowance for life out of the secret service
money. The well-known prohibition against the sealing of
letters with letter-marks, which make the opening so diffi-
cult, may have been issued not upon financial, but simply
upon heigistic grounds.