The Glasgow Chronicle. — 1849-08-22 (Glasgow, Strathclyde, Scotland)

STATE AND PROSPECTS OF ROME.  [The utter fruitlessness for any good of French interference in the affairs of Rome is strikingly proved by the following admissions of the Times, made, we may be assured, with the greatest reluctance :]—The only ground on which the policy of the French expedition to Rome has been de- ( fended even by the Ministers of the Republic, is the positive 1 assurance that the res,toration of the Pope, as effected by ti France, would be effected by a thorough reform of the abuses _ which are encrusted on the temporal government of the Papal States. M. de Tocquerville concluded his last speech I on this subject by a declaration that he could undertake to say the Pope was prepared to sanction such an arrangement, and that the consequence of the Papal restoration would not be. blind and implacablereaction. The honour of France, ' the tranquillity of Rome and the very existence of the Pope as a temporal Sovereign, depend on the fulfilment of these engagements. Unhappily the first acts of the Pontiff betoken the existence of a very different spirit, and have at once roused the hostility and the suspicions of the Roman people to such a pitch that a fresh insurrection would immediately have broken out, if it had uot not beea for the imposing attitude of the French army. General Oudinot had prevailed upon Prince Odeschalchi and some other eminent Roman laymen to constitute a species of municipal Government, in concert with the French military authorities, until such time as he should hand over the government of Rome to the Pope, or tohis representatives. These individuals, who appear to have acted from very patriotic motives, have si nee received General Oudinot's official thanks for 'the enlightened and acti veservice they had given him in the direction of public affairs ;" and it is obvious that Pius IX. could not have done better than in intrusting the supreme power to this respectable municipal body of Roman laymen until his own return to the Quirinal. He has pursued, however, a directly opposite course. The Commission which arrived in Rome on the 9d of August is a revival of the worst and most contemptible usages of the old Papal administration. A triumvirate of Monsignori, whose names and characters are literally abhorred by the people, has assumed the reins of government, without a word of practical assurance to the nation, or a word of remonstrance on the part of the French General. Their first measures were of a piece with their proclamation. They instantly removed from office all the persons who had obtained employment since the revolution, and thereby augmented the discontent of the most formidable and intelligent agents of the Republican party. They rescinded all the laws passed since November, and restored the hateful and I clumsy old courts of justice. They appointed a commission of inquiry with undefined powers, and quashed the municipal bodies in the towns, to which they ought especially to have looked for support. And they repudiated one-third of the paper currency by a measure which could not fail at such a moment to occasion excessive irritation and embarrassment. This paper being inconvertible, it was the interest of the Government to maintain its circula• tion as long as possible; it was a convenient fiction; and as the value of the Republican baiocchi must eventually have declined, that would have been the time to propose the conversion of this currency. Coin had disappeared, and there was no remedy for this state of things but to allow the paper to sink to its own level. The unpopularity of such acts as these is, of course, excessive, and if the object of the French be to restore the Pope to power, they could not have rendered him a greater disservice than by tolerating so fatal and absurd a commencement. We have no doubt that when the Para government was attacked in November, 1848, by the murder of M. Rossi and a brutal outrage on the Pope's palace, the better part of the Roman population were disgusted and appalled by such acts of Violence. The government then overthrown by Mazzini was the best experiment Rome had witnessed. The cabinet consisted , of able laymen; the chambers had convoked the best citizens of central Italy; the destruction of that form ot government was a fatal blow to the cause of the Constitution and of freedom, But, much as that even has been deplored, we  2