THE ROMAN QUESTION
by
E. ABOUT
Translated From The French By H. C. Coape
New York:
D. Appleton and Company,
346 & 348 Broadway
1859
PREFACE
It was in the Papal States that I studied the Roman Question. I
travelled over every part of the country; I conversed with men of all
opinions, examined things very closely, and collected my information
on the spot.
My first impressions, noted down from day to day without any especial
object, appeared, with some necessary modifications, in the _Moniteur
Universel_. These notes, truthful, somewhat unconnected, and so
thoroughly impartial, that it would be easy to discover in them
contradictions and inconsistencies, I was obliged to discontinue, in
consequence of the violent outcry of the Pontifical Government. I did
more. I threw them in the fire, and wrote a book instead. The present
volume is the result of a year's reflection.
I completed my study of the subject by the perusal of the most recent
works published in Italy. The learned memoir of the Marquis Pepoli,
and the admirable reply of an anonymous writer to M. de Rayneval,
supplied me with my best weapons. I have been further enlightened by
the conversation and correspondence of some illustrious Italians, whom
I would gladly name, were I not afraid of exposing them to danger.
The pressing condition of Italy has obliged me to write more rapidly
than I could have wished; and this enforced haste has given a certain
air of warmth, perhaps of intemperance, even to the most carefully
matured reflections. It was my intention to produce a memoir,--I fear
I may be charged with having written a pamphlet. Pardon me certain
vivacities of style, which I had not time to correct, and plunge
boldly into the heart of the book. You will find something there.
I fight fairly, and in good faith. I do not pretend to have judged the
foes of Italy without passion; but I have calumniated none of them.
If I have sought a publisher in Brussels, while I had an excellent one
in Paris, it is not because I feel any alarm on the score of the
regulations of our press, or the severity of our tribunals. But as the
Pope has a long arm, which might reach me in France, I have gone a
little out of the way to tell him the plain truths contained in these
pages.
May 9, 1859.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. THE POPE AS A KING
II. NECESSITY OF THE TEMPORAL POWER
III. THE PATRIMONY OF THE TEMPORAL POWER
IV. THE SUBJECTS OF THE TEMPORAL POWER
V. OF THE PLEBEIANS
VI. THE MIDDLE CLASSES
VII. THE NOBILITY
VIII. FOREIGNERS
IX. ABSOLUTE CHARACTER OF THE TEMPORAL POWER OF THE POPE
X. PIUS IX
XI. ANTONELLI
XII. PRIESTLY GOVERNMENT
XIII. POLITICAL SEVERITY
XIV. THE IMPUNITY OF REAL CRIME
XV. TOLERANCE
XVI. EDUCATION OF THE PEOPLE
XVII. FOREIGN OCCUPATION
XVIII. WHY THE POPE WILL NEVER HAVE SOLDIERS
XIX. MATERIAL INTERESTS
XX. FINANCES
CONCLUSION
CHAPTER I.
THE POPE AS A KING.
The Roman Catholic Church, which I sincerely respect, consists of one
hundred and thirty-nine millions of individuals--without counting
little Mortara.
It is governed by seventy Cardinals, or Princes of the Church, in
memory of the twelve Apostles.
The Cardinal-Bishop of Rome, who is also designated by the name of
Vicar of Jesus Christ, Holy Father, or Pope, is invested with
boundless authority over the minds of these hundred and thirty-nine
millions of Catholics.
The Cardinals are nominated by the Pope; the Pope is nominated by the
Cardinals; from the day of his election he becomes infallible, at
least in the opinion of M. de Maistre, and the best Catholics of our
time.
This was not the opinion of Bossuet; but it has always been that of
the Popes themselves.
When the Sovereign Pontiff declares to us that the Virgin Mary was
born free from original sin, the hundred and thirty-nine millions of
Catholics are bound to believe it on his word. This is what has
recently occurred.
This discipline of the understanding reflects infinite credit upon the
nineteenth century. If posterity does us justice, it will be grateful
to us therefor. It will see that instead of cutting one another's
throats about theological questions, we have surveyed lines of
railway, laid telegraphs, constructed steam-engines, launched ships,
pierced isthmuses, created sciences, corrected laws, repressed
factions, fed the poor, civilized barbarians, drained marshes,
cultivated waste lands, without ever having a single dispute as to the
infallibility of a man.
But the busiest age, the age which the best knows the value of time,
may be obliged for a moment to neglect its business. If, for instance,
it should remark around Rome and its Bishop a violent agitation, which
neither the trickery of diplomacy nor the pressure of armies can
suppress; if it perceive in a little corner of a peninsula a
smouldering fire, which may at any moment burst forth, and in
twenty-four hours envelope all Europe, this age, prudent from a sense
of duty, on account of the great things it has to accomplish, turns
its attention to the situation of Rome, and insists upon knowing what
it all means.
It means that the simple princes of the middle ages, Pepin the Brief,
Charlemagne, and the Countess Matilda, behaved with great liberality
to the Pope. They gave him lands and men, according to the fashion of
the times, when men, being merely the live-stock of the land, were
thrown into the bargain. If they were generous, it was not because
they thought, with M. Thiers, that the Pope could not be independent
without being a King; they had seen him in his poverty more
independent and more commanding than almost any monarch on the earth.
They enriched him from motives of friendship, calculation, gratitude,
or it might even be to disinherit their relations, as we sometimes see
in our own time. Since the days of the Countess Matilda, the Pope,
having acquired a taste for possession, has gone on rounding his
estate. He has obtained cities by capitulation, as in the case of
Bologna; he has won others at the cannon's mouth, as Rimini; while
some he has appropriated, by treachery and stealth, as Ancona. Indeed
so well have matters been managed, that in 1859 the Bishop of Rome is
the temporal sovereign of about six millions of acres, and reigns over
three millions one hundred and twenty-four thousand six hundred and
sixty-eight men, who are all crying out loudly against him.
What do they complain of? Only listen, and you will soon learn.
They say--that the authority to which, without having either asked or
accepted it, they are subject, is the most fundamentally absolute that
was ever defined by Aristotle; that the legislative, executive, and
judicial powers are united, confounded, and jumbled together in one
and the same hand, contrary to the practice of civilized states, and
to the theory of Montesquieu; that they willingly recognize the
infallibility of the Pope upon all religious questions, but that in
civil matters it appears to them less easy to tolerate; that they do
not refuse to obey, because, all things considered, man is not placed
here below to follow the bent of his own inclinations, but that they
would be glad to obey laws; that the good pleasure of any man, however
good it may be, is not so good as the _Code Napoléon_; that the
reigning Pope is not an evil-disposed man, but that the arbitrary
government of one man, even admitting his infallibility, can never be
anything but a bad government.
That in virtue of an ancient and hitherto ineradicable practice, the
Pope is assisted in the temporal government of his States by the
spiritual chiefs, subalterns, and spiritual _employés_ of his Church;
that Cardinals, Bishops, Canons, Priests, forage pell-mell about the
country; that one sole and identical caste possesses the right of
administering both sacraments and provinces; of confirming little boys
and the judgments of the lower courts; of ordaining subdeacons and
arrests; of despatching parting souls and captains' commissions; that
this confusion of the spiritual and the temporal disseminates among
the higher offices a multitude of men, excellent no doubt in the sight
of God, but insupportable in that of the people; often strangers to
the country, sometimes to business, and always to those domestic ties
which are the basis of every society; without any special knowledge,
unless it be of the things of another world; without children, which
renders them indifferent to the future of the nation; without wives,
which renders them dangerous to its present; and to conclude,
unwilling to hear reason, because they believe themselves
participators in the pontifical infallibility.
That these servants of a most merciful but sometimes severe God,
simultaneously abuse both mercy and justice; that, full of indulgence
for the indifferent, for their friends, and for themselves, they treat
with extreme rigour whoever has had the misfortune to become obnoxious
to power; that they more readily pardon the wretch who cuts a man's
throat, than the imprudent citizen who blames an abuse.
That the Pope, and the Priests who assist him, not having been taught
accounts, grossly mismanage the public finances; that whereas
maladministration or malversation of the public finances might have
been tolerated a hundred years ago, when the expenses of public
worship and of the papal court were defrayed by one hundred and
thirty-nine millions of Catholics, it is a widely different affair
now, when they have to be supported by 3,124,668 individuals.
That they do not complain of paying taxes, because it is a universally
established practice, but that they wish to see their money spent upon
terrestrial objects; that the sight of basilicas, churches, and
convents built or maintained at their expense, rejoices them as
Catholics, but grieves them as citizens, because, after all, these
edifices are but imperfect substitutes for railways and roads, for the
clearing of rivers, and the erection of dykes against inundations;
that faith, hope, and charity receive more encouragement than
agriculture, commerce, and manufactures; that public simplicity is
developed to the detriment of public education.
That the law and the police are too much occupied with the salvation
of souls, and too little with the preservation of bodies; that they
prevent honest people from damning themselves by swearing, reading bad
books, or associating with Liberals, but that they don't prevent
rascals from murdering honest people; that property is as badly
protected as persons; and that it is very hard to be able to reckon
upon nothing for certain but a stall in Paradise.
That they are made to pay heavily for keeping up an army without
knowledge or discipline, an army of problematical courage and doubtful
honours, and destined never to fight except against the citizens
themselves; that it is adding insult to injury to make a man pay for
the stick he is beaten with. That they are moreover obliged to lodge
foreign armies, and especially Austrians, who, as Germans, are
notoriously heavy-fisted.
To conclude, they say all this is not what the Pope promised them in
his _motu proprio_ of the 19th of September; and it is sad to find
infallible people breaking their most sacred engagements.
I have no doubt these grievances are exaggerated. It is impossible to
believe that an entire nation can be so terribly in the right against
its masters. We will examine the facts of the case in detail before we
decide. We have not yet arrived at that point.
You have just heard the language, if not of the whole 3,124,668
people, at least of the most intelligent, the most energetic, and the
most interesting part of the nation. Take away the conservative
party,--that is to say, those who have an interest in the
government,--and the unfortunate creatures whom it has utterly
brutalized,--and there will remain none but malcontents.
The malcontents are not all of the same complexion. Some politely and
vainly ask the Holy Father to reform abuses: this is the moderate
party. Others propose to themselves a thorough reform of the
government: they are called radicals, revolutionists, or
Mazzinists--rather an injurious term. This latter category is not
precisely nice as to the measures to be resorted to. It holds, with
the Society of Jesus, that the end justifies the means. It says, if
Europe leaves it _tête-à-tête_ with the Pope, it will begin by cutting
his throat; and if foreign potentates oppose such criminal violence,
it will fling bombs under their carriages.
The moderate party expresses itself plainly, the Mazzinists noisily.
Europe must be very stupid, not to understand the one; very deaf, not
to hear the other.
What then happens?
All the States which desire peace, public order, and civilization,
entreat the Pope to correct some abuse or other. "Have pity," they
say, "if not upon your subjects, at least upon your neighbours, and
save _us_ from the conflagration!"
As often as this intervention is renewed, the Pope sends for his
Secretary of State. The said Secretary of State is a Cardinal who
reigns over the Holy Father in temporal matters, even as the Holy
Father reigns over a hundred and thirty nine millions of Catholics in
spiritual matters. The Pope confides to the Cardinal Minister the
source of his embarrassment, and asks him what is to be done.
The Cardinal, who is the minister of everything in the State, replies,
without a moment's hesitation, to the old sovereign:--
"In the first place, there are no abuses: in the next place,
if there were any, we must not touch them. To reform
anything is to make a concession to the malcontents. To give
way, is to prove that we are afraid. To admit fear, is to
double the strength of the enemy, to open the gates to
revolution, and to take the road to Gaeta, where the
accommodation is none of the best. Don't let us leave home.
I know the house we live in; it is not new, but it will last
longer than your Holiness--provided no attempt is made to
repair it. After us the deluge; we've got no children!"
"All very true," replies the Pope.
"But the sovereign who is entreating me to do something, is
an eldest son of the Church. He has rendered us great
services. He still protects us constantly. What would become
of us if he abandoned us?"
"Don't be alarmed," says the Cardinal. "I'll arrange the matter
diplomatically." And he sits down, and writes an invariable note, in a
diplomatically tortuous style, which may thus be summed up:--
"We want your soldiers, and not your advice, seeing that we
are infallible. If you were to show any symptom of doubting
that infallibility, and if you attempted to force anything
upon us, even our preservation, we would fold our wings
around our countenances, we would raise the palms of
martyrdom, and we should become an object of compassion to
all the Catholics in the universe. You know we have in your
country forty thousand men who are at liberty to say
everything, and whom you pay with your own money to plead
our cause. They shall preach to your subjects, that you are
tyrannizing over the Holy Father, and we shall set your
country in a blaze without appearing to touch it."