POLITICAL SEVERITY.
It is admitted that the Popes have always been remarkable for a senile
indulgence and goodness. I do not pretend to deny the assertions of M.
de Brosses and M. de Tournon that this government is at once the
mildest, the worst, and the most absolute in Europe.
And yet Sixtus V., a great Pope, was a still greater executioner. That
man of God delivered over to the gallows a Pepoli of Bologna, who had
bestowed upon him a kick instead of a piece of bread when he was a
mendicant friar.
And yet Gregory XVI., in our own times, granted a dispensation of age
to a minor for the sake of having him legally executed.
And yet the punishment of the wooden horse was revived four years ago
by the mild Cardinal Antonelli.
And yet the Pontifical State is the only one in Europe in which the
barbarous practice of placing a price upon a man's head is still in
use.
Never mind. Since, after all, the Pontifical State is that in which
the most daring crimes and the most open assassinations have the
greatest chance of being committed with perfect impunity, I will
admit, with M. de Brosses and M. de Tournon, that it is the mildest in
Europe. I am about to examine with you the application of this
mildness to political matters.
Nine years ago Pius IX. re-entered his capital, as the father of a
family his house, after having the door broken open. It is not likely
that either the Holy Father, or the companions of his exile, were
animated by very lively feelings of gratitude towards the chiefs of
the revolution which had driven them away. A priest never quite
forgets that he was once a man.
This is why two hundred and eighty-three individuals[9] were excluded
from the general amnesty recommended by France and promised by the
Pope. It is unfortunate for these two hundred and eighty-three that
the Gospel is old, and forgiveness of injuries out of date. Perhaps
you will remind me that St. Peter cut off one of the ears of Malchus.
By the clemency of the Pope, fifty-nine of these exiles were pardoned,
during a period of nine years, if men can be said to be pardoned who
are recalled provisionally, some for a year, others for half a year,
or who are brought home only to be placed under the surveillance of
the police. A man who is forbidden to exercise the calling to which he
was bred, and whose sole privilege is that of dying of starvation in
his native land, is likely rather to regret his exile sometimes.
I was introduced to one of the fifty-nine privileged partakers of the
pontifical clemency. He is an advocate; at least he was until the day
when he obtained his pardon. He related to me the history of the
tolerably inoffensive part he had played in 1848; the hopes he had
founded on the amnesty; his despair when he found himself excluded
from it; some particulars of his life in exile, such, for instance, as
his having had recourse to giving lessons in Italian, like the
illustrious Manin, and so many others.
"I could have lived happily enough," he said,
"but one day the home-sickness laid my heart low; I felt
that I must see Italy, or die. My family took the necessary
steps, and it fortunately happened that we knew some one who
had interest with a Cardinal. The police dictated the
conditions of my return, and I accepted them without knowing
what they were. If they had told me I could not return
without cutting off my right arm, I would have cut it off.
The Pope signed my pardon, and then published my name in the
newspapers, so that none might be ignorant of his clemency.
But I am interdicted from resuming my practice at the Bar,
and a man can hardly gain a livelihood by teaching Italian
in a country where everybody speaks it."
As he concluded, the neighbouring church-bells began to sound the _Ave
Maria_. He turned pale, seized his hat, and rushed out of my room,
exclaiming, "I knew not it was so late! Should the police arrive at my
house before I can reach it, I am a lost man!"
His friends explained to me the cause of his sudden alarm: the poor
man is subject to the police regulation termed the _Precetto_.
He must always return to his abode at sunset, and he is then shut in
till the next morning. The police may force their way in at any time
during the night, for the purpose of ascertaining that he is there. He
cannot leave the city under any pretence whatever, even in broad day.
The slightest infraction of these rules exposes him to imprisonment,
or to a new exile.
The Pontifical States are full of men subject to the _Precetto_: some
are criminals who are watched in their homes, for want of prison
accommodation; others are _suspected persons_. The number of these
unfortunate beings is not given in the statistical tables, but I know,
from an official source, that in Viterbo, a town of fourteen thousand
souls, there are no less than two hundred.
The want of prison accommodation explains many things, and, among
others, the freedom of speech which exists throughout the country. If
the Government took a fancy to arrest everybody who hates it openly,
there would be neither gendarmes nor gaolers enough; above all, there
would be an insufficiency of those houses of peace, of which it has
been said, that "their protection and salubrity prolong the life of
their inmates."[10]
The citizens, then, are allowed to speak freely, provided always they
do not gesticulate too violently. But we may be sure no word is ever
lost in a State watched by priests. The Government keeps an accurate
list of those who wish it ill. It revenges itself when it can, but it
never runs after vengeance. It watches its occasion; it can afford to
be patient, because it thinks itself eternal.
If the bold speaker chance to hold a modest government appointment, a
purging commission quietly cashiers him, and turns him delicately out
into the street.
Should he be a person of independent fortune, they wait till he wants
something, as, for instance, a passport. One of my good friends in
Rome has been for the last nine years trying to get leave to travel.
He is rich and energetic. The business he follows is one eminently
beneficial to the State. A journey to foreign countries would complete
his knowledge, and advance his interests. For the last nine years he
has been applying for an interview with the head of the passport
office, and has never yet received an answer to his application.
Others, who have applied for permission to travel in Piedmont, have
received for answer, "Go, but return no more." They have not been
exiled; there is no need of exercising unnecessary rigour; but on
receiving their passports, they have been compelled to sign an act of
voluntary exile. The Greeks said, "Not every one who will goes to
Corinth." The Romans have substituted Turin for Corinth.
Another of my friends, the Count X., has been, for years, carrying on
a lawsuit before the infallible tribunal of the _Sacra Rota_. His
cause could not have been a bad one, seeing that he lost and gained it
some seven or eight times before the same judges. It assumed a
deplorably bad complexion from the day the Count became my friend.
When once the discontented proceed from words to actions you may
indeed pity them.
A person charged with a political offence summoned before the _Sacra
Consulta_ (for everything is holy and sacred, even justice and
injustice), must be defended by an advocate, not chosen by himself,
against witnesses whose very names are unknown to him.
In the capital (and under the eyes of the French army) the extreme
penalty of the law is rarely carried out. The government is satisfied
with quietly suppressing people, by shutting them up in a fortress for
life. The state prisons are of two sorts, healthy and unhealthy. In
the establishment coming within the second category, perpetual
seclusion is certain not to be of very long duration.
The fortress of Pagliano is one of the most wholesome. When I walked
through it there were two hundred and fifty prisoners, all political.
The people of the country told me that in 1856 these unfortunate men
had made an attempt at escape. Five or six had been shot on the roof
like so many sparrows. The remainder, according to the common law,
would be liable to the galleys for eight years; but an old ordinance
of Cardinal Lante was revived, by which, God willing, some of them may
be guillotined.
It is, however, beyond the Apennines that the paternal character of
the Government is chiefly displayed. The French are not there, and the
Pope's reactionary police duty is performed by the Austrian army. The
law there is martial law. The prisoner is without counsel; his judges
are Austrian officers, his executioners Austrian soldiers. A man may
be beaten or shot because some gentleman in uniform happens to be in a
bad temper. A youth sends up a Bengal light,--the galleys for twenty
years. A woman prevents a smoker from lighting his cigar,--twenty
lashes. In seven years Ancona has witnessed sixty capital executions,
and Bologna a hundred and eighty. Blood flows, and the Pope washes his
hands of it. He did not sign the warrants. Every now and then the
Austrians bring him a man they have shot, just as a gamekeeper brings
his master a fox he has killed in the preserves.
Perhaps I shall be told that this government of priests is not
responsible for the crimes committed in its service.
We French have also experienced the scourge of a foreign occupation.
For some years soldiers who spoke not our language were encamped in
our departments. The king who had been forced upon us was neither a
great man nor a man of energy, nor even a very good man; and he had
left a portion of his dignity in the enemy's baggage-waggons. But
certain it is that, in 1817, Louis XVIII. would rather have come down
from his throne than have allowed his subjects to be legally shot by
Russians and Prussians.
M. de Rayneval says, "The Holy Father has never failed to mitigate the
severity of judgments."
I want to know in what way he has been enabled to mitigate these
Austrian fusillades. Perhaps he has suggested a coating of soft cotton
for the bullets.