Transcribed by from the 1861 Macmillan and Co. edition by David Price,
email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
ROME IN 1860.
By
EDWARD DICEY.
Cambridge:
MACMILLAN AND CO.
AND 23, HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN,
London.
1861.
[The right of Translation is reserved.]
* * * * *
Cambridge:
PRINTED BY C. J. CLAY, M.A.
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
* * * * *
TO
MR. AND MRS ROBERT BROWNING
CHAPTER I. THE ROME OF REAL LIFE.
My first recollections of Rome date from too long ago, and from too early
an age, for me to be able to recall with ease the impression caused by
its first aspect. It is hard indeed for any one at any time to judge of
Rome fairly. Whatever may be the object of our pilgrimage, we Roman
travellers are all under some guise or other pilgrims to the Eternal
City, and gaze around us with something of a pilgrim's reverence for the
shrine of his worship. The ground we tread on is enchanted ground, we
breathe a charmed air, and are spellbound with a strange witchery. A
kind of glamour steals over us, a thousand memories rise up and chase
each other. Heroes and martyrs, sages and saints and sinners, consuls
and popes and emperors, people the weird pageant which to our mind's eye
hovers ever mistily amidst the scenes around us. Here above all places
in God's earth it is hard to forget the past and think only of the
present. This, however, is what I now want to do. Laying aside all
memory of what Rome has been, I would again describe what Rome is now.
And thus, in my solitary wanderings about the city, I have often sought
to picture to myself what would be the feelings of a stranger who, caring
nothing and knowing nothing of the past, should enter Rome with only that
listless curiosity which all travellers feel perforce, when for the first
time they approach a great capital. Let me fancy that such a traveller--a
very Gallio among travellers--is standing by my side. Let me try and
tell him what, under my mentorship, he would mark and see.
It shall not be on a bright, cloudless day that we enter Rome. To our
northern eyes the rich Italian sun-light gives to everything, even to
ruins and rags and squalor, a deceptive grandeur, and a beauty which is
not due. No, the day shall be such a day as that on which I write; such
a day in fact as the days are oftener than not at this dead season of the
year, sunless and damp and dull. The sky above is covered with
colourless, unbroken clouds, and the outline of the Alban and the Sabine
hills stands dimly out against the grey distance. It matters little by
what gate or from what quarter we enter. On every side the scene is much
the same. The Campagna surrounds the city. A wide, waste, broken,
hillock-covered plain, half common, half pasture land, and altogether
desolate; a few stunted trees, a deserted house or two, here and there a
crumbling mass of shapeless brickwork: such is the foreground through
which you travel for many a weary mile. As you approach the city there
is no change in the desolation, no sign of life. Every now and then a
string of some half-dozen peasant-carts, laden with wine-barrels or wood
faggots, comes jingling by. The carts so-called, rather by courtesy than
right, consist of three rough planks and two high ricketty wheels. The
broken-kneed horses sway to and fro beneath their unwieldy load, and the
drivers, clad in their heavy sheepskin jackets, crouch sleepily beneath
the clumsy, hide-bound framework, placed so as to shelter them from the
chill Tramontana blasts. A solitary cart is rare, for the neighbourhood
of Rome is not the safest of places, and those small piles of stone, with
the wooden cross surmounting them, bear witness to the fact that a murder
took place not long ago on the very spot you are passing now. Then,
perhaps, you come across a drove of wild, shaggy buffaloes, or a
travelling carriage rattling and jilting along, or a stray priest or so,
trudging homewards from some outlying chapel. That red-bodied funereal-
looking two-horse-coach, crawling at a snail's pace, belongs to his
Excellency the Cardinal, whom Papal etiquette forbids to walk on foot
within the city, and whom you can see a little further on pottering
feebly along the road in his violet stockings, supported by his clerical
secretary, and followed at a respectful distance by his two attendant
footmen with their threadbare liveries. At last, out of the dreary
waste, at the end of the interminable ill-paved sloughy road, the long
line of the grey tumble-down walls rises gloomily. A few cannon-shot
would batter a breach anywhere, as the events of 1849 proved only too
well. However, at Rome there is neither commerce to be impeded nor
building extension of any kind to be checked; the city has shrunk up
until its precincts are a world too wide; and the walls, if they are
useless, are harmless also; more, by the way, than you can say for most
things here. There is no stir or bustle at the gates. Two French
soldiers, striding across a bench, are playing at picquet with a pack of
greasy cards. A pack-horse or two nibble the blades of grass between the
stones, while their owners haggle with the solitary guard about the
"octroi" duties. A sentinel on duty stares listlessly at you as you
pass,--and you have entered Rome.
You are coming, I will suppose, from Ostia, and enter therefore by the
"Porta San Paolo;" the gate where legends tell that Belisarius sat and
begged. I have chosen this out of the dozen entrances as recalling
fewest of past memories and leading most directly to the heart of the
living, working city. You stand then within Rome, and look round in vain
for the signs of a city. Hard by a knot of dark cypress-trees waves
above the lonely burial-ground where Shelley lies at rest. A long,
straight, pollard-lined road stretches before you between high walls far
away; low hills or mounds rise on either side, covered by stunted,
straggling vineyards. You pass on. A beggar, squatting by the roadside,
calls on you for charity; and long after you have passed you can hear the
mumbling, droning cry, "Per l'amore di Dio e della Santa Vergine," dying
in your ears. On the wall, from time to time, you see a rude painting of
Christ upon the cross, and an inscription above the slit beneath bids you
contribute alms for the souls in purgatory. A peasant-woman it may be is
kneeling before the shrine, and a troop of priests pass by on the other
side. A string of carts again, drawn by bullocks, another shrine, and
another troop of priests, and you are come to the river's banks. The
dull, muddy Tiber rolls beneath you, and in front, that shapeless mass of
dingy, weather-stained, discoloured, plaster-covered, tile-roofed
buildings, crowded and jammed together on either side the river, is Rome
itself. You are at the city's port, the "Ripetta" or quay of Rome. In
the stream there are a dozen vessels, something between barges and
coasting smacks, the largest possibly of fifty tons' burden, which have
brought marble from Carrara for the sculptors' studios. There is a
Gravesend-looking steamer too, lying off the quay, but she belongs to the
French government, and is employed to carry troops to and from Civita
Vecchia. This is all, and at this point all traffic on the Tiber ceases.
Though the river is navigable for a long distance above Rome, yet beyond
the bridge, now in sight, not a boat is to be seen except at rare
intervals. It is the Tiber surely, and not the Thames, which should be
called the "silent highway."
A few steps more and the walls on either side are replaced by houses, and
the city has begun. The houses do not improve on a closer acquaintance;
one and all look as if commenced on too grand a scale, they had ruined
their builders before their completion, had been left standing empty for
years, and were now occupied by tenants too poor to keep them from decay.
There are holes in the wall where the scaffolding was fixed, large
blotches where the plaster has peeled away; stones and cornices which
have been left unused lie in the mud before the doors. From the window-
sills and from ropes fastened across the streets flutter half-washed rags
and strange apparel. The height of the houses makes the narrow streets
gloomy even at midday. At night, save in a few main thoroughfares, there
is no light of any kind; but then, after dark at Rome, nobody cares much
about walking in out-of-the-way places. The streets are paved with the
most angular and slippery of stones, placed herringbone fashion, with ups
and downs in every direction. Foot-pavement there is none; and the
ricketty carriages drawn by the tottering horses come swaying round the
endless corners with an utter disregard for the limbs and lives of the
foot-folk. You are out of luck if you come to Rome on a "Festa" day, for
then all the shops are shut, and the town looks drearier than ever.
However, even here the chances are two to one, or somewhat more, in
favour of the day of your arrival being a working-day. When the shops
are open there is at any rate life enough of one kind or other. In most
parts the shops have no window-fronts. Glass, indeed, there is little of
anywhere, and the very name of plate-glass is unknown. The dark, gloomy
shops varying in size between a coach-house and a wine-vault, have their
wide shutter-doors flung open to the streets. A feeble lamp hung at the
back of every shop you pass, before a painted Madonna shrine, makes the
darkness of their interiors visible. The trades of Rome are primitive
and few in number. Those dismembered, disembowelled carcases, suspended
in every variety of posture, denote the butchers' shops; not the
pleasantest of sights at any time, least of all in Rome, where the custom
of washing the meat after killing it seems never to have been introduced.
Next door too is an open stable, crowded with mules and horses. Those
black, mouldy loaves, exposed in a wire-work cage, to protect them from
the clutches of the hungry street vagabonds, stand in front of the
bakers, where the price of bread is regulated by the pontifical tariff.
Then comes the "Spaccio di Vino," that gloomiest among the shrines of
Bacchus, where the sour red wine is drunk at dirty tables by the grimiest
of tipplers. Hard by is the "Stannaro," or hardware tinker, who is
always re-bottoming dilapidated pans, and drives a brisk trade in those
clumsy, murderous-looking knives. Further on is the greengrocer, with
the long strings of greens, and sausages, and flabby balls of cheese, and
straw-covered oil-flasks dangling in festoons before his door. Over the
way is the Government depot, where the coarsest of salt and the rankest
of tobacco are sold at monopoly prices. Those gay, parti-coloured
stripes of paper, inscribed with the cabalistic figures, flaunting at the
street corner, proclaim the "Prenditoria di Lotti," or office of the
Papal lottery, where gambling receives the sanction of the Church, and
prospers under clerical auspices to such an extent that in the city of
Rome alone, with a population under two hundred thousand, fifty-five
millions of lottery tickets are said to be taken annually. Cobblers and
carpenters, barbers and old clothes-men, seem to me to carry on their
trades much in the same way all the world over. The peculiarity about
Rome is, that all these trades seem stunted in their development. The
cobbler never emerges as the shoemaker, and the carpenter fails to rise
into the upholstery line of business. Bookselling too is a trade which
does not thrive on Roman soil. Altogether there is a wonderful sameness
about the streets. Time after time, turn after turn, the same scene is
reproduced. So having got used to the first strangeness of the sight you
move on more quickly.
There is no lack of life about you now, at the shop-doors whole families
sit working at their trades, or carrying on the most private occupations
of domestic life; at every corner groups of men stand loitering about,
with hungry looks and ragged garments, reminding one only too forcibly of
the "Seven Dials" on a summer Sunday; French soldiers and beggars, women
and children and priests swarm around you. Indeed, there are priests
everywhere. There with their long black coats and broad-brimmed shovel
hats, come a score of young priests, walking two and two together, with
downcast eyes. How, without looking up, they manage to wend their way
among the crowd, is a constant miracle; the carriages, however, stop to
let them pass, for a Roman driver would sooner run over a dozen children
than knock down a priest. A sturdy, bare-headed, bare-footed monk, not
over clean, nor over savoury, hustles along with his brown robe fastened
round his waist by the knotted scourge of cord; a ghastly-looking figure,
covered in a grey shroud from head to foot, with slits for his mouth and
eyes, shakes a money-box in your face, with scowling importunity; a fat
sleek abbe comes sauntering along, peeping into the open shops or (so
scandal whispers) at the faces of the shop-girls. If you look right or
left, behind or in front, you see priests on every side,--Franciscan
friars and Dominicans, Carmelites and Capuchins, priests in brown cloth
and priests in serge, priests in red and white and grey, priests in
purple and priests in rags, standing on the church-steps, stopping at the
doorways, coming down the bye-streets, looking out of the windows--you
see priests everywhere and always. Their faces are, as a rule, not
pleasant to look upon; and I think, at first, with something of the "old
bogey" belief of childhood, you feel more comfortable when they are not
too close to you; but, ere long, this feeling wears away, and you gaze at
the priests and at the beggars with the same stolid indifference.
You are getting, by this time, into the heart of the city, ever and anon
the streets pass through some square or piazza, each like the other. In
the centre stands a broken fountain, moss-grown and weedy, whence the
water spouts languidly; on the one side is a church, on the other some
grim old palace, which from its general aspect, and the iron bars before
its windows, bears a striking resemblance to Newgate gone to ruin. Grass
grows between the flag-stones, and the piazza is emptier, quieter, and
cleaner than the street, but that is all. You stop and enter the first
church or two, but your curiosity is soon satisfied. Dull and bare
outside, the churches are gaudy and dull within. When you have seen one,
you have seen all. A crippled beggar crouching at the door, a few common
people kneeling before the candle-lighted shrines, a priest or two
mumbling at a side-altar, half-a-dozen indifferent pictures and a great
deal of gilt and marble everywhere, an odour of stale incense and mouldy
cloth, and, over all, a dim dust-discoloured light. Fancy all this, and
you will have before you a Roman church. On your way you pass no fine
buildings, for to tell the honest truth, there are no fine buildings in
Rome, except St Peter's and the Colosseum, both of which lie away from
the town. Fragments indeed of old ruins, porticoes built into the wall,
bricked-up archways and old cornice-stones, catch your eye from time to
time; and so, on and on, over broken pavements, up and down endless
hills, through narrow streets and gloomy piazzas, by churches
innumerable, amidst an ever-shifting motley crowd of peasants, soldiers,
priests, and beggars, you journey onwards for two miles or so; you have
got at last to the modern quarter, where hotels are found, and where the
English congregate. There in the "Corso," and in one or two streets
leading out of it, there are foot-pavements, lamps at night, and windows
to the shops. A fair sprinkling of second-rate equipages roll by you,
bearing the Roman ladies, with their gaudy dresses, ill-assorted colours,
and their heavy, handsome, sensual features. The young Italian nobles,
with their English-cut attire, saunter past you listlessly. The peasants
are few in number now, but the soldiers and priests and beggars are never
wanting. These streets and shops, brilliant though they seem by contrast
with the rest of the city, would, after all, only be third-rate ones in
any other European capital, and will not detain you long. On again by
the fountain of Treves, where the water-stream flows day and night
through the defaced and broken statue-work; a few steps more, and then
you fall again into the narrow streets and the decayed piazzas; on again,
between high walls, along roads leading through desolate ruin-covered
vineyards, and you are come to another gate. The French sentinels are
changing guard. The dreary Campagna lies before you, and you have passed
through Rome.
And when our stroll was over, that sceptic and incurious fellow-traveller
of mine would surely turn to take a last look at the dark heap of roofs
and chimney-pots and domes, which lies mouldering in the valley at his
feet. If I were then to tell him, that in that city of some hundred and
seventy thousand souls, there were ten thousand persons in holy orders,
and between three and four hundred churches, of which nearly half had
convents and schools attached; if I were to add, that taking in novices,
scholars, choristers, servitors, beadles, and whole tribes of clerical
attendants, there were probably not far short of forty thousand persons,
who in some form or other lived upon and by the church, that is, in
plainer words, doing no labour themselves, lived on the labour of others,
he, I think, would answer then, that a city so priest-infested, priest-
ruled and priest-ridden, would be much such a city as he had seen with
me; such a city as Rome is now.
CHAPTER II. THE COST OF THE PAPACY.
In foreign discussions on the Papal question it is always assumed, as an
undisputed fact, that the maintenance of the Papal court at Rome is, in a
material point of view, an immense advantage to the city, whatever it may
be in a moral one. Now my own observations have led me to doubt the
correctness of this assumption, which, if true, forms an important item
in the whole matter under consideration. It is no good saying, as my
"Papalini" friends are wont to do, Rome gains everything and indeed only
exists by the Papacy. The real questions are, What class at Rome gain by
it, and what is it that they gain? There are four classes at Rome: the
priests, the nobles, the bourgeoisie, and the poor. Of course if anybody
gains it is the priesthood. If the Pope were removed from Rome, or if a
lay government were established (the two hypotheses are practically
identical), the number of the Clergy would undoubtedly be much
diminished. A large portion of the convents and clerical endowments
would be suppressed, and the present generation of priests would be heavy
sufferers. This result is inevitable. Under no free government would or
could a city of 170,000 inhabitants support 10,000 unproductive persons
out of the common funds; for this is substantially the case at Rome in
the present day. Every sixteen lay citizens, men, women, and children,
support out of their labour a priest between them. The Papal question
with the Roman priesthood is thus a question of daily bread, and it is
surely no want of charity to suppose that the material aspect influences
their minds quite as much as the spiritual. Still even with regard to
the priests there are two sides to the question. The system of political
and social government inseparable from the Papacy, which closes up almost
every trade and profession, drives vast numbers into the priesthood for
want of any other occupation. The supply of priests is, in consequence,
far greater than the demand, and, as the laws of political economy hold
good even in the Papal States, priest labour is miserably underpaid. It
is a Protestant delusion that the priests in Rome live upon the fat of
the land. What fat there is is certainly theirs, but then there are too
many mouths to eat it. The Roman priests are relatively poorer than
those in any other part of Italy. It is one of the great mysteries in
Rome how all the priests who swarm about the streets manage to live. The
clue to the mystery is to be found inside the churches. In every church
here, and there are 366 of them, some score or two of masses are said
daily at the different altars. The pay for performing a mass varies from
a "Paul" to a "Scudo;" that is, in round numbers, from sixpence to a
crown. The "good" masses, those paid for by private persons for the
souls of their relatives, are naturally reserved for the priests
connected with the particular church; while the poor ones, which are paid
for out of the funds of the church, are given to any priest who happens
to apply for them. So somehow or other, what with a mass or two a day,
or by private tuition, or by charitable assistance, or in some cases by
small handicrafts conducted secretly, the large floating population of
unemployed priests rub on from day to day, in the hope of getting
ultimately some piece of ecclesiastical patronage. Yet the distress and
want amongst them are often pitiable, and, in fact, amongst the many
sufferers from the artificial preponderance given to the priesthood by
the Papal system, the poorer class of priests are not among the least or
lightest.
The nobility as a body are sure to be more or less supporters of the
established order of things. Their interests too are very much mixed up
with those of the Papacy. There is not a noble Roman family which has
not one or more of its members among the higher ranks of the priesthood,
and to a considerable degree their distinctions, such as they are, and
their temporal prospects are bound up with the Popedom. Moreover, in
this rank of the social scale the private and personal influence of the
priests, through the women of the family, is very powerful. The more
active, however, and ambitious amongst the aristocracy feel deeply the
exclusion from public life, the absence of any opening for ambition, and
the gradual impoverishment of their property, which are the necessary
evils of an absolute ecclesiastical government.
The "Bourgeoisie" stand on a very different footing. They have neither
the moral influence of the priesthood nor the material wealth of the
nobility to console them for the loss of liberty; they form indeed the
"Pariahs" of Roman society. "In other countries," a Roman once said to
me, "you have one man who lives in wealth and a thousand who live in
comfort. Here the one man lives in comfort, and the thousand live in
misery." I believe this picture is only too true. The middle classes,
who live by trade or mental labour, must have a hard time of it. The
professions of Rome are overstocked and underpaid. The large class of
government officials or "impiegati," to whom admirers of the Papacy point
with such pride as evidence of the secular character of the
administration, are paid on the most niggardly scale; while all the
lucrative and influential posts are reserved for the priestly
administrators. The avowed venality of the courts of justice is a proof
that lawyers are too poorly remunerated to find honesty their best
policy, while the extent to which barbers are still employed as surgeons
shows that the medical profession is not of sufficient repute to be
prosperous. There is no native patronage for art, no public for
literature. The very theatres, which flourish in other despotic states,
are here but losing speculations, owing to the interference of clerical
regulations. There are no commerce and no manufactures in the Eternal
city. In a back street near the Capitol, over a gloomy, stable-looking
door, you may see written up "Borsa di Roma," but I never could discover
any credible evidence of business being transacted on the Roman change.
There is but one private factory in Rome, the Anglo-Roman Gas Company.
What trade there is is huckstering, not commerce. In fact, so Romans
have told me, you may safely conclude that every native you meet walking
in the streets here, in a broadcloth coat, lives from hand to mouth, and
you may pretty surely guess that his next month's salary is already
overdrawn. The crowds of respectably-dressed persons, clerks and
shopkeepers and artizans, whom you see in the lottery offices the night
before the drawing, prove the general existence not only of improvidence
but of distress.
The favourite argument in support of the Papal rule in Rome, is that the
poor gain immensely by it. I quite admit that the argument contains a
certain amount of truth. The priests, the churches, and the convents
give a great deal of employment to the working classes. There are
probably some 30,000 persons who live on the priests, or rather out of
the funds which support them. Then, too, the system of clerical charity
operates favourably for the very poor. Any Roman in distress can get
from his priest a "buono," or certificate, that he is in want of food,
and on presenting this at one of the convents belonging to the mendicant
orders, he will obtain a wholesome meal. No man in Rome therefore need
be reduced to absolute starvation as long as he stands well with his
priest; that is, as long as he goes to confession, never talks of
politics, and kneels down when the Pope passes. Now the evil moral
effects of such a system, its tendency to destroy independent
self-respect and to promote improvidence are obvious enough, and I doubt
whether even the positive gain to the poor is unmixed. The wages paid to
the servants of the Church, and the amount given away in charity, must
come out of somebody's pockets. In fact, the whole country and the poor
themselves indirectly, if not directly, are impoverished by supporting
these unproductive classes out of the produce of labour. If prevention
is better than cure, work is any day better than charity. After all,
too, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and nowhere are the poor
more poverty-stricken and needy than in Rome. The swarms of beggars
which infest the town are almost the first objects that strike a stranger
here, though strangers have no notion of the distress of Rome. The
winter, when visitors are here, is the harvest-time of the Roman poor. It
is the summer, when the strangers are gone and the streets deserted,
which is their season of want and misery.
The truth is, that Rome, at the present day, lives upon her visitors, as
much or more than Ramsgate or Margate, for I should be disposed to
consider the native commerce of either of these bathing-places quite as
remunerative as that of the Papal capital. The Vatican is the quietest
and the least showy of European courts; and of itself, whatever it may do
by others, causes little money to be spent in the town. Even if the Pope
were removed from Rome, I much doubt, and I know the Romans doubt,
whether travellers would cease to come, or even come in diminished
numbers. Rome was famous centuries before Popes were heard of, and will
be equally famous centuries after they have passed away. The churches,
the museums, the galleries, the ruins, the climate, and the recollections
of Rome, would still remain equally attractive, whether the Pope were at
hand or not. Under a secular government the city would be far more
lively and, in many respects, more pleasant for strangers. An
enterprising vigorous rule could probably do much to check the malaria,
to bring the Campagna into cultivation, to render the Tiber navigable, to
promote roads and railways, and to develop the internal resources of the
Roman States. The gain accruing from these reforms and improvements
would, in Roman estimation, far outweigh any possible loss in the number
of visitors, or from the absence of the Papal court. Moreover, whether
rightly or wrongly, all Romans entertain an unshakeable conviction that
in an united Italian kingdom, Rome must ultimately be the chief, if not
the sole capital of Italy.
These reasons, which rest on abstract considerations, naturally affect
only the educated classes who are also biassed by their political
predilections. The small trading and commercial classes are, on somewhat
different grounds, equally dissatisfied with the present state of things.
The one boon they desire, is a settled government and the end of this
ruinous uncertainty. Now a priestly government supported by French
bayonets can never give Rome either order or prosperity. For the sake of
quiet itself, they wish for change. With respect to the poor, it is very
difficult to judge what their feelings or wishes may be. From what I
have seen, I doubt, whether in any part of Italy, with the exception of
the provinces subject to Austrian oppression, the revolution is, strictly
speaking, a popular one. I suspect that the populace of Rome have no
strong desire for Italian unity or, still less for annexation to
Sardinia, but I am still more convinced that they have no affection or
regard whatever for the existing government; not even the sort of
attachment, valueless though it be, which the lazzaroni of Naples have
for their Bourbon princes. It is incredible, if any such a feeling did
exist, that it should refuse to give any sign of its existence at such a
time as the present.
With respect to the actual pecuniary cost of the Papal government, it is
not easy to arrive at any positive information; I have little faith in
statistics generally, and in Roman statistics in particular; I have,
however, before me the official Government Budget for the year 1858. Like
all Papal documents, it is confused and meagre, but yet some curious
conclusions may be arrived at from it. The year 1858 was as quiet a
year, be it remembered, as there has been in Italy for ten years past. It
was only on new year's day, in 1859, that Napoleon dropped the first hint
of the Italian war. The year 1858 may therefore be fairly regarded as a
normal year under the present Papal system. For this year the net
receipts of the Government were,
Scudi.
Direct Taxes . . . . 3,011571
Customs . . . . . . 5,444729
Stamps . . . . . . . 947184
Post . . . . . . . . 111848
Lottery . . . . . . 392813
Licences for Trade . . 174525
Total 10,082670
Now the census, taken at the end of 1857, showed a little over 600,000
families in the Papal States. The head therefore of every family had, on
an average, to pay about 16 sc. and a half, or 3 pounds. 7_s_. 9_d_.
annually for the expenses of the Government, which for so poor a country
is pretty well. Let us now see how that money is professed to have been
spent,
The net expenses are,
Scudi.
Army . . . . . . . . 2,014047
Public Debt . . . . 4,217708
Interior . . . . . . 1,507235
Currency . . . . . . 15115
Public Works . . . . 681932
Census . . . . . . . 88151
Grant for special
purposes to Minister
of Finance . . . 1,415404
Total 9,949592
Now the Pontifical army is kept up avowedly not for purposes of defence,
but to support the Government. The public debt of 66 millions of scudi
has been incurred for the sake of keeping up this army. The expenses of
the Interior mean the expenses of the police and spies, which infest
every town in the Papal dominions, and the grant for Special Purposes,
whatever else it may mean, which is not clear, means certainly some job,
which the Government does not like to avow. The only parts, therefore,
of the expenditure which can be fairly said to be for the benefit of the
nation, are the expenses of the Currency, Census and Public Works,
amounting altogether to 785198 scudi, or not a twelfth of the net income
raised by taxation. Commercially speaking, whatever may be the case
theologically, I am afraid the Papal system can hardly be said to pay.
CHAPTER III. THE MORALITY OF ROME.
We all know the story of "Boccaccio's" Jew, who went to Rome an
unbeliever, and came back a Christian. There is no need for alarm; it is
not my intention to repeat the story. Indeed the only reason for my
alluding to it, is to introduce the remark that, at the present day, the
Jew would have returned from Rome hardened in heart and unconverted. The
flagrant profligacy, the open immorality, which in the Hebrew's judgment
supplied the strongest testimony to the truth of a religion that survived
such scandals, exist no longer. Rome is, externally, the most moral and
decorous of European cities. In reality, she may be only a whited
sepulchre, but at any rate, the whitewash is laid on very thick, and the
plaster looks uncommonly like stone. From various motives, this feature
is, I think, but seldom brought prominently forward in descriptions of
the Papal city. Protestant and liberal writers slur over the facts,
because, however erroneously, they are deemed inconsistent with the
assumed iniquity of the Government and the corruptions of the Papacy.
Catholic narrators know perhaps too much of what goes on behind the
scenes to relish calling too close an attention to the apparent
proprieties of Rome. Be the cause what it may, the moral aspect of the
Papal city seems to me to be but little dwelt upon, and yet on many
accounts it is a very curious one.
As far as Sabbatarianism is concerned, Rome is the Glasgow of Italy. All
shops, except druggists', tobacconists', and places of refreshment, are
hermetically closed on Sundays. Even the barbers have to close at half-
past ten in the morning under a heavy fine, and during the Sundays in
Lent cafes and eating-houses are shut throughout the afternoon, because
the waiters are supposed to go to catechism. The English reading-rooms
are locked up; there is no delivery of letters, and no mails go out. A
French band plays on the Pincian at sunset, and the Borghese gardens are
thrown open; but these, till evening, are the only public amusements. At
night, it is true, the theatres are open, but then in Roman Catholic
countries, Sunday evening is universally accounted a feast. To make up
for this, the theatres are closed on every Friday in the year, as they
are too throughout Lent and Advent; and once a week or more there is sure
to be a Saint's day as well, on which shops and all are closed, to the
great trial of a traveller's patience. All the amusements of the Papal
subjects are regulated with the strictest regard to their morals. Private
or public gambling of any kind, excepting always the Papal Lottery, is
strictly suppressed. There are no public dancing-places of any kind, no
casinos or "cafes chantants." No public masked balls are allowed, except
one or two on the last nights of the Carnival. The theatres themselves
are kept under the most rigid "surveillance." Every thing, from the
titles of the plays to the petticoats of the ballet-girls, undergoes
clerical inspection. The censorship is as unsparing of "double
entendres" as of political allusions, and "Palais Royal" farces are
'Bowdlerized' down till they emerge from the process innocuous and dull;
compared with one at the "Apollo," a ballet at the Princess's was a wild
and voluptuous orgy.
The same system of repression prevails in everything. In the print-shops
one never sees a picture which even verges on impropriety. The few
female portraits exhibited in their windows are robed with an amount of
drapery which would satisfy the most prudish "sensibilities." All books,
which have the slightest amorous tendency, are scrupulously interdicted
without reference to their political views. The number of wine-shops
seems to me small in proportion to the size of the city, and in none of
them, as far as I could learn, are spirits sold. There is another
subject, which will suggest itself at once to any one acquainted with the
life of towns, but on which it is obviously difficult to enter fully. It
is enough to say, that what the author of "Friends in Council" styles,
with more sentiment than truth, "the sin of great cities," does not
"apparently" exist in Rome. Not only is public vice kept out of sight,
as in some other Italian cities, but its private haunts and resorts are
absolutely and literally suppressed. In fact, if priest rule were
deposed, and our own Sabbatarians and total-abstinence men and societies
for the suppression of vice, reigned in its stead, I doubt if Rome could
be made more outwardly decorous than it is at present.
This then is the fair side of the picture. What is the aspect of the
reverse? In the first place, the system requires for its working an
amount of constant clerical interference in all private affairs, which,
to say the least, is a great positive evil. Confession is the great
weapon by means of which morality is enforced. Servants are instructed
to report about their employers, wives about their husbands, children
about their parents, and girls about their lovers. Every act of your
life is thus known to, and interfered with, by the priests. I might
quote a hundred instances of petty interference: let me quote the first
few that come to my memory. No bookseller can have a sale of books
without submitting each volume to clerical supervision. An Italian
gentleman, resident here, had to my own knowledge to obtain a special
permission in order to retain a copy of Rousseau's works in his private
library. The Roman nobles are not allowed to hunt because the Pope
considers the amusement dangerous. Profane swearing is a criminal
offence. Every Lent all restaurateurs are warned by a solemn edict not
to supply meat on fast days, and then told that "whenever on the
forbidden days they are obliged to supply rich meats, they must do so in
a separate room, in order that scandal may be avoided, and that all may
know they are in the capital of the catholic world." Forced marriages
are matters of constant occurrence, and even strangers against whom a
charge of affiliation is brought are obliged either to marry their
accuser, or make provision for the illegitimate offspring. In the
provinces the system of interference is naturally carried to yet greater
lengths. Nine years ago certain Christians at Bologna, who had opened
shops in the Jewish quarter of the town, were ordered to leave at once,
because such a practice was in "open opposition to the Apostolic laws and
institutions." Again, Cardinal Cagiano, Bishop of Senigaglia, published
a decree in the year 1844, which has never been repealed, to promote
morality in his diocese. In that decree the following articles occur:
"All young men and women are strictly forbidden, under any pretext
whatever, to give or receive presents from each other before marriage.
All persons who have received such presents before the publication of
this decree, are required to make restitution of them within three
months, or to become betrothed to the donor within the said period.
Any one who contravenes these regulations is to be punished by fifteen
days imprisonment, during which he is to support himself at his own
expense, and the presents will be devoted to some pious purpose to be
determined on hereafter."
I could multiply instances of this sort indefinitely, but I know of none
more striking than the last.
So much for the mode in which the system is worked, and now as to its
practical result. To judge fully, it is necessary to get behind the
scenes, a thing not easy for a stranger anywhere, least of all here.
There is too the further difficulty, that when you have got behind the
scenes, it is not very easy to narrate your esoteric experiences to the
public. Even if there were no other objection, it would be useless to
quote individual stories and facts which have come privately to my
knowledge, and which would show Rome, in spite of its external propriety,
to be one of the most corrupt, debauched, and demoralized of cities. Each
separate story can be disputed or explained away, but the weight of the
general evidence is overpowering. In these matters it is best to keep to
the old Latin rule, "Experto crede." I have talked with many persons,
Romans, Italians, and foreign residents, on the subject, and from one and
all I have heard similar accounts. Every traveller I have ever met with,
who has made like inquiries, has come to a like conviction. In a country
where there is practically neither press nor public courts, nor
responsible government, where even no classified census is allowed to be
taken, statistics are hard to obtain, and of little value when obtained.
Personal evidence, unsatisfactory as it is, is after all the best you can
arrive at. With regard then to what, in its strictest sense, is termed
the "morality" of Rome, I must dismiss the subject with the remarks, that
the absence of recognized public resorts and agents of vice may be dearly
purchased when parents make a traffic in their own houses of their
children's shame, and that perhaps as far as the state is concerned the
debauchery of a few is a less evil than the dissoluteness of the whole
population. More I cannot and need not say. With respect to other sins
against the Decalogue, it is an easier task to speak. There is very
little drunkenness in Rome I freely admit, but then the Italians, like
most natives of warm countries, are naturally sober. Rome is certainly
not superior in this respect to other Italian cities; since the
introduction of the French soldiery probably the contrary. At the street
corners you constantly see exhortations against profane swearing, headed
"Bestemmiatore orrendo nome," but in spite of this, the amount of
blasphemies that any common Roman will pour forth on the slightest
provocation, is really appalling. Beggars too are universal. Everybody
begs; if you ask a common person your way along the street, the chances
are that he asks you for a "buono mano." Now, even if you doubt the
truth of Sheridan's dictum, that no man could be honest without being
rich, it is hard to believe in a virtuous beggar. The abundance, also,
of lotteries shakes one's faith in Roman morality. A population amongst
whom gambling and beggary are encouraged by their spiritual and temporal
rulers is not likely in other respects to be a virtuous or a moral one.
The frequency of violent crimes is in itself a startling fact.
To my eyes, indeed, the very look of the city and its inhabitants, is a
strong _prima facie_ ground of suspicion. There is vice on those worn,
wretched faces--vice in those dilapidated hovel-palaces--vice in those
streets, teeming with priests and dirt and misery. In fact, if you only
fancy to yourself a city, where there are no manufactures, no commerce,
no public life of any kind; where the rich are condemned to involuntary
idleness, and the poor to enforced misery; where there is a population of
some ten thousand ecclesiastics in the prime of life, without adequate
occupation for the most part, and all vowed to celibacy; where priests
and priest-rule are omnipotent, and where every outlet for the natural
desires and passions of men is carefully cut off--if you take in fully
all these conditions and their inevitable consequences, you will not be
surprised if to me, as to any one who knows the truth, the outward
morality of Rome seems but the saddest of its many mockeries.
CHAPTER IV. THE ROMAN PEOPLE.
"Senatus Populusque Romanus." The phrase sounds strangely, in my ears,
like the accents of an unknown language or the burden of a half-forgotten
melody. In those four initial letters there seems to me always to lie
embodied an epitome of the world's history--the rise and decline and fall
of Rome. On the escutcheons of the Roman nobles, the S.P.Q.R. are still
blazoned forth conspicuously, but where shall we look for the realities
expressed by that world-famed symbol? It is true, the Senate is still
represented by a single Senator, nominated by the Pope, who drives in a
Lord Mayor's state coach on solemn occasions; and regularly, on the first
night of the opera season, sends round ices, as a present to the favoured
occupants of the second and third tiers of boxes at the "Apollo." This
gentleman, by all the laws of senatorial succession, is the undoubted
heir and representative of the old Roman Senate, who sat with their togas
wrapped around them, waiting for the Gaul to strike; but alas, the
"Populus Romanus" has left behind him neither heir nor descendant.
Yet surely, if anything of dead Rome be still left in the living city, it
should be found in the Roman people. In the _Mysteres du Peuple_ of
Eugene Sue, there is a story, that to the Proletarian people, the sons of
toil and labour, belong genealogies of their own, pedigrees of families,
who from remote times have lived and died among the ranks of industry.
These fabulous families, I have often thought, should have had their home
in the Eternal City. Amongst the peasants that you meet, praying in the
churches, or basking in the sun-light, or toiling in the deadly Campagna
plains, there must be some, who, if they knew it, descend in direct
lineage from the ancient "Plebs." It may be so, or rather it must be so;
but of the fact there is little outward evidence. You look in vain for
the characteristic features of the old Roman face, such as you behold
them when portrayed in ancient statues. The broad low brow, the
depressed skull, the protruding under-jaw, and the thin compressed lips,
are to be seen no longer. Indeed, though I make the remark with the fear
of the artist-world before my eyes, I should hardly say myself, that the
Romans of the present day were a very handsome race; and of their own
type they are certainly inferior both to Tuscans and Neapolitans. The
men are well formed and of good height, but not powerful in build or
make, and their features are rather marked than regular. As for the
women, when you have once perceived that hair may be black as coal and
yet coarse as string, that bright sparkling eyes may be utterly devoid of
expression, and that an olive complexion may be deepened by the absence
of washing, you grow somewhat sceptical as to the reality of their
vaunted beauty. All this, however, is a matter of personal taste, about
which it is useless to express a decided opinion. I must content myself
with the remark, that the Roman peasantry as depicted, year after year,
on the walls of our academy, bear about the same resemblance to the
article provided for home consumption, as the ladies in an ordinary
London ball-room bear to the portraits in the "Book of Beauty." The
peasants' costumes too, like the smock-frocks and scarlet cloaks of Old
England, are dying out fast. On the steps in the "Piazza di Spagna," and
in the artists' quarter above, you see some score or so of models with
the braided boddices, and the head-dresses of folded linen, standing
about for hire. The braid, it is true, is torn; the snow-white linen
dirt-besmeared, and the brigand looks feeble and inoffensive, while the
hoary patriarch plays at pitch and toss: but still they are the same
figures that we know so well, the traditional Roman peasantry of the
"Grecian" and the "Old Adelphi." Unfortunately, they are the last of the
Romans. In other parts of the city the peasants' dresses are few and far
between; the costume has become so uncommon, as to be now a fashionable
dress for the Roman ladies at Carnival time and other holiday festivals.
On Sundays and "Festas" in the mountain districts you can still find real
peasants with real peasants' dresses; but even there Manchester stuffs
and cottons are making their way fast, and every year the old-fashioned
costumes grow rarer and rarer. A grey serge jacket, coarse nondescript-
coloured cloth trousers, and a brown felt hat, all more or less ragged
and dusty, compose the ordinary dress of the Roman working man. Female
dress, in any part of the world, is one of those mysteries which a wise
man will avoid any attempt to explain; I can only say, therefore, that
the dress of the common Roman women is much like that of other European
countries, except that the colours used are somewhat gayer and gaudier
than is common in the north.
Provisions are dear in Rome. Bread of the coarsest and mouldiest quality
costs, according to the Government tariff, by which its price is
regulated, from a penny to three halfpence for the English pound. Meat
is about a third dearer than in London, and clothing, even of the poorest
sort, is very high in price. On the other hand, lodgings, of the class
used by the poor, are cheap enough. There is no outlay for firing, as
even in the coldest weather (and I have known the temperature in Rome as
low as eight degrees below freezing-point), even well-to-do Romans never
think of lighting a fire; and then, in this climate, the actual quantity
of victuals required by an able-bodied labourer is far smaller than in
our northern countries, while, from the same cause, the use of strong
liquors is almost unknown. Tobacco too, which is all made up in the
Papal factories and chiefly grown in the country, is reasonable in price,
though poor in quality. In the country and the poorer parts of the city,
the dearest cigar you can buy is only a baioccho, or under one halfpenny;
and from this fact you may conclude what the price of the common cheap
cigars is to a native. From all these causes, I feel no doubt that the
cost of living for the poor is comparatively small, though of course the
rate of wages is small in proportion. For ordinary unskilled labour, the
day-wages, at the winter season, are about three pauls to three pauls and
a half; in summer about five pauls; and in the height of the vintage as
much as six or seven pauls, though this is only for a very few weeks. I
should suppose, therefore, that from 1_s_. 6_d_. to 1_s_. 9_d_. a day,
taking the paul at 5_d_., were the average wages of a good workman at
Rome. From these wages, small as they are, there are several deductions
to be made.
In the first place, the immense number of "festas" tells heavily on the
workman's receipts. On the more solemn feast-days all work is strictly
forbidden by the priests; and either employer or labourer, who was
detected in an infraction of the law, would be subject to heavy fines.
Even on the minor festivals, about the observance of which the Church is
not so strict, labour is almost equally out of the question. The people
have got so used to holiday keeping, that nothing but absolute necessity
can induce them to work, except on working days. All over Italy this is
too much the case. I was told by a large manufacturer in Florence, that
having a great number of orders on hand, and knowing extreme distress to
prevail among his workmen's families, he offered double wages to any one
who came to work on a "festa" day, but that only two out of a hundred
responded to his offer. I merely mention this fact, as one out of many
such I have heard, to show how this abuse must prevail in Rome, where
every moral influence is exerted in favour of idleness against industry,
and where the observance of holy days is practised most religiously.
Then, too, the higher rate of wages paid in summer is counterbalanced by
the extra risk to which the labourer is exposed. The ravages created by
the malaria fevers amongst the ill-bred, ill-clothed, and ill-cared-for
labourers, are really fearful. Indeed it is hardly an exaggeration to
say, that the whole working population of Rome is eaten up with malaria.
I feel myself convinced that the misery and degradation of the Papal
States are to be attributed to two causes, the enormous burden of the
priesthood, and the ravages of the malaria. How far these two causes are
in any way connected with each other, I have never been able to
determine. It is one of the rhetorical exaggerations which have impaired
the utility of the _Question Romaine_, that M. About, in his remarkable
work, always treats the malaria as if it was solely due to the
inefficiency of the Papal Government, and would disappear with the
deposition of the Pope. This unphilosophical view is generally adopted
by liberal opponents of the Papacy, who lay the malaria to its doors,
while Papal advocates, on the contrary, always treat the malaria as a
mysterious scourge which can never be removed or even palliated; a view
almost as unphilosophical as the other. For my own part, I have only
been able to arrive at three isolated conclusions on the subject. First,
that mere cultivation of the Campagna, as shown by Prince Borghese's
unsuccessful experiments, does not at any rate immediately affect the
virulence of the miasma, or whatever the malaria may be. Secondly, that
the malaria can actually be built out, or, in other words, if the
Campagna was covered with a stone pavement, the disease would disappear--a
remedy obviously impracticable; and lastly, that though the existence of
the malaria cannot be removed, as far I can see, yet that its evil
effects might be immensely lessened by warm clothing, good food, and
prompt medical aid at the commencement of the malady. Whatever tends to
improve the general condition of the Roman peasantry will put these
remedies more and more within their reach, and will therefore tend to
check the ravages of the malaria. Thus, the inefficient and obstructive
Government of the Vatican, which checks all material as well as all moral
progress, increases indirectly the virulence of the fever-plague; but
this, I think, is the most that can fairly be stated.
I trust that, considering the importance of the subject, this digression,
unsatisfactory as it is, may be pardoned; and I now turn to the third
curse, which eats up the wages of the working man at Rome--a curse even
greater, I think, than the "festas" or the malaria--I mean, the
universality of the middle-man system. If you require any work done,
from stone carving to digging, you seldom or never deal with the actual
workman. If you are a farmer and want your harvest got in, you contract
months beforehand with an agent, who agrees to supply you with harvest-
men in certain numbers, at a certain price, out of which price he pockets
as large a percentage as he can, and has probably commissions to pay
himself to some sub-contractor. If you are a sculptor and wish a block
of marble chiselled in the rough, the man you contract with to hew the
block at certain day-wages brings a boy to do the work at half the above
amount or less, and only looks in from time to time to see how the work
is proceeding. It is the same in every branch of trade or business. If
you wish to make a purchase, or effect a sale, or hire a servant, you
have a whole series of commissions or brokerages to pay before you come
into contact with the principal.
If you inquire why this system is not broken through, why the employer
does not deal directly with his workmen, you are told that the custom of
the country is against any other method; that amongst the workmen
themselves there is so much terrorism and intimidation and _espionnage_,
that any single employer or labourer, who contracted for work
independently, would run a risk of annoyance or actual injury; of having,
for example, his block of marble split "by a slip of the hand," or his
tools destroyed, or a knife stuck into him as he went home at night, and,
more than all, that, without the supervision of the actual overseer, your
workmen would cheat you right and left, no matter what wages you paid.
After all it is better to be cheated by one man than by a dozen, and
being at Rome you must do as the Romans do.
It may possibly have been observed that, in the foregoing paragraph, I
have spoken of the "workmen at Rome," not of the Roman workmen. The
difference, though slight verbally, is an all-important one. The workmen
in Rome are not Romans, for the Romans proper never work. The Campagna
is tilled in winter by groups of peasants, who come from the Marches, in
long straggling files, headed by the "Pifferari," those most inharmonious
of pipers. In summer-time the harvest is reaped and the vintage gathered
in by labourers, whose homes lie far away in the Abruzzi mountains. In
many ways these mountaineers bear a decided resemblance to the swarms of
Irish labourers who come across to England in harvest-time. They are
frugal, good-humoured, and, compared to the native Romans, honest and
hard-working. A very small proportion too of the working-men in Rome
itself are Romans. Certain trades, as that of the cooks for instance,
are almost confined to the inhabitants of particular outlying districts.
The masons, carpenters, carvers, and other mechanical trades, are filled
by men who do not belong to the city, and who are called and considered
foreigners. Of course the rule is not without exceptions, and you will
find genuine Romans amongst the common workmen, but amongst the skilled
workmen hardly ever. There is a very large, poor, I might almost say,
pauper population in Rome, and in some form or other these poor must work
for their living, but their principle is to do as little work as
possible. There still exists amongst the Romans a sort of debased,
imperial pride, a belief that a Roman is _per se_ superior to all other
Italians. For manual work, or labour under others, they have an equal
contempt and dislike. All the semi-independent trades, like those of cab-
drivers, street-vendors, petty shopkeepers, &c. are eagerly sought after
and monopolized by Romans. The extent to which small trades are carried
on by persons utterly without capital and inevitably embarrassed with
debt, is one of the chief evils in the social system which prevails here.
If the Romans also, like the unjust steward, are too proud to dig, unlike
that worthy, to beg they are _not_ ashamed. Begging is a recognized and
a respected profession, and if other trades fail there is always this
left. The cardinal principle of Papal rule is to teach its subjects to
rely on charity rather than industry. In order to relieve in some
measure the fearful distress that existed among the poor of Rome in the
early spring, the Government took some thousand persons into their
employment, and set them to work on excavating the Forum. The sight of
these men working, or, more correctly speaking, idling at work, used to
be reckoned one of the stock jokes of the season. Six men were regularly
employed in conveying a wheelbarrow filled with two spadefuls of soil.
There was one man to each handle, two in front to pull when the road
rose, and one on each side to give a helping hand and keep the barrow
steady. You could see any day long files of such barrows, so escorted,
creeping to and from the Forum. It is hardly necessary to say that
little progress was ever made in the excavations, or, for that matter,
intended to be made. Yet the majority of these workmen were able-bodied
fellows, who received tenpence a day for doing nothing. Much less injury
would have been inflicted on their self-respect by giving them the money
outright than in return for this mockery of labour. Moreover the poor in
Rome, as I have mentioned elsewhere, are not afraid of actual starvation.
"Well-disposed" persons, with a good word from the priests, can obtain
food at the convents of the mendicant friars. I am not saying there is
no good in this custom; in fact, it is almost the one good feature I know
of connected with the priestly system of government; but still, on an
indolent and demoralised population like that of Rome, the benefit of
this sort of charity, which destroys the last and the strongest motive
for exertion, is by no means an unmixed one.
The amusements of the people are much what might be expected from their
occupations. To do them justice, they drink but moderately; but whenever
they can spare the time and money, they crowd out into the roadside
"Osterias," and spend hours, smoking and sipping the red wine lazily.
Walking is especially distasteful to them; and on a Sunday and festa-day
you will see hundreds of carriages filled with working people, though the
fares are by no means cheap. Whole families will starve themselves for
weeks before the Carnival, and leave themselves penniless at the end, to
get costumes and carriages to drive down the "Corso" with on the gala
days. The Romans, too, are a nation of gamblers. Their chief amusement,
not to say their chief occupation, is gambling. In the middle of the
day, at street-corners and in sunny spots, you see groups of working-men
playing at pitch halfpenny, or gesticulating wildly over the mysterious
game of "Moro." Skittles and stone-throwing are the only popular
amusements which require any bodily exertion; and both of these, as
played here, are as much chance as skill. The lottery, too, is the great
national pastime.
This picture of the Roman people may not seem a very favourable or a very
promising one. I quite admit, that many persons, who have come much into
contact with them, speak highly of their general good humour, their
affectionate feelings and their sharpness of intellect. At the same
time, I have observed that these eulogists of the Roman populace are
either Papal partizans who, believing that "this is the best of all
possible worlds," wish to prove also that "everything here is for the
best," or else they are vehement friends of Italy, who are afraid of
damaging their beloved cause by an admission of the plain truth, that the
Romans are not as a people either honest, truthful or industrious. For
my own part, my faith is different. A bad government produces bad
subjects, and I am not surprised to find in the debasement and
degradation of a priest-ruled people the strongest condemnation of the
Papal system.
CHAPTER V. TRIALS FOR MURDER.
The idler about the streets of Rome may, from time to time, catch sight,
on blank walls and dead corners, of long white strips of paper, covered
with close-printed lines of most uninviting looking type, and headed with
the Papal arms--the cross-keys and tiara. If, being like myself
afflicted with an inquisitive turn of mind, he takes the trouble of
deciphering these hieroglyphic documents, his labour would not be
altogether thrown away. Those straggling strips, stuck up in out-of-the-
way places, glanced at by a few idle passers-by, and torn down by the
prowling vagabonds of the streets after a day or two for the sake of the
paper, are the sole public records of justice issued, or allowed to be
issued, under the Pontifical government. Trials are carried on here with
closed doors; no spectators are admitted; no reports of the proceedings
are published. In capital cases, however, _after_ the execution of the
criminal has taken place a sort of _Proces verbal_ of the case and of the
trial is placarded on the walls of the chief towns.
During the period of my stay at Rome there were three executions in
different parts of the Papal territory. Whether by accident or by design
I cannot say, but all these executions occurred within a short period of
each other, and, in consequence, three such statements were issued almost
at the same time by the Government. With considerable difficulty I
succeeded in obtaining copies of these statements, not, I am bound to
say, because there seemed to be any reluctance in furnishing them, but
because the fact of anybody wishing to obtain copies was so unusual, that
there was no preparation made for supplying them; and, at last, I only
succeeded in procuring them from a printer's devil to the Stanperia
Apostolica. The facts narrated in them, and the circumstances alluded
to, seem to me to throw a strange light on the administration of justice,
and the daily life of this priest-ruled country. It is as such that I
wish to comment on them. In these statements, be it remembered, there is
no question of political or clerical bias. The facts stated are all
facts, admitted by the authorities of their own free will and pleasure;
and if, as I think, these facts tell most unfavourably on the judicial
system of our clerical rulers, it is, at any rate, out of their own
mouths they are convicted. All, therefore, that I propose to do is,
having these official statements before me, to tell the stories that they
contain, as shortly and as clearly as I can, adding no comment of my own
but what is necessary to explain the facts in question. Let me take
first the case, which is entitled "Cannara contro Luigi Bonci;" the
township of Cannara, where the crime was committed, being what we should
call in a civil suit the plaintiff, and the accused Bonci the defendant.
CHAPTER V.--continued. THE "BONCI" MURDER.
Some three years ago, then, there lived in the hamlet of Cannara, near
Perugia, a family called Bonci. They belonged to the peasant class, and
were poor, even among the Papal peasantry. The family consisted of the
father and mother, and of their son and daughter, both grown up. Between
the father and son there had long been ill-blood. The cause of this want
of family harmony is but indistinctly stated, but apparently it was due
to the irregular habits of the son, and to the severity of the father;
while all this domestic misery was rendered doubly bitter by the almost
abject want of the household. On the night of November the 9th, 1856,
Venanzio Bonci, the father, Maria Rosa, his wife, and their daughter,
Caterina, were at supper in the miserable room, which formed the whole of
their dwelling, waiting for the return of the son, Luigi, who had been
absent ever since the morning. There had been frequent quarrels before
between father and son about Luigi's stopping out late, and now it was
past midnight. There was no light in the room except a faint flicker
from the embers, and the feeble glimmering of the starlight which entered
through the open windows. A noise was heard in the stable underneath the
room, and the father, thinking it was the son, called out three or four
times, but got no answer. A few minutes after Luigi entered without the
lantern, which he had left below in the stable, and although his sister
bade him good night he made no reply. As he entered the room his father
called to him, "A fine time of night to come home." "What then?" was the
only answer given by Luigi. "You have never been home since morning,"
went on the father. "What then?" was still the only answer. The father
then told the son to hold his tongue, and again received the same reply.
At last Venanzio, losing his temper, called out, "Be quiet, or I'll break
your head;" or, according to the story, "I'll murder you:" to which Luigi
only answered, "I may as well die to-day as to-morrow." After that there
was a short scuffle heard, and Venanzio suddenly cried out as if in pain,
"My God! my God!" The mother and daughter screamed for help, but by the
time the neighbours had come in with lights, Luigi had run off. Venanzio
was found reeling to and fro, with blood pouring from several wounds,
and, in spite of medical aid, he died in the course of a few hours.
Almost immediately after the commission of the crime Luigi was found by
the gendarmes in the cottage of an uncle, and arrested on the spot.
These, as far as I can learn from the very confused documents before me,
are all the facts admitted without question; or, more strictly speaking,
which the Government states to have been unquestioned. Luigi was
arrested on the night of the murder. Such small evidence as there was
could have been ascertained in twenty-four hours, and yet the prisoner
was never brought to trial till the 3rd of May, 1858; that is, eighteen
months afterwards. On that day Luigi Bonci was arraigned before the
civil and criminal court of Perugia, on the two counts of parricide, and
of having illegal arms in his possession. The Court was composed of the
President, Judge, Assistant Judge, and Deputy Judge of the district.
These gentlemen (all, I should state, lay officials) were assisted by the
public prosecutor and the Government counsel for the defence. The course
of proceedings is stated to have been as follows: prayers were first
offered up for the Divine guidance, the prisoner was introduced and
identified, the written depositions were read over, a narrative of the
facts was given by the president, the prisoner was called upon to reply
to the charges alleged against him, the witnesses for the crown and for
the prisoner were heard respectively, the counsel for the prosecution
called upon the court to condemn the prisoner, and was replied to by the
counsel for the defence; the discussion was then declared closed, and
after the judges had retired and deliberated, their sentence was given.
All the facts I have been able to put together about the case are
gathered from this sentence and from those of the courts of appeal. These
sentences, however, are extremely lengthy, very indistinct, and
encumbered with a great deal of legal phraseology. As they are all alike
I may as well give an abstract of this one as a specimen of all. The
sentence begins with the following moral remarks: "Frequent paternal
admonitions, alleged scarcity of daily food, and the evil counsels of
others, had alienated the heart of the prisoner to such an extent, that
feelings of affection and reverence towards his own father, Venanzio, had
given place to contempt, disobedience, ill-will, and even worse." No
one, however, would have supposed that he "was capable of becoming a
parricide, as was too clearly proved on the fatal night in question."
After these preliminary reflections comes a narration of the facts much
in the words in which I have given them. This is followed by a statement
of the arguments for the prosecution and for the defence, consisting of a
number of verbose paragraphs, each beginning, "considering that," &c. The
case of the prosecution was clear enough. The medical evidence proved
that the father died of the wounds received on the above-named night. The
fact that the wounds were inflicted by the prisoner, was established by
the evidence of his mother and sister, who overheard the quarrel between
him and his father, by the flight after commission of the crime, by the
discovery of a blood-stained knife dropped on the threshold, by the
deposition of the father before death, and lastly, by the confession of
the prisoner himself, who admitted the crime, though under extenuating
circumstances. The fact that the sister never heard the knife open,
although it had three clasps, was asserted to be evidence that the
prisoner entered the room with his knife open and intending to commit the
crime. This charge of _malice prepense_ was supported by the son's
refusal to answer his father, by the insolence of his language, and by
the number and vehemence of the stabs he inflicted.
The prisoner's defence was also very simple. According to his own story,
he was half drunk on his return home. His father not only taunted and
threatened him, but at last seized the door-bar and began knocking him
about the head; and then, at last, maddened with pain and passion, he
drew out a knife he had picked up on the road, and stabbed his father,
hardly knowing what he did. On the bare statement of facts, I should
deem this version of the story the more probable of the two, but as no
details whatever are given of the evidence on either side, it is
impossible to judge. The court at any rate decided that there was no
proof of the prisoner having been drunk, and that the evidence of his
father having struck him was of a suspicious character, "while," they
add, "it would be absurd and immoral to maintain, that a father, whose
right and duty it is to correct his children (and indeed on this occasion
correction was abundantly deserved by the insolent demeanour of Luigi)
could be considered to provoke his son by a slight personal
chastisement." The son, by the way, was over one and twenty, a fact to
which no allusion is made. As "a forlorn hope," in the words of the
sentence, the counsel for the defence asserted, that whatever the crime
of the prisoner might be, it was not parricide, from the simple fact that
Luigi was not Venanzio's son. The facts of the case appear to have been,
that Maria Rosa Battistoni being then unmarried, gave birth in July 1835
to a son, who was the prisoner at the bar; that shortly afterwards the
vicar of Cannara gave information to the Episcopal court of Assisi, that
Maria Rosa had been seduced by Venanzio Bonci and had had an illegitimate
child by him; that, in consequence, a formal requisition was addressed by
the above court to Venanzio, and that he thereupon acknowledged the
paternity of the child, and expressed his readiness to marry the mother.
The marriage was therefore solemnized, and the child entered in the
church-books as the legitimized son of Venanzio and Maria Bonci, in June,
1836. Against this strong presumptive evidence of paternity, and the
natural inference to be drawn from the child having been brought up and
educated as Venanzio's son, there were only, we are told, to be set,
alleged expressions of doubt on the father's part, when in a passion, as
to his being really the father, and also certain confessions of the
mother to different parties, that Luigi was not the child of her husband.
All these confessions however, so it is asserted, were proved to be
subsequent in date to the son's arrest, and therefore, probably, made
with a view to save his life. The plea is in consequence rejected.
No defence was attempted to the second count. Both charges are therefore
declared fully proved; and as the punishment for parricide is public
execution, and the penalty for having in one's possession (a lighter
offence by the way, than using) any weapon without special license,
consists of imprisonment from two to twelve months, and of a fine from
five to sixty scudi, therefore the court "condemns Luigi Bonci for the
first count, to be publicly executed in Cannara, and to make compensation
to the heirs of the murdered man, according to the valuation of the civil
tribunals, and to pay the cost of the trial; and on the second count, the
court" (with a pedantic mockery of mercy) "considers the first three
months of the incarceration the prisoner has already undergone to be
sufficient punishment, coupled with a fine of five scudi and the loss of
the weapon."
This summary will, I fear, give the reader too favourable an opinion of
the original sentence. In order to make the story at all intelligible, I
have had to pick out my facts, from a perfect labyrinth of sentences and
parentheses. All I, or any one else can state is, that these seem to be
the facts, which seem to have been proved by the witnesses. What the
character of the evidence was, or what was the relative credibility of
the witnesses, whose very names I know not, or how far their assertions
were borne out or contradicted by circumstantial proof, are all matters
on which (though the whole character of the crime depends on them) I can
form no opinion whatever.
The trial occupied but one day, and yet the above sentence, it appears,
was not communicated to the prisoner till the 15th of October, 1858, that
is, over five months afterwards. When the official announcement of the
sentence was made, the prisoner declared his intention of appealing
against its justice. By the Papal law, every person condemned for a
criminal offence, by the lay tribunals, has the right of appealing to the
Supreme Pontifical Court. It is, therefore, needless to say, that in all
cases where sentence of death is passed, an appeal is made on any ground,
however trivial, as the condemned culprit cannot lose by this step, and
may gain. The practical and obvious objection to this unqualified power
of appeal, is that the supreme ecclesiastical court is the real judge,
not the nominal lay court, which does little more than register the fact,
that the crime is proved _prima facie_.
On the 15th of February, 1859, after a delay of four months more from the
time of appeal, the court of the supreme tribunal of the Consulta Sacra,
assembled at the Monte Citorio in Rome, to try the appeal. The court was
composed of six "most illustrious and reverend Judges," all "Monsignori"
and all dignitaries of the Church, assisted by a public prosecutor and
counsel for the defence, attached to the Papal exchequer. The course of
proceedings appears to be much the same as in the inferior courts, except
that no witnesses, save the prisoner, were examined orally, and the whole
evidence was taken from written depositions. At last, after "invoking
the most sacred name of God," the court pronounce their sentence. This
sentence is in a great measure a recapitulation of the preceding one.
Either no new facts were adduced, or none are alluded to. The grounds
for the defence are the same as on the previous occasion, namely, the
provocation given by the father, and the doubt as to the son's paternity.
There were, in fact, two questions before the court. First, whether the
crime committed was murder or manslaughter; and, if it was murder,
whether the murderer was or was not the son of the murdered man. Instead,
however, of facing either of these questions of fact, the court seems to
enter upon abstract considerations, which to our notions are quite
irrelevant. The degree to which paternal corrections can be carried
without abuse, and the problem whether a man who kills a person, whom he
believes and has reason to believe to be his father, but who is not so in
fact, is guilty or not of the sin of parricide, seem rather questions for
clerical casuistry than considerations which bear upon facts. The final
conclusion drawn from these various reflections is, that the court
confirms the judgment of the Perugian tribunal, in every respect.
The rejection of the appeal is not communicated for two months more, that
is, not till the 22nd of April, to the prisoner, who at once appeals
again against the execution of the verdict to the Upper Court of the
Supreme Tribunal. On the 13th of May the case comes on for its third and
last trial. The court is again composed of six ecclesiastics of high
rank, assisted by the same official counsel as before; the same course of
proceeding is adopted, except that the prisoner is not brought into court
or examined. Again, after "invoking the most holy name of God," the
tribunal pronounces, not its sentence this time, but its judgment. This
judgment alludes only to the two grounds on which the appeal is based.
The first is the question of paternity, which is at once dismissed, as
being a matter of evidence that has been already decided. The second
ground of appeal is a technical and a legal one. The defence appears to
have pleaded, that the original arrest was illegal, and that, by this
fact, the whole trial was vitiated. On both sides it was admitted that
the prisoner was arrested without a warrant, and not in "flagrante
delicto," and that therefore the arrest was, strictly speaking, illegal.
The court, however, decides, that though the prisoner was not taken in
the act, yet his guilt was so manifest, that the gendarmes were justified
in acting as if they had caught him perpetrating the crime, while in
offences of great atrocity the police have also a discretionary power to
arrest offenders, even without warrants. Though in this particular
instance the result is not much to be regretted, yet it is obvious, that
the admission of such a principle, and such an interpretation of the law,
gives the police unlimited power of arrest, subject to the approval of
their superiors: whether right or wrong, therefore, the appeal is
dismissed, and the final sentence of death pronounced.
It seems that this verdict was submitted on the 24th of May by the
President of the Supreme Court to the consideration of his Holiness the
Pope, who offered no objection to its execution. The prisoner's last
chance was now gone, but, with a cruel mercy, he was left to linger on
for eight months more in uncertainty. It was only on the 3rd of January,
1860, that orders were sent from Rome to Perugia, for the execution to
take place there instead of at Cannara, on the 13th. On that day the
verdict of the court is conveyed to the unhappy wretch. On the 14th, so
the last paragraph informs us, "The condemned" Luigi Bonci "was beheaded
by the public executioner, in the market-place of Perugia, and his head
was there exposed for an hour to the gaze of the assembled multitude."
On the 18th the report, from which these facts are taken, was placarded
on the walls of Rome. The murder is committed in November, 1856; the
murderer is arrested on the night of the crime; for that crime he is not
tried at all till May, 1858; his final trial does not come off till May,
1859, and his execution is deferred till January, 1860. For three years
and a quarter after the commission of the murder no report is published.
These facts need no comment.
CHAPTER V.--continued. THE "UGOLINI" MURDER.
Of late years, round and about Viterbo, there was a well-known character,
Giovanni Ugolini by name, a sort of itinerant "Jack-of-all-trades," who
wandered about from place to place, picking up any odd job he could find,
and begging when he could turn his hand to nothing else. He is described
in the legal reports as a Tinker and Umbrella-mender, but his especial
line of industry, novel to us at any rate, seems to have been that of a
scraper and cleaner of old tombstones. By these various pursuits, he
scraped together a good bit of money for a man in his position, and at
the end of his winter circuit, in the year 1857, he had saved up by
common report as much as 70 scudi, or about 14 pounds odd. On the 4th of
May in that year, Ugolini left the little town of Castel Giorgio, with
the avowed intention of going to Viterbo, to change his monies into
Tuscan coin. Being belated on his road, he resolved to stop over the
night at the house of a certain Andrea Volpi which lay on his road, and
where he had often slept before. On the following morning, about eight
o'clock, he left Volpi's house and went on his journey towards Viterbo.
Nothing more is positively known about him, except that on the same day
his body was found on a bye-path, a little off the direct Viterbo road,
covered with wounds. No money was discovered about his person, while
there was every indication of his clothes and pack having been rummaged
and rifled.
Assuming, as one must, the correctness of these facts, there can be no
doubt that a very brutal murder and robbery had been committed. For some
reasons, what, we are not told, the suspicions of the police fell at once
on one of Volpi's sons, called Serafino, a lad of about 22, and on a
friend of his, Bonaventura Starna, about two years older than himself.
Both of these persons, who were common labourers, were, in consequence,
arrested on the 7th of May. They were not tried, however, till the 27th
of April, in the year following, when they were arraigned for the murder
before the lay criminal and civil court of Viterbo.
The two prisoners, nevertheless, are not tried on the same charge. Volpi
is arraigned by the public prosecutor on a charge of wilful murder,
accompanied with treachery and robbery, while Starna is only brought to
trial as an accomplice to the crime, not as a principal. Before the
actual guilt of either prisoner is ascertained, the public prosecutor,
that is, the Government, decides the relative degree of their respective
hypothetical guilt. The justice of this proceeding may be questioned,
but its motive is palpable enough. There was little or no direct
evidence against the prisoners, and to convict either of them, it was
necessary to rely upon the testimony of the other.
"With both the prisoners," so runs the sentence of the court, "a criminal
motive could be established in the fact of their avowed poverty, as they
each clearly admitted, that neither they nor their families possessed
anything in the world, and that they derived the means of their miserable
sustenance from their daily labour alone." A very close intimacy was
proved to have existed between the prisoners, so much so, indeed, that
Starna had frequently been reproved by his parents for his friendship
with a man who stood in such ill repute as Volpi. The fact that the
murdered man was, or was believed to be in possession of money, was shown
to be well known amongst the Volpi family. Two of Serafino Volpi's
brothers were reported to have spoken to third parties of Ugolini's
savings, and one of them expressed a wish to rob him. Why this brother
was neither arrested nor apparently examined, is one of the many
mysteries, by the way, you come across in perusing these Papal reports.
Serafino too had mentioned himself, to a neighbour, his suspicion of the
tinker's having saved money. On the morning of the murder, Starna was
known to have come to the Volpi's cottage, to have talked with Serafino,
and to have left again in his company, shortly after Ugolini's departure.
After about an hour's absence, Serafino Volpi returned home, and
therefore had time enough to commit the murder. He was shown, moreover,
to have been in possession of a knife, about which he could give no
satisfactory account, and which might have inflicted the wounds found on
the corpse.
These appear to have been all the facts which could be established
against either Volpi or Starna by positive evidence, and, at the worst,
such facts could only be said to constitute a case for suspicion.
Previously, however, to the trial, Starna turned, what we should call,
"King's evidence," and, in contradiction to his foregoing statements,
made a confession, on which the prosecution practically rested the whole
of its case. According to this confession of Starna's, on the morning of
the murder he called by accident at the Volpi's, and stopped there, till
after the tinker, who was an entire stranger to him, had left the house.
Serafino Volpi then offered to accompany him to his (Starna's) house, on
the pretence of borrowing some tool or other. They walked quickly to
avoid the rain, which was falling heavily, and shortly overtook Ugolini,
who exchanged a few words with Volpi about the weather, and then turned
off along a bye-road. Thereupon Volpi proposed that they should follow
the old man and rob him, adding, "he has got a whole lot of coppers."
Starna, according to his own story, refused to have anything to do with
the matter; on which Volpi said, in that case he should do it alone, and
asked Starna to go and fetch the tool he wanted, and bring it to him
where they were standing. Starna then left Volpi running across the
fields to overtake the tinker, and went home to find the tool. In a very
short time afterwards, as he was coming back to the appointed meeting-
place, he met Volpi in a great state of agitation, who told him that the
job was finished, and Ugolini's throat cut, but that only 20 pauls' worth
of copper money, about eight shillings, were found upon him. Starna
admitted that he then took eight pauls as his own share in the booty, and
told Volpi to wash off some spots of blood visible on his sleeve. He
also added, that later on the same day he met Volpi again, and then
expressed his alarm at what had happened; on which he received the
answer, "If you had been with me, you would not be alive now."
One can hardly conceive a more suspicious story, or one more clearly
concocted to give the best colour to the witness's own conduct, at the
expense of his fellow-prisoner. No evidence whatever appears to have
been brought in support of this confession. The court, notwithstanding,
decides that the truth of this statement is fully established by internal
and external testimony, and therefore declares that the alleged crimes
are clearly proved against both the prisoners. "Considering,"
nevertheless, "that though Starna was an accomplice in the crime, from
his having assisted Volpi, and from having, by his own confession, shared
in the booty, yet that his guilt was less, both in the conception and in
the perpetration of the crime, there being no proof that he had taken any
active part in the murder of Ugolini," therefore, "in the most holy name
of God," the court sentences Volpi to public execution, and Starna to
twenty years at the galleys.
Of course, both the prisoners resorted to their invariable right of
appeal, but their case did not come on before the lower court of the
Supreme Clerical Tribunal at Rome for upwards of a year, namely, on the
17th of May, 1859. At this trial, no new facts whatever appear to have
been adduced. I gather indistinctly, that Volpi's defence was that he
had not left his father's house at all on the morning of the murder, but
that his attempt to prove an "alibi" was unsuccessful. The chief object
indeed of the very lengthy sentence of the court, recapitulating the
evidence already stated, is to establish the comparative innocence of
Starna, who, for some cause or other, seems to have been favourably
regarded. We are told, that "the confession of Starna is confirmed by a
thousand proofs;" that "it is clearly shown" that Starna "in this
confession did not deny his own responsibility; a fact which gives his
statement the character of an incriminative and not of an exonerative
confession; and that though he might possibly have wished, in his
statement of the facts, to modify and extenuate his own share in the
crime, yet there was no reason to suspect that he wished gratuitously to
aggravate the guilt of his comrade;" and that also taking into
consideration the villainous character of Volpi, it cannot be doubted,
that he was the principal in the crime. The court at Viterbo had decided
that the crime of the prisoners was murder, coupled with robbery and
treachery. The Court of Appeal decides, on what seem sufficient grounds,
that there is no proof of treachery, and therefore, the crime not being
of so heinous a character, reduces the period of Starna's punishment from
twenty to fifteen years, while it simply confirms the sentence of death
on Volpi.
Again, as a matter of course, there is an appeal from this sentence to
the upper court of the Supreme Tribunal, which appeal comes off after
four months' delay, on the 9th of September, 1859. The only ground of
appeal brought forward is one which, according to our notions of law,
should have been brought forward from the first, namely, that the guilt
of Volpi is not adequately proved by the unsupported statement of his
accomplice Starna, and "that the evidence which corroborates this
statement, only constitutes an _a priori_ probability of his guilt." The
court, however, dismisses this plea at once, on the ground that it is not
competent to take cognizance of an argument based on the abstract merits
of the case, and therefore confirms the verdict.
On the 25th of November the sentence is submitted to, and approved by,
the Pope. On the 3rd of January, 1860, orders are issued from Rome for
the execution to take place. On the 17th the authorities of Viterbo
notify to the prisoner that his last appeal has been dismissed, and "call
on the military to lend their support to the execution of the sentence,"
and on the following day, two years and eight months after his arrest,
Volpi is executed for the murder of Ugolini on the Piazza della Rocca at
Viterbo. On that day, too, appears the first report of his crime and
trial.
CHAPTER V.--continued. THE "AVANZI" MURDER.
In July, 1859, there were in the Bagnio of Civita Vecchia two galley
slaves, Antonio Simonetti and Domenico Avanzi. Simonetti was a man of
thirty, whose life, short as it was, seemed to have been one long career
of crime. He had enlisted at an early age in the Pontifical dragoons,
and served for seven years; on leaving the army, he became a porter, and
within a few months was guilty of a highway robbery, and sentenced to the
galleys for life, then to five years' hard labour for theft, and again to
seven years at the galleys for an attempt to escape, though how the last
punishment could be super-added to the first, is a fact I cannot hope to
explain. Of Avanzi nothing is mentioned, except that he was an elderly
man condemned to a lengthened term of imprisonment for heavy crimes.
Prisoners, it seems, condemned for long periods, are not sent out of
doors to labour at the public works, but are employed within the prison.
Both Simonetti and Avanzi were set to work in the canvas factory, and
according to a system adopted in many foreign gaols, they received a
certain amount of pay for their labour. An agreement had been made
between the pair, that one should twist and the other spin the hemp; and
the price paid for their joint work was to be divided between them in
certain proportions. About a fortnight before the murder this sort of
partnership was dissolved at the proposal of Simonetti, and some days
after Avanzi made a claim on his late partner for the price of two pounds
of hemp not accounted for. There seems to have been no particular
dispute about this, but on the morning of the murder, Simonetti was
summoned before the overseer of the factory, on the ground of his refusal
to pay the sum claimed by Avanzi of fifteen baiocchi, or seven pence
halfpenny. Simonetti did not deny that Avanzi had some claim upon him,
but disputed the amount. At last, the overseer proposed, as an amicable
compromise, that Simonetti should pay down seven baiocchi as a settlement
in full, sooner than have a formal investigation. Both parties adopted
the suggestion readily, and returned to their work apparently satisfied.
An hour and a half after, while Avanzi was sitting at his frame, with his
face to the wall, Simonetti entered the room with an axe he had picked up
in the carpenter's store, and walking deliberately up to Avanzi, struck
him with the axe across the neck, as he was stooping down. Almost
immediate death ensued, and on the arrival of the guard, Simonetti was
arrested at once, and placed in irons. Probably, as a matter of policy,
so daring a crime required summary punishment; at any rate, Papal justice
seems to have been executed with unexampled promptitude. With what the
report justly calls "laudable celerity," the case was got ready for trial
in a week, and on the 30th of July, the civil and criminal court of
Civita Vecchia met to try the prisoner. There could be no conceivable
question about the case. The murder had been committed during broad
daylight, in a crowded room, and indeed, the prisoner confessed his
guilt, and only pleaded gross provocation as an excuse. There was no
proof, however, that Avanzi had used irritating language; and even if he
had, too long a time had elapsed between the supposed offence and the
revenge taken, for the excuse of provocation to hold good. Indeed, as
the sentence of the court argues, in somewhat pompous language, "Woe to
civil intercourse and human society, if, contrary to every principle of
reason and justice, an attempt to enforce one's just and legal rights by
honest means, were once admitted as an extenuating circumstance in the
darkest crimes, or as a sufficient cause for exciting pardonable
provocation in the hearts of criminals." The tribunal too considers,
that the crime of the prisoner was aggravated by the fact, that his mind
remained unimpressed "by the horrors of his residence, or the dreadful
aspect and sad fellowship of his thousand unfortunate companions in
guilt, or by the flagrant penalties imposed upon him, for so many
crimes." On all these grounds, whether abstract or matter-of-fact, the
court declares the prisoner guilty of the wilful murder of Avanzi, and
sentences him to death.
On the morrow this sentence is conveyed to Simonetti, who appeals. With
considerable expedition the Supreme Tribunal meet to hear the case on the
23rd of September. The prisoner alleged before this court that his
indignation had been excited by improper proposals made to him by the
murdered man, and it was on this account their partnership had been
dissolved. Besides certain inherent improbabilities in this story, the
court decides that it was incredible that, if true, Simonetti should not
have made the statement at his previous trial. The appeal was therefore
dismissed, and the sentence of death confirmed. This decision was
notified to the prisoner on the 18th of November, who again appeals to
the higher Court, which meets to try the appeal on the 29th of the same
month. This court at once decided that there was no ground for supposing
the crime was not committed with "malice prepense," or for modifying the
verdict. It is not stated when the sentence was submitted to the Pope,
but on the 20th of January, 1860, the rejection of his final appeal is
communicated to the prisoner, and on the 21st the execution takes place,
and the report is published.
Now, if I had wished solely to decry the Papal system of justice, I
should not have given the report of the last trial, which seems to me far
the most favourable specimen of the set I have come across. I am
inclined to believe, from the meagre narratives before me, that all the
criminals whose cases I have narrated were guilty of the crimes alleged
against them, and fully deserved the fate they met with. My object,
however, has been to point out certain features which must, I think,
force themselves on any one who has read these cases carefully. The
disregard for human life, the abject poverty, the wide-spread
demoralization in the rural districts indicated by these stories, are
startling facts in a country which has been for centuries ruled by the
vicegerents of Christ on earth. At the same time, the great protraction
of the trials and the utter uncertainty about the date of their
occurrence, the unsatisfactory nature of the evidence, the want of any
cross-examination, the manner in which strict law is disregarded from a
clerical view of justice, and the identity between the court and the
prosecution, the abuse of the unlimited power of appeal, and the extent
to which this appeal from a lay to a clerical court places justice
virtually in the hands of the priesthood; and finally, the secret and
private character of the whole investigation, coupled with the utter
absence of any check on injustice through publicity, are all matters
patent even to a casual observer. If such, I ask, is Papal justice, when
it has no reason for concealment and has right upon its side, what would
it be in a case where injustice was sought to be perpetrated and
concealed?
CHAPTER V.--continued. THE "SANTURRI" MURDER.
Some months after I had written the question which closes the last
chapter, I was fortunate enough to obtain a partial answer to it. During
the present year the Cavaliere Gennarelli, a Roman barrister, and a
member of the Roman parliament in 1848, has published a series of
official documents issued by the Papal authorities during the last ten
years; the most damning indictment, by the way, that was ever recorded
against a Government. Amongst those documents there appears the official
sentence which, as usual, was published after the execution of a certain
Romulo Salvatori in 1851. The trial possesses a peculiar momentary
interest from the fact that Garibaldi is one of the persons implicated in
the charge, and that the gallant general, if captured on Roman territory,
would be liable to the judgment passed on him in default. It is,
however, rather with a view to show how the Papal system of justice
works, when political bias comes into play, that I propose to narrate
this story as a sequel to the others. The words between inverted commas
are, as before, verbal translations from the sentence. From that
sentence I have endeavoured to extract first the modicum of facts which
seem to have been admitted without dispute.
During the death-struggle of the Roman Republic, when the Neapolitan
troops had entered the Papal territory on their fruitless crusade, the
country round Velletri was occupied by Garibaldi's soldiery. Near
Velletri there is a little town called Giulianello, of which a certain
Don Dominico Santurri was the head priest. Justly or unjustly, this
priest, and two inhabitants of the town, named De Angelis and Latini,
were accused of plotting against the Republic; arrested by order of one
of Garibaldi's officers; imprisoned for a couple of days, and, after a
military examination (though of what nature is a matter of dispute) found
guilty of treason against the state. The priest was sentenced to death
and shot at once; the other two prisoners were dismissed with a reproof.
Subsequently orders were issued for their re-arrest. One of them,
Latini, had made his escape meanwhile; the other, De Angelis, being less
fortunate, was arrested again and executed.
Now, how far these persons were really guilty or not of the offence for
which they suffered, I of course have no means of knowing. Common sense
tells one that a nation, fighting for dear life against foes abroad and
traitors within, is obliged to deal out very rough and summary justice,
and can hardly be expected to waste much time in deliberation. At any
rate, when the Papal authority was restored, the Pope, on the demand of
the French, declared a general amnesty for all political offences. This
promise, however, of an amnesty, like many other promises of Pius the
Ninth, was made with a mental reservation. The Pope pardoned all
political offenders, but then the Pope alone was the judge of what
constituted a political offence.
In accordance with this system the execution of Santurri and De Angelis
was decided not to have been a political offence, but a case of private
vengeance, and "the indignation of the public was so strong," that
Government could not refuse the imperative call for justice. Within a
few weeks, therefore, of the Papal restoration, seven inhabitants of
Giulianello were arrested on the charge of being concerned in the murders
of Santurri and De Angelis.
On the 4th of April, 1851, the Supreme Court of the Sacra Consulta met to
try the prisoners--nearly two years after the date of their arrest. The
court, as usual, was composed of six high dignitaries of the Church, and
throughout the mode of procedure differed in nothing that I can learn
from what I have described in the former trials, except that there is no
allusion to any preliminary trial before the ordinary lay courts. Whether
this omission is accidental, or whether, as in other instances during the
Papal "Vendetta" after '49, the ordinary forms of justice were dispensed
with, I cannot say. Garibaldi, De Pasqualis, and David, "self-styled"
General, Colonel, and auditor respectively of the Roman army, were
summoned to appear and answer to the charge against them, or else to
allow judgment to go by default. The prisoners actually before the bar
were
Romolo Salvatori,
Vincenzo Fenili,
Luigi Grassi,
Francesco Fanella,
Dominico Federici,
Angelo Gabrielli,
Teresa Fenili.
It is curious, to say the least, that all the prisoners appear to have
been leading members of the liberal party at Giulianello. Salvatori was
elected Mayor of the town during the Republic, and the next four
prisoners held the office there of "Anziani" at the same period, an
office which corresponds somewhat to that of Alderman in our old civic
days. The chief witnesses for the prosecution were Latini, who so
narrowly escaped execution, and the widow of De Angelis, persons not
likely to be the most impartial of witnesses.
The whole sentence is in fact one long "ex parte" indictment against
Salvatori. The very language of the sentence confesses openly the
partizanship of the court. I am told that, in May 1849, "The Republican
hordes commanded by the adventurer Garibaldi, after the battle with"
(defeat of?) "the Royal Neapolitan troops at Velletri, had occupied a
precarious position in the neighbouring towns," and a good number of
these troops were stationed at Valmontone, under the command of the so-
called Colonel De Pasqualis; that at this period, when "an accusation
sent to the commanders of these freebooters was sufficient to ruin every
honest citizen," Salvatori, in order to gratify his private animosity
against Santurri, De Angelis, and Latini, forwarded to De Pasqualis an
unfounded accusation against them of intriguing for the overthrow of the
Republic; and in order to give it a "colour of probability," induced the
above-named Anziani to sign it; and that, in order to accomplish his
impious design, he wrote a private letter to De Pasqualis, telling him
how the arrest of the accused might be effected. Again, I learn that a
search, instituted by Salvatori into the priest Santurri's papers,
produced no "evidence favourable to his infamous purpose," that the
accused were never examined, though "a certain David, who pretended to be
a military auditor, made a few vague inquiries of Santurri, and noted the
answers down on paper with a pencil." Then we have a queer story how,
when Santurri implored for mercy, David replied, "Priests may pardon, but
Garibaldi never," though the very next minute David is represented as
announcing to De Angelis and Latini, that Garibaldi had granted them
their pardon. Then I am informed that Salvatori used insulting language
to Santurri on his arrest; that it was solely owing to Salvatori's
remonstrances that orders were issued for the re-arrest of Latini and De
Angelis; and that though Salvatori ultimately, at the prayer of De
Angelis' wife, gave her a letter to De Pasqualis interceding for her
husband, yet he purposely delayed granting it till he knew it would be
too late.
Such are the heads of the long string of accusations against Salvatori,
of which practically the sentence is composed. The evidence, as far as
it is given in the sentence on which the accusations rest, is vague in
the extreme. The proof of any personal ill-will against the three
victims of the Republic, on the part of any of the prisoners, is most
insufficient. Salvatori is said to have had an old grudge against
Santurri, about some wood belonging to the Church, to which he had made
an unjust claim. De Angelis was stated to have once threatened to shoot
Salvatori; but this, even in Ireland, could hardly be construed into
evidence that therefore Salvatori was resolved to murder De Angelis. The
only ground of ill-will that can be suggested, as far as Latini is
concerned, is that he was a partizan of the priesthood. The act of
accusation against Santurri and his fellow-victims, forwarded by the
authorities of Giulianello, though essential to the due comprehension of
the story, is not forthcoming; and no explanation even is offered of the
motives which induced the four "Anziani" to sign a charge which, by the
Papal hypothesis, they knew to be utterly unfounded. The bare idea, that
Santurri or the others were really guilty of any intrigues against the
Republic, is treated as absurd; the fact that any trial or investigation
ever took place is slurred over; and yet, with a marvellous
inconsistency, Salvatori is accused of being in reality the guilty author
of these executions, because some witness--name not given--reports that
he heard a report from a servant of Garibaldi, that Santurri was only
executed, in opposition to Garibaldi's own wish, in consequence of
Salvatori's representations.
What was the nature of Salvatori's defence cannot be gathered from the
sentence. From another source, however, I learn that it was such as one
might naturally expect. During 1849, the mayors of the small country
towns were entrusted with political authority by the Government. In the
exercise of his duty, as mayor, Salvatori discovered that Santurri and
the others were in correspondence with the Neapolitans, who were then
invading the country, and reported the charge to the officer in command.
The result of a military perquisition was to establish convincing proof
of the charge of treason. Santurri was tried by a court martial, and
sentenced at once to execution; as were also his colleagues, on further
evidence of guilt being discovered. Salvatori, therefore, pleaded, that
his sole offence, if offence there was, consisted in having discharged
his duty as an official of the Republican Government, and that this
offence was condoned by the Papal amnesty. This defence, as being
somewhat difficult to answer, is purposely ignored; and a printed notice,
published on the day of Santurri's execution, and giving an account of
his trial and conviction, is rejected as evidence, because it is not
official!
Considering the tone of the sentence it will not be matter of surprise,
that the court sums up with the conclusion, that "Not the slightest doubt
can be entertained that the wilful calumnies and solicitations of the
prisoner Salvatori were the sole and the too efficacious causes of the
result he had deliberately purposed to himself" (namely, the murder of
Santurri); and therefore unanimously condemns him to public execution at
Anagni. Vincenzo Fenili and Grassi, who had co-operated in the arrest of
Santurri, are sentenced to 20 years' labour on the hulks. There not
being sufficient evidence to convict Fanella, Federici, and Teresa
Fenili, they are to be--not acquitted, but kept in prison for six months
more, while Gabrielli, whose only offence was, that he told Salvatori
where the priest Santurri was to be found, though without any evil
motive, is to be released provisionally, having been, by the way,
imprisoned already for 18 months, while Garibaldi and De Pasqualis are to
be proceeded against in default.
Salvatori was executed on the 10th of September, 1851; Fenili and Grassi
are probably, being both men in the prime of life, still alive and
labouring in the Bagnio of Civita Vecchia, where, at their leisure, they
can appreciate the mercies of a Papal amnesty. It seems to me that I
should have called this chapter the Salvatori rather than the Santurri
murder, and then the question asked at the end of the last would have
required no answer.