As the hour of solemn vengeance had not yet struck, fright, and fright
alone for the black-robed rulers of Rome was the result of the events we
have detailed.
The priests were in mortal terror lest the thread by which the sword of
popular wrath was suspended should be cut.
The hour, however, had not struck; the measure of the cup was not full;
the God of justice delayed the day of his retribution.
Know you what the lust of priests is to torture? Do you know that by the
priests Galileo was tortured? Galileo, the greatest of Italians! Who but
priests could have committed him to the torture? Who but an archbishop
could have condemned to death by starvation in a walled-up prison
Ugolino and his four sons?
Where but in Rome have priests hated virtue and learning while they
fostered ignorance and patronized vice? Woe to the man who, gifted by
God above his fellows, has dared to exhibit his talent in Papal Italy.
Has he not been immediately consigned to moral and physical tortures,
until he admitted darkness was light?
Is it not surprising that in spite of the light of the nineteenth
century, a people should be found willing to believe the blasphemous
fables called the doctrines of the Church, and the priests permitted to
hold or withhold salvation at their pleasure, and to exercise such power
in such a continent, that rulers court their alliance as a means
of enabling them the more effectually to keep, in subjection their
miserable subjects?
In England, America, and Switzerland this torture has been abolished.
There progress is not a mere word. In Rome the torture exists in all its
power, though concealed. Light has yet to penetrate the secrets of those
dens of infamy called cloisters, seminaries, convents, where beings,
male and female, are immured as long as life lasts, and are bound by
terrible vows to resign forever the ties of natural affection and sacred
friendship.
Fearful are the punishments inflicted upon any hapless member suspected
of being lax in his belief, or desirous of being released from his
oaths. Redress for them is impossible in a country where despotism is
absolute, and the liberty of the press chained.
Yes, in Rome, where sits the Vicar of God, the representative of Christ,
the man of peace, the torture, I say, still exists as in the times of
Saint Dominic and Torquemada. The cord and the pincers are in constant
requisition in these present days of political convulsion.
Poor Dentato, the sergeant of dragoons who facilitated the escape of
Manlio, soon experienced this. He had been unfortunately identified as
engaged at the Quirinal Morning, noon, and night means too horrible to
divulge were resorted to to compel him to give up the names of those
concerned in the attack upon the prison. Failing to gain their point,
he had been left by his tormentors a shapeless mass, imploring his
persecutors to show mercy by putting him to death.
Unhappy man! the executioners falsely declared he had denounced his
accomplices, and continued daily to make fresh arrests.
Yet the world still tolerates these fiends in human form, and kings
moreover impose them upon our unhappy countries. God grant the people
of Italy will before long have the will and the courage to break this
hateful yoke from off their necks! God set us free, before we are weary
of praying, from those who take His holy name in vain, and chase Christ
himself out of the Temple to set their money-changing stalls therein!