and which they used to print on their premises, has now been removed to Rome. That the clergy have a strong fuction with the Government I do not doubt: so have the Lazzaroni; but there is no proof of the complicity of the body, and clear proof of the opposition of a part of it, however their professional tone and learning may, to a certain extent, innocently predispose them in favour of the authorities, especially under a Monarch reputed to be most regular and strict in the offices of religion.”

Yet it is not a little remarkable that Mr. Gladstone, when he desires to throw a light upon the present condition of Italy from antecedent circumstances, at once adverts to the judicial practices of the Court of Rome, as affording the model pattern to which the proceedings of other Italian Courts have been studiously shaped:

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“I shall next name two facts which are related by Farini, the recent and esteemed writer of a History of the States of the Church since 1815': There exists a confidential circular of Cardinal Bernetti, in which he orders the judges, in the case of Liberals charged with ordinary offences or crimes, invariably to inflict the highest degree of punishment. This was under Gregory XVI. Under Leo XII., Cardinal Rivarola went as legate a latere into Romagna. On the 31st of August, 1825, he pronounced sentence on five hundred and eight persons. Seven of these were to suffer death. Forty-nine were to undergo hard labour for terms varying between ten years and life. Fifty-two were to be imprisoned for similar terms. These sentences were pronounced privately, at the simple will of the cardinal, upon mere presumptions that the parties belonged to the Liberal sects; and, what is to the ear of an Englishman the most astounding fact of all, after a process simply analogous to that of a grand jury-(I compare the process, not the persons)—and without any opportunity given to the accused for defence!"

Thus Rome is represented by our author himself as the influential centre from which that illegality, which he tells us is the foundation-stone of the huge pile of Neapolitan corruption and abominations, is radiated to every corner of the peninsula. It is quite irrelevant to cite some Romish priests, or even a particular order, as themselves victims of the despotic fury which is raging in the dominions of his Most Christian Majesty, the King of Naples. Some Romish priests are such only in name, and cover a philosophic Deism or Pantheism under the outer crust of rigid Romanism: others are seduced by a kind and genial nature from following out to their full length the results of their speculative tenets. The true criterion must always be-Of what kind the effective teaching of a religious communion is, as proved by its formularies and recognised productions? On this head we

are obliged to Mr. Gladstone for his quotations from the "Catechismo Filosofico," taught in all the lower Neapolitan schools by the authority of the Government, or, as Mr. Macfarlane states, by the authority of the Papal see. It is the work of an ecclesiastic who was at the head of the commission of public instruction, and is characterised by Mr. Gladstone as studiously veiling, under the phrases of religion, "false, base, and demoralising doctrines-sometimes ludicrous, but oftener horrible:"

"The pupil asks with great simplicity of his teachers, not whether all Liberals are wicked, but whether they are all wicked in one and the same fashion?' And the answer is

"Not all, my child, because some are thorough-paced and wilful deceivers, while others are piteously deceived; but, notwithstanding, they are travelling the same road: and, if they do not alter their course, they will arrive at the same goal.'

Thus, on the infallible authority of his Holiness the Pope, wickedness is synonymous with Liberalism: and conversely, we presume, falsehood and arbitrary measures are identical with moral excellency. The same "Catechism" teaches thus of the obligation of an oath :

"Should the Sovereign find that the fundamental law is seriously hurtful to his people, he is bound to correct it; because, in spite of all promises and all constitutions, the duty of the Sovereign is his people's weal. In a word, an oath never can become an obligation to commit evil, and therefore cannot bind a Sovereign to do what is injurious to his subjects. Besides, the head of the Church has authority from God to release consciences from oaths when he judges that there is suitable cause for it."

Mr. Gladstone avowedly connects the illegality from which he deduces the whole tissue of enormities with a bad conscience; and he has now afforded us the means of judging how this bad conscience is nurtured, and "from what source the polluted waters of fraud and falsehood flow." We have proceeded on the statements of Mr. Gladstone, who is certainly not inimical to Romanism, and have taken his own admissions, that "the Jesuits are the body who, perhaps, stand nearest to the Government:" that Ferdinand is "a Monarch reputed to be most regular and strict in the offices of religion"—indeed, he afforded a refuge to his Holiness in his humiliation and would. seem to have profitted much by his lessons in return: that Carducci was assassinated by Peluso a priest-and Mr. Macfarlane conjectures "the love of his Church and of his order might have had as much to do in the energetic measure of Peluso as the love of lucre." We have quoted Mr. Gladstone's own words, and the conclusion is inevitable that the

corrupt doctrines of the Papacy are the real root of the tyranny and calamities under which Italy is prostrated. "The complete systematized philosophy of perjury for monarchs," as Mr. Gladstone aptly terms the "Catechismo Filosofico," is exactly adapted to the actual facts of Neapolitan history, because it is the morality of Romanism applied to politics. It can hardly be surprising that the results of such abominable religious teaching are a constitution ratified by solemn oath deliberately violated, a judicature corrupted, a system of bribed espionage : Settembrini tortured by "sharp instruments thrust under the finger nails;" and Carlo Poerio in felon's dress loaded with irons fastened to a fellow-prisoner in a filthy dungeon. Here is an adequate cause for patent facts! We do not affirm that Romish doctrines are the sole cause of these execrable acts; but we are convinced they are the prime agent in them—the fundamental cause-a condition necessary to the very possibility of such flagrant cruelty being perpetrated in a country of Europe called civilized in the middle of the nineteenth century.

Despotism and Romanism are most congenial in spirit; or, rather, so far identical that one is the political, the other the religious, side of the same system. For either to be complete, both must be combined. The objects of both are similar, as are the expedients employed by them. The Despot is politically, as the Pope is religiously, infallible: the one is represented as "the image of God upon earth"-the other as "the vicar of Jesus Christ." Yet, while claiming to be representatives of the Almighty, both efface from the mind the idea of him whom they profess to represent, elevating the image above the original. Both may be termed "the negation of God erected into a system of Government." Popery would render man a religious, Despotism a political and civil, machine. Both dislike the spread of intelligence and check every aspiration that might grow into independent thought-both keep the organs of public opinion under rigid control-both have at command a subservient judicial bench. Absolutism requires its Star-chamber, its Jeffreys, or Navarro: Romanism its inquisition and its cardinals. Both have their prisons and dungeons, their fetters and tortures. An organised system of espionage is the common instrument for stifling thought, and the police of both are among the most infamous of mankind. The same moral code, supplied by his Holiness in the Vatican, which saps the very root of all virtue, is found ancillary to the policy of both. All morality is with both collected into two wordsservile obedience! Both, too, can, if need require, with Protean facility, assume a contradictory form, and imitate Liberalism and

VOL. XXX.-D D

reformatory zeal only to crush all reform and establish tyranny and intolerance more effectually. In France, the worn-out Empire is striving to look young in the garb of Republicanism and rising on the spiritual arm: in England, Romanism is endeavouring to rear its crest under the shield of Liberalism. In former days, the two sometimes appeared as rivals, and their collision was the birth-pang of liberty: in the present hour of peril, their union is close and complete. The Romish confessional plays occasionally the part of informer's box to the Government; and despotic bayonets preserve the fisherman's seal and keys to the supreme Pontiff. They are the Siamese twins which flourish conjointly!

We have been led to draw out this comparison by the peculiarities of Mr. Gladstone's known opinions. He is one of the chiefs of a party of which the Morning Chronicle, despite its traditions, is the recognised organ, who attempt to combine High Churchism, of a standard rather medieval than modern, with political principles of a far more enlightened and liberal complexion. A politician of the nineteenth century, he in some respects follows in the wake of Cobden; whilst his religious tenets belong to the age of Albertus Magnus or St. Cyprian. He was the notorious adherent of Mr. Oakeley and others who have apostatised to Papal superstition: he is a frequent visitor at Cuddesden palace; and even his seat for his favourite university is rendered insecure by his religious convictions, outbidding even Oxford itself! He dreads a repetition of the Bastille, and yet desires to enslave the conscience. When the author of a pamphlet denunciatory of the acts of a despotic Government professes such religious tenets, it is important to remind him, and those who concur in his views, that the principle he advocates, of blind submission to human authority in matters of religion, is the natural ally of those political maxims and engines from which he instinctively recoils; and that the patchwork of Medievalism and Liberalism, which he would stitch together, is quite as monstrous an incongruity in its way as the painter's compound of a human head with a horse's neck, overlaid with a motley assemblage of different feathers. No art of chemistry can force ingredients, totally antagonistic, quietly to coalesce; and, were we to metamorphose old England to the Gladstone type, we should soon find that, by reverting to Romanism, we had reverted also to the rack, the dungeon, and wholesale tyranny. The Reformation, in an historical point of view, was the day-break of civil freedom in modern times; and from the very constitution of the mind, and the paramount influence of the religious faculty, it would be as absurd to conceive

it possible that one, who is religiously a slave, can be politically free, as to expect astonishing feats of strength and agility from a man whose right hand is securely manacled. Italy will never be ripe for constitutional government, and the manifold blessings of political and civil freedom, until it has flung aside those fetters of spiritual degradation, the iron of which has entered deep into the soul.

ART. IX.-1. Remarks on Dr. Wiseman's Sermon on the Gorham Case. By HENRY DRUMMOND. Second Edition. 2. Speech of Henry Drummond, Esq., M.P., in the House of Commons, on Thursday, March 20th, 1851. With a Preface and Notes. Third Edition.

3. Cases of Conscience, or Lessons in Morals, for the Use of the Laity: Extracted from the Moral Theology of the Romish Clergy. By PASCAL THE YOUNGER. London: Bosworth. 1851.

THE Pope has shown his estimation of English forbearance and English legislation by a new aggression. He proposes to build a monster cathedral in the very heart of the English metropolis avowedly for the use of his Italian subjects who may be resident therein; but really for the purpose of familiarising English eyes and minds with the close neighbourhood of Rome in another of her very powerful aspects.

It is somewhat ominous that, in propounding this scheme, a precedent should be followed from the effects of which the Romish Church has never yet recovered. A sale of indulgences is proposed as the means for carrying the project to completion, and it only needs a second Tetzel to vend them for the manifestation of similar results. A cathedral may be built and worshippers may be found to fill it; but a deadlier hatred will, we trust, be engendered in all honest minds against the system which can permit sin to pay for its immunities and then profit by the price.

Many are of opinion, and with very good grounds as we think, that we are indebted to Austrian diplomacy for what is justly called the "Papal Aggression." It has answered its

end and done us infinite social damage at small cost to the advisers. England is regarded by those continental powers which uphold the privileges of absolutism as a sanctuary for the bad