ed by prelates. The higher posts in the
State were by law interdicted to laymen. In practice the
different powers were often confounded. The principle of
pontifical infallibility was applied to administrative
questions. The personal decision of the Sovereign had been
known to reverse the decision of the tribunals, even in
civil matters. The Cardinal Secretary of State, first
minister in the fullest extent of the term, concentred in
his own hands all the powers of the State. Under his supreme
direction the different branches of the administration were
confided to clerks rather than ministers. These neither
formed a council, nor deliberated together upon the affairs
of the State. The public finances were administered in the
most profound secrecy. No information was communicated to
the nation as to the mode in which its revenues were spent.
Not only did the budget remain a mystery, but it was
afterwards discovered that the accounts were frequently not
made up and balanced. Lastly, municipal liberties, which are
appreciated above all others by the Italians, and which more
particularly respond to their real tendencies, had been
submitted to the most restrictive measures. _But from the
day on which Pope Pius IX. ascended the throne_" etc. etc.

Thus we find that the _not long ago_ of the Count de Rayneval is an
exact date. It means, in good French, "before the election of Pius
IX.," or again, "up to the 16th of June, 1846."

Thus also M. de Brosses, if he could have returned to Rome in 1846,
would have found there, by the admission of the Count de Rayneval
himself, the worst government in Europe.

And thus the most absolute of governments, as M. de Tournon calls it,
still existed in Rome in 1846.

Up to the 16th of June, 1846, Catholicity owned the six millions of
acres of which the Roman territory consists; the Pope was the
administrator, the guardian, the steward; and the citizens of the
State seem to have been the ploughmen.

Up to this era of deliverance, a systematic despotism had deprived the
subjects of the Pope, not only of all participation in public affairs,
but of the simplest and most legitimate liberties, of the most
innocuous progress, and even--I shudder as I write it--of recourse to
the laws. The whim of one man had arbitrarily reversed the decisions
of the courts of law. And lastly, an incapable and