d business to be done in this line, and
particularly beyond the Apennines, in those provinces which Austria
has disarmed and does not protect. The tribunal of Bologna faithfully
described the state of the country in a sentence of the 16th of June,
1856.

"Of late years this province has been afflicted by
innumerable crimes of all sorts: robbery, pillage, attacks
upon houses, have occurred at all hours, and in all places.
The numbers of the malefactors have been constantly
increasing, as has their audacity, encouraged by impunity."

Nothing is changed since the tribunal of Bologna spoke so forcibly.
Stories, as improbable as they are true, are daily related in the
country. The illustrious Passatore, who seized the entire population
of Forlimpopoli in the theatre, has left successors. The audacious
brigands who robbed a diligence in the very streets of Bologna, a few
paces from the Austrian barracks, have not yet wholly disappeared. In
the course of a tour of some weeks on the shores of the Adriatic, I
heard more than one disquieting report. Near Rimini the house of a
landed proprietor was besieged by a little army. In one place, all the
inmates of the goal walked off, arm-in-arm with the turnkeys; in
another a diligence came to grief just outside the walls of a city. If
any particular district was allowed to live in peace, it was because
the inhabitants subscribed and paid a ransom to the brigands. Five
times a week I used to meet the pontifical courier, escorted by an
omnibus full of gendarmes, a sight which made me shrewdly suspect the
country was not quite safe.

But if the Government is too weak or too careless to undertake an
expedition against brigandage, and to purge the country thoroughly, it
sometimes avenges its insulted authority and its stolen money. When by
chance the Judges of Instruction are sent into the field, they do not
trifle with their work. Not only do they press the prisoners to
confess their crimes, but they press them in a thumbscrew! The
tribunal of Bologna confessed this fact, with compunction, in 1856,
alluding to the measures employed as _violenti e feroci_.

But simple theft, innocent theft, the petty larceny of snuff-boxes and
pocket-handkerchiefs, the theft which seeks a modest alms in a
neighbour's pocket, is tolerated as paternally as mendicity. Official
statistics give the number of the beggars in Rome, I believe, somewhat
under the mark; it is a pity they