To supply this defect, the resource of vexatious and impolitic
jobbing at home, if anything, is rather increased than lessened. Various
well-intended, but ill-understood practices, some of them existing, in
their spirit at least, from the time of the old Roman Empire, still
prevail; and that government is as blindly attached to old abusive
customs as others are wildly disposed to all sorts of innovations and
experiments. These abuses were less felt whilst the Pontificate drew
riches from abroad, which in some measure counterbalanced the evils of
their remiss and jobbish government at home. But now it can subsist
only on the resources of domestic management; and abuses in that
management of course will be more intimately and more severely felt.

In the midst of the apparently torpid languor of the Ecclesiastical
State, those who have had opportunity of a near observation have seen a
little rippling in that smooth water, which indicates something alive
under it. There is in the Ecclesiastical State a personage who seems
capable of acting (but with more force and steadiness) the part of the
tribune Rienzi. The people, once inflamed, will not be destitute of a
leader. They have such an one already in the Cardinal or Archbishop
Boncompagni. He is, of all men, if I am not ill-informed, the most
turbulent, seditious, intriguing, bold, and desperate. He is not at all
made for a Roman of the present day. I think he lately held the first
office of their state, that of Great Chamberlain, which is equivalent to
High Treasurer. At present he is out of employment, and in disgrace. If
he should be elected Pope, or even come to have any weight with a new
Pope, he will infallibly conjure up a democratic spirit in that country.
He may, indeed, be able to effect it without these advantages. The nest
interregnum will probably show more of him. There may be others of the
same character, who have not come to my knowledge. This much is
certain,--that the Roman people, if once the blind reverence they bear
to the sanctity of the Pope, which is their only bridle, should relax,
are naturally turbulent, ferocious, and headlong, whilst the police is
defective, and the government feeble and resourceless beyond all
imagination.

[Sidenote: Spain]

As to Spain, it is a nerveless country. It does not possess the use, it
only suffers the abuse, of a nobility. For some time, and even before
the settlement of the Bourbon dynasty, that body has been sy