The prosperity they would seem to indicate is a
pretence. There is no money in the treasury, and so they enfeeble her
instead of strengthening. Italy has achieved the dearest wish of her
heart and become an independent State--and in so doing she has drawn an
elephant in the political lottery. She has nothing to feed it on.
Inexperienced in government, she plunged into all manner of useless
expenditure, and swamped her treasury almost in a day. She squandered
millions of francs on a navy which she did not need, and the first time
she took her new toy into action she got it knocked higher than
Gilderoy's kite--to use the language of the Pilgrims.

But it is an ill-wind that blows nobody good. A year ago, when Italy saw
utter ruin staring her in the face and her greenbacks hardly worth the
paper they were printed on, her Parliament ventured upon a 'coup de main'
that would have appalled the stoutest of her statesmen under less
desperate circumstances. They, in a manner, confiscated the domains of
the Church! This in priest-ridden Italy! This in a land which has
groped in the midnight of priestly superstition for sixteen hundred
years! It was a rare good fortune for Italy, the stress of weather that
drove her to break from this prison-house.

They do not call it confiscating the church property. That would sound
too harshly yet. But it amounts to that. There are thousands of
churches in Italy, each with untold millions of treasures stored away in
its closets, and each with its battalion of priests to be supported.
And then there are the estates of the Church--league on league of the
richest lands and the noblest forests in all Italy--all yielding immense
revenues to the Church, and none paying a cent in taxes to the State.
In some great districts the Church owns all the property--lands,
watercourses, woods, mills and factories. They buy, they sell, they
manufacture, and since they pay no taxes, who can hope to compete with
them?

Well, the Government has seized all this in effect, and will yet seize it
in rigid and unpoetical reality, no doubt. Something must be done to
feed a starving treasury, and there is no other resource in all Italy
--none but the riches of the Church. So the Government intends to take to
itself a great portion of the revenues arising from priestly farms,
factories, etc., and also intends to take possession of the churches and
carry them on, after its own fashion and upon its own res