THE Condition of a country must be indeed precarious when, torn by faction, pauperized by mal-administration, degraded by the unsettling presence of foreign armies, its cities under martial-law, its high-roads given up to brigandage, it has become an object of shame and terror in the midst of surrounding nations. Such is the actual state of Italy, the fairest spot in all the continent of Europe, the most prolific in all the associations of past times, the richest in all that can promise for the future.

To trace any of these results to their causes would be not alone to enter upon one of the most intricate inquiries of contemporary history, but also to engage in a scarcely less difficult examination-that of the traits of a people, whose natures, endowed almost above every other, have been degraded by misrule, debased by superstitions, and whose very morality has been sacrificed as the easy means of accomplishing their slavery. Our

limits will not admit of such investigation, and we can but glance at the working of the existing evils, and call attention to a state of things which is alike a reproach to our century, as it is a standing menace to the peace of Europe.

The greatest step which our age has effected in political knowledge, is the recognition of the fact, that the material prosperity of a state, and its social well-being, are the real tests of its being well and wisely governed. When life and property are secured, when the toil of industry is protected, where the exigencies of the government impinge little on personal freedom, where the burden of taxation is no more than what the just requirements of the state demand,-whether the rule be that of absolute monarchy or constitutionalism-whether the ruler be called Pope or President-there is little to complain of. There may be questions of internal administration, tarifs to reform, wider freedom of the press to be desired, more tolerance in matters of religion to be exercised: but these are all matters which are

within the safe limits of discussion; they involve no vital necessities, and so far from damaging the stability of a state, they are as often the healthy excesses of liberal and enlightened patriotism.

It was a saying of the great modern Macchiavelli-Prince Talleyrandthat "there were very few governments too bad to live under," the observation being directed to the contrast between the regulated march of any disciplined administration, and the capricious cruelty of mob rule. Assuredly, there is much truth in the remark. The state and invariable dictates of a written code, severe though they be, are light in comparison with the inflictions of a rule varying with eventualities, at one moment exulting in success, at the next vindictive and persecuting under failure. To combine the evils of each-to preserve the unswerving tyranny of a despotism, and to superadd all the iniquities which are the suggestions of men's worst passions-would seem to have been the great receipt of Italian government; and from Lombardy to Naples, we see a people tortured by every species of misrule which the stupidity or malevolence of man has ever devised.

A dominant church, not alone set above the law in every personal responsibility, but placed beneath and within the law as an element of intrigue and espionage-a moral detective force, penetrating into every family, seated at every hearth, influencing every resolve, and swaying every motive such is the chief instrument of all Italian legislation. From the choice of a minister to the selection of the humblest official in the state, the pleasure of the church is to be taken. If a great measure of policy is to be supported, or a passport denied to a maid-servant, the same high authority is to be consulted. All responsible rule is a mere farce in the presence of a power screened from every observation, ever working in secret,-its agents disseminated through every corner of the

land, mingling with every class, and all amenable to a discipline which can secure zeal and ensure activity.

Next in power to this agency is the secret police system,* an agency which probably has gone farther to corrupt and debase the people than any combination of causes in existence.

The fact that in every rank and condition of life, from the highest to the lowest, the paid emissaries of the police are to be found, illustrates the breadth of a detective system which penetrates into every family. By the working of this abominable agency, the most vindictive cruelties are accomplished; denunciations, as they are called, are the constant resource of private personal enmities; and men have been accused of political offences, arrested and imprisoned, for no other real reason than some accidental slight to a man in powersome casual show of dislike to the society of a government official.

The most important functions of the secret police, however, are less exercised in discovering schemes than in suggesting and promoting them, and a distinct department of this body are devoted to this praiseworthy duty. The hardiest, most daring patriot in a dinner party of young men at Sorento-the most energetic denouncer of kingly tyranny-the readiest to offer himself to lead a band of daring followers to the attack-is very commonly the retained agent of the police, who only enacts the wild orgies of excited youth to draw up his report for the minister. In the same way, the workman whose fluent speech has obtained him an influence over his fellows, and whose description of political oppressors has actually goaded them on to open revolt, is nothing more than the "mouchard" of the prefecture, who has provided the minister with every detail of the projected movement, and in whose pocket are dates and names of every circumstance that can criminate his companions. While such infamous practices go far to degrade and debase those who profess them, engendering habits of the basest treachery, hypocrisy, distrust, and falsehood on every side, they in

flict another evil scarcely less pernicious on those by whom they are countenanced, which is, that they impress the governing powers of these states with the most intense contempt for the characters of those beneath their rule. The knowledge that there is not a society in the land, however polished and exalted-not a class of men, however elevated in station or independent in fortune-into which the minister cannot penetrate by corruption, does much to degrade in his estimation those over whom he presides, and readily leads to the persuasion, that amidst elements so debased and demoralized, a system based on demoralization can alone prevail.

It has been often reproached against the Italian governments, that they have little studied the habits of the people, and taken short account of those strange and peculiar characteristics which guide their natures. In one respect the reproach is palpably unmerited. For every purpose of cruelty and repression-for every object of corruption and enslavement

they have deeply and intently investigated the temperament of the nation. Every instinct of the southern blood has been calmly, keenly calculated. Their religious zeal, their superstition, their credulity, their craft, their love of indolence, have all been weighed and estimated; and from the impulses that sway them and the passions which move them, artful plans of administrative rule have been devised with an ingenuity that one may well regret has not been dignified by nobler ends.

Setting fidelity to the state at the head of all human virtue, making attachment to the government the real test of a man's excellence, and throwing a gloss of indulgence over all private and personal delinquency is a favourite system with Italian rulers. The most abandoned and profligate are often found in the rank of the ministers; men, whose lives are in open defiance to the moral opinion of all around them, are the advisers of the Sovereign and the companions of the Prince. Such men "give no hostages to honour." They

represent to the nation at large nothing beyond the benefit of low. cunning, the success of unscrupulous, shameless craft. It were absurd to suppose that any sense of respect, much less of affection, existed on the part of the people towards governors so constituted, thoroughly knowing the whole lives of those who rule them, conversant with their vices, and even their crimes. The people have long learned to despise as well as detest them. The acts and opinions of such men come, therefore, tinctured with the dark dye of their private lives. Not a step in legislation-not a measure of finance that does not suggest, and naturally too, the basest motives; and if by any casualty an enactment that savors of better government should issue from their hands, every suspicion is at once enlisted to depreciate and distrust it, and every calumnious device invented to find a secret treachery in its tendency.

Let any one imagine such elements as these in operation amongst a people singularly fertile in every ingenuity of distrust, who accept nothing in good faith, and are ever ready to invest with suspicion acts the most palpably favourable to them and theirs; he may form some idea of the frame of mind which pervades the Peninsula. A word of esteem or respect for one in power is never heard. Pope or prince, arch-duke or cardinal, it is all alike. The very terrors of religion are weak to repress the bitter animosity they feel towards those above them, and whom they only recognize in the galley or the guillotine, in the secret denunciation of the spy, and in the dark dungeon of perpetual imprisonment.

But it needs not the warm, impassioned temperament of this impulsive race to be thus carried away. The actual evils are terribly palpable. The country is beggared by taxation. In the Roman states alone the assessment is made for fourteen months in lieu of a year! In Tuscany, the least oppressed and best administered state after Piedmont, landed property is so encumbered by taxation, that its receipts are never above one-and-a-half per cent.

Such is the corruption in the administration of the law, that no man relies on the justice of his cause, but

on the influence of powerful friends, and the interference of men in govern-ment employ. The judges, ill-paid, of low station and mean acquirements, are not selected from the upper ranks of their profession, but are those who, avowedly unequal to contend for the higher rewards of the bar, are well content to accept of a small and certain income in exchange for the subserviency required of them.

The system of appeal from one court to another invariably places the result of any suit at the discretion of a rich man, who has only to draw on his purse to prolong a cause for years of duration, and exhaust the patience and the resources of his opponent.

It is, however, as the agent of the government itself that the law exhibits its most oppressive and tyrannical aspect. The power to arrest and imprison any one on mere suspicion, sometimes on information anonymously communicated, and to prolong his incarceration at will, is the most terrible of all the abuses of arbitrary rule.

This system prevails from the Alps to the sea. The prisons are filled with persons who have never been made acquainted with the charges alleged against them, and who are actually in a great number of instances detained in expectation of what may turn up against them. They have been heard to express certain opinions, to be seen in certain companionship, to frequent certain cafés; the style of their hat, the cut of their beard, has implied a certain leaning to sentiments disapproved of by the state. They are therefore marked men. Should such a one solicit a passport to visit a foreign country for health, pleasure, or business, the demand is at once rejected. Should he ask permission for his son to study in some university of France or Ğermany, the same denial meets him. These and other evidences not less palpable acquaint him that he is looked on with scant favour by the state, and from that moment his life becomes one of terror and anxiety, well aware that an accident, over which he has no control, may at any moment place him in a position of great peril. His whole existence becomes a feverish, uneasy dream. He scrutinizes with painful care the characters of all his former friends,

studiously avoiding intimacy with those likely to attract distrust themselves; he as rigidly abstains from frequenting any society which might give countenance to any suspicion. He changes the habits of his former life to something he fancies in conformity with the will of the state, and reduces himself to a condition of daily, hourly hypocrisy, an object of pity or scorn, as men'snatures dispose them to regard him. This is the position of the timid man, awaiting the day that shall send him to the dark dungeons of Forli, or the sea-washed cells of Procida. No longer able to exert himself, to pursue habits of industry or plans of pleasure, he has no thought for anything save the web of intrigue he sees around him. Terrified at everything-the chance meeting with a friend, the casual sight of a suspicious journal in a reading-room, the accidental applause of a passage in a play may, at any moment, be the crowning act which shall sentence him to a prison. This is no exaggerated sketch. Naples and Rome abound with men who pass such lives as this. You meet them at every turn; sad, sorrow-struck, and anxious, they walk the streets in solitary wretchedness, seeming actually to shrink from the very sympathy which might perhaps endanger them. Lombardy and the Duchies have their share of these sad victims. That terrible engine, the secret police, one of the heaviest charges in the state budget, must needs show evidence of its activity. When, therefore, real offenders are scarce,suspicions and denunciations are rife; and thus is it, that in periods of comparative tranquillity, the arrests and condemnations are almost always more numerous. Is it any wonder, then, if every city of Europe is filled with voluntary exiles from Italy, men who, at the sacrifice of country, fortune, friends, and station, have fled from a tyranny that makes life a torture, and gives to daily existence the prolonged terrors of a criminal awaiting sentence? Who can be surprised at this?

Who can

even wonder at the bursts of passionate indignation which occasionally break forth from those thus outraged and insulted? It is very far from our sentiments to applaud or even think moderately well of those violent effusions which Mazzini and his followers address to their suffering

countrymen; but assuredly it is no marvel to us that men, so conversant with the system they condemn, should appeal to force against force, and even oppose the poignard of the assassin to the axe of the headsman. The governors of Italy have themselves demoralized the people. There is not a weapon in the armoury of rebellion that has not been forged by the state. The vindictive cruelty, the falsehood, the base treachery of the rulers are reflected in the masses; and what one has done by armed battalions at noon day, the other has accomplished by murderous bands at midnight.

Is it not, after all, a matter of wonder that a high-hearted impassioned people should have borne so much and so long, rather than rush upon any fate by a burst of indignant frenzy? The conduct of the populace of Rome and Florence during the Revolution of '49 is the best guarantee of the spirit of the nation. It was a time of the wildest anarchy and confusion. Armed men paraded the streets in all the licence of their new power; and yet, within sight of the greatest art-treasures of the world-objects with whose value kings and emperors have nothing to compete-not a picture, not a statue, not a vase was stolen. The Vatican and the Pitti stood with open doors, as in the days of peace and tranquillity. Men came and wenthungry, famished, half-savage men in blouses and sabots. They trod galleries where kings have lingered in delight, and gazed on walls rich in all the glorious triumphs of high art-the malachite tables strewn with priceless objects; the carved cups of Cellini on shelves around them-and yet nothing was touched -nothing was taken. A friend of our own, when alluding to this striking fact, told us how powerfully the example exerted its influence upon himself. It chanced that in some search of the archives of the Vatican, he was himself led on to explore some of the curious contents of one of the cabinets; and, in so doing, chanced upon the record of the process against Gallileo; the most extraordinary, perhaps the most interesting, document of the nature in existence. He was a man of literary taste as well as an ardent politician, and gazed upon