t evil passions, far more fatal to society than the rational
resistance of parties, have progressed in an inverse direction. They
predominate but little at Bologna, where the middle class is strong
enough to keep them under; they triumph at Home, where the middle
class has been destroyed. Thence it follows that Bologna is a city of
opposition, and Rome a socialist city; and that the revolution will be
moderate at Bologna, sanguinary at Rome. This is what the clerical
party has gained.

Nothing can equal the disdain with which the prelates the princes, the
foreigners of condition, and even the footmen at Rome, judge the
middle class, of _mezzo ceto_.

The prelate has his reasons. If he be a minister, he sees in his
offices some hundred clerks, belonging to the middle class. He knows
that these active and intelligent, but underpaid men, are for the most
part obliged to eke out a livelihood by secretly following some other
occupation: one keeps the books of a land-steward, another those of a
Jew. Whose fault is it? They well know that neither excellence of
character nor length of service are carried to the credit of the civil
functionary, and that, after having earned advancement, he will be
obliged either to ask it himself as a favour, or to employ the
intercession of his wife. It is not these poor men whom we should
despise, but the dignitaries in violet stockings who impose the burden
upon them.

Should Monsignore be a judge of a superior tribunal, of the _Sacra
Rota_ for instance, he need know nothing about the law. His secretary,
or assistant, has by dint of patient study made himself an
accomplished lawyer, as indeed a man must be who can thread his way
through the dark labyrinths of Roman legislation. But Monsignore, who
makes use of his assistant's ability for his own particular profit,
thinks he has a right to despise him, because he is ill paid, lives
humbly, and has no future to look forward to. Which of the two is in
the wrong?

If the same prelate be a Judge of Appeal, he will profess a most
profound contempt for advocates. I must confess they are to be pitied,
these unfortunate Princes of the Bar, who write for the blind, and
speak to the deaf, and who wear out their shoes in treading the
interminable paths of Rotal procedure. But assuredly they are not men
to be despised. They have always knowledge, often eloquence.
Marchetti, Rossi, and Lunati might no doubt have written good sermons,
if they had not