h has
been suppressed by the Government. All the liberal papers have been put
down. They appeared again and again under new names, but only to
encounter, under every form, the veto of the authorities. At last their
whole printing establishments were confiscated. The public press having
been silenced, the secret one continued to speak to the Tuscans from
its hiding-place; and its voice was the more heard that the other was
dumb. Besides Bibles, a variety of religious books have issued from it,
and have been widely circulated. Among the translated works spread among
the Tuscans are D'Aubigne's "History of the Reformation," M'Crie's
"Suppression of the Reformation in Italy," "The Mother's Catechism,"
Watts' "Catechism," "The Pilgrim's Progress," and a variety of religious
tracts. The prohibition of a book by the Government is sure to be
followed by a universal demand for it; and the Government decree is thus
the signal for going to press with a new edition of the forbidden work.
Mr Gladstone's letters on Naples were prohibited by Government; and the
very means adopted to keep the Tuscans ignorant of what Englishmen
thought of the state of Naples, and of the Continent generally, only led
to its being better known. Though not a single copy of these letters was
to be seen in the shops or on the stalls, they found their way into
every one's hands. The same thing happened to Count Guicciardini. The
Government prohibited his statement, and all Florence read it. The
well-known hatred of the priests to the Bible has been its best
recommendation in the eyes of the Tuscans. Thus the Government finds
that it cannot move a step without inflicting deadly damage on its own
interests. Its interposition is fatal only to the cause it seeks to
help. To prohibit a book is to publish it; to bring a man to trial is to
give liberty an opportunity of speaking through his advocate; to cast a
confessor of the Lord Jesus into prison is but to erect a light-house
amidst the Tuscan darkness. The Government and the priesthood find that
their efforts are foiled and their might paralyzed by a mysterious
power, which they know not how to grapple with. The guillotine has stood
unused: not that any scruples of conscience or any feelings of humanity
restrain the priests; fain would they bring every convert to the
scaffold if they dared; but the odium which they well know would attend
such a deed deters them; and they anxiously wait the coming of a time
when