and stone, with which their churches are crowded, and
before which you may see votaries praying, and priests burning incense,
all day long. Nor can I speak of the endless round of fetes and
festivals which fill up the entire year, and by which the priests seek
to dazzle, and, by dazzling, to delude and enthral, the Romans. Nor can
I detain my readers with tales and wonders of Madonnas which have
winked, and of the blind and halt which have been cured, which knaves
invent and simpletons believe. Nor can I detail the innumerable frauds
for fleecing the Romans;--money for indulgences,--money for the souls in
purgatory,--money for eating flesh on Friday,--money for votive
offerings to the saints. The church of the Jesuits is supposed to be
worth a million sterling, in the shape of marbles, paintings, and
statuary; and in this way the capital of the country is locked up, while
not a penny can be had for making roads or repairing bridges, or
promoting trade and agriculture. I cannot enter into these matters: I
must confine my attention to one subject,--THE PONTIFICAL GOVERNMENT.

When I speak of the Pontifical Government, I just mean the Papacy. The
working of the Papal Government is simply the working of the Papacy; for
what is that Government, but just the principles of the Papacy put into
judicial gear, and employed to govern mankind? It is the Church that
governs the Papal States; and as she governs these States, so would she
govern all the earth, would we let her. The Pontifical Government is
therefore the fairest illustration that can be adduced of the practical
tendency and influence of the system. I now arraign the system in the
Government. I am prepared to maintain, both on general principles, and
on facts that came under my own observation while in Rome, that the
Pontifical Government is the most flagitiously unjust, the most
inexorably cruel, the most essentially tyrannical Government, that ever
existed under the sun. It is the necessary, the unchangeable, the
eternal enemy of liberty. I say, looking at the essential principles of
the Papacy, that it is a system claiming infallibility, and so laying
reason and conscience under interdict,--that it is a system claiming to
govern the world, not _by_ God, but _as_ God,--that it is a system
claiming supreme authority in all things spiritual, and claiming the
same supreme authority, though indirectly, in all things temporal,--that
it sets no limits to its jurisdiction, bu