nderful. But the wonder is completed when we
reflect that this state of things obtains under a Government claiming to
be guided by a higher than mortal sagacity,--a Government which says
that it never did, and never can, err,--a Government that is
supernatural and infallible. Supernatural and infallible! Why, I say, go
out into the street,--stop the first old woman you meet,--carry her to
Rome,--put a three-storied cap on her head,--enthrone her on the high
altar in St Peter's,--burn incense before her, and call her
infallible,--I say that old woman will be a more enlightened ruler that
Pio Nono. The old Scotch woman or English woman would beat the old Roman
woman hollow.

The facts I have stated are sad enough; but the more harrowing picture
of the working of the papal system has yet to be shown.

CHAPTER XXVI.

JUSTICE AND LIBERTY IN THE PAPAL STATES.

Justice the Pillar of the State--Claim implied in being God's
Vicar, namely, that the Pope governs the World as God would govern
it, were He personally present in it--No Civil Code in the Papal
States--Citizens have no Rights save as Church Members--No Lay
Judges--The Pontifical Government simply the Embodiment of the
Papacy--Courts of Justice visited--Papal Tribunals--The
Rota--Signatura--Cassation--Exceptional Tribunals--Apostolical
Chamber--House of Peter--Justice bought and sold at Rome--POLITICAL
JUSTICE--Gregorian Code--Case of Pietro Leoni--Accession of Pius
IX.--His Popularity at first--Re-action--Case of Colonel
Calendrelli--The Three Citizens of Macarata--The Hundred Young Men
of Faenza--Butchery at Sinigaglia--Horrible Executions at
Ancona--Estimated Number of Political Prisoners 30,000--Pope's
Prisons described--Horrible Treatment of Prisoners--The Sbirri--The
Spies--Domiciliary Restraint--Expulsions from Rome--Imprisonment
without reason assigned--Manner in which Apprehensions are
made--Condemnations without Evidence or Trial--Misery of Rome--The
Pope's Jubilee.

We turn now to the JUSTICE of the Papal States. Alas! if in the
preceding chapters on _Trade_ we were discoursing on what does not
exist, we are now emphatically to speak of what is but a shadow, a
mockery. To say that in the Papal States Justice is not,--that it is a
negation,--is only to state half the truth. Were that all, thankful
indeed would the Romans be. But, alas! in the seat of Justice