d the expenses, besides the fees of
the fiscal advocate. If any one should have the rare luck to gain his
suit, as, for instance, by producing the receipt in full, he must
nevertheless pay a sum for the judgment absolving him.

The presidents of the tribunals--the minor judges, comprising the
private auditors of the Vicar of Rome--have the power of legitimatizing
all contracts for persons affected by legal incapacity. This is
generally done without examination, and merely in consideration of the
fee which they receive. It would take a long chapter to narrate the sums
which have been, by a single stroke of the pen, wrongfully taken from
poor widows and orphans. Incapacity for the management of one's affairs
is sometimes pronounced by the tribunal, but very frequently is decreed
by the prelate-auditor of the Pope, without any judicial formality. Thus
any citizen may at any moment find himself deprived of the direction of
his private affairs and business.

Such is the machinery employed for dispensing justice by a man who
professes to be the infallible fountain of equity, and the world's
teacher as regards the eternal maxims of justice. Justice! The word is a
delusion,--a lie. It is a term which designates a tyranny worse than any
under which the populations of Asia groan.[5]

It would be wearisome to adduce individual cases, even were I able
to do so. But, indeed, the vast corruption of the _civil justice_
of the Papal States must be evident from what I have said. A
law so inextricable!--judges so incompetent, who decide without
examining!--tribunals which sit in darkness! Why, justice is not
dispensed in Rome; it is bought and sold; it is simply a piece of
merchandise; and if you wish to obtain it, you cannot, but by going to
the market, where it is openly put up for sale, and buying it with your
money. Mr Whiteside, a most competent witness in this case, who spent
two winters in Rome, and made it his special business to investigate the
Roman jurisprudence, both in its theory and in its practice, tells us in
effect, in his able work on Italy, that if you are so unfortunate as to
have a suit in the Roman courts, the decision will have little or no
reference to the merits of the cause, but will depend on whether you or
your opponent is willing to approach the judgment-seat with the largest
bribe. Such, in substance, is Mr Whiteside's testimony; and precisely
similar was the evidence of every one whom I met in Rome who ha