d had any
dealings with the papal tribunals.

But I turn to the political justice of the Papal States,--a department
even more important in the present state of Italy, and where the
specific acts are better known. Let us look first at the tribunal set up
in Rome for the trial of all crimes against the State. And let the
reader bear in mind, that offences against the Church are crimes against
the State, for there the Church is the State. A secret, summary, and
atrocious tribunal it is, differing in no essential particular from that
sanguinary tribunal in Paris where Robespierre passed sentence, and the
guillotine executed it. The Gregorian Code[6] enacts, that in cases of
sedition or treason, the trial may take place by a commission nominated
by the Pope's Secretary; that the trial shall be secret; that the
prisoner shall not be confronted with the witnesses, or know their
names; that he may be examined in prison and by torture. The accused,
according to this barbarous code, has no means of proving his
innocence, or defending his life, beyond the hasty observations on the
evidence which his advocate, who is appointed in all cases by the
tribunal, may be able to make on the spur of the moment. This tribunal
is simply the Inquisition; and yet it is by this tribunal that the Pope,
who professes to be the first minister of justice on earth, governs his
kingdom. No man is safe at Rome. However innocent, his liberty and life
hang by a single thread, which the Government, by the help of such a
tribunal as this, may snap at any moment.

This is the established, the legal course of papal justice. Let the
reader lift his eyes, and survey, if he have courage, the wide weltering
mass of misery and despair which the Papal States present. We cannot
bring all into view; we must permit a few only to speak for the rest.
Here they come from a region of doom, to tell to the free people of
Britain, if they will hear them, the dread secrets of their
prison-house; and, we may add, to warn them, "lest they also come into
this place of torment." I shall first of all take a case that occurred
before the Revolution, lest any one should affirm of the cases that are
to follow, that the Pontifical Government had been exascerbated by the
insurrection, and hurried into measures of more than usual severity.
This case I give on the authority of Mr Whiteside, who, being curious to
see a _political process_ in the Roman law, after some trouble procured