d-fashioned weapons, many of which missed fire, so that at
the first discharge some of the prisoners did not fall, but ran off,
with the soldiers pursuing and firing at them repeatedly; others crawled
about; and one wretch, after being considered dead, made a violent
exertion to get up, rendering a final _coup de grace_ necessary." The
writer who recorded these accounts added, that other executions were to
follow, and that, if these wholesale slaughters were necessary, they
ought, in the dominions of a pontifical sovereign, to be conducted with
more delicacy, that is, in a more summary fashion. In truth, such
executions are a departure from the approved pontifical method of
killing,--which is not by fusillades and in open day, but in silence and
night, by the help of the rack and the dungeon.

I cannot go into any minute detail of the imprisonments, banishments,
and massacres by which the Pope has signalized his return to his palace
and the chair of Peter. But I may state a few facts, from which some
idea of their number may be gathered. When Pio Nono fled from Rome to
Gaeta, what was the amount of its population? Not less than a hundred
and sixty thousand. I conversed with a distinguished literary Englishman
who chanced to visit Rome at the time I speak of, and who assured me
that there could not be fewer than two hundred thousand in Rome then,
for Italians had flocked thither from every country under heaven,
expecting a new era for their city and nation. But I shall give the Pope
the benefit of the smaller number. When he fled, there were, I shall
suppose, only a hundred and sixty thousand human beings in his city of
Rome. Take the same Rome six months after his return, and how many do
you find in it? According to the most credible accounts, the population
of the Eternal City had dwindled down to little above a hundred
thousand. Here are sixty thousand human beings lacking in this one city.
What has become of them? Where have they gone to? I shall suppose that
some were fortunate enough to escape to Malta, some to Belgium, some to
England, and others to America. I shall suppose that twenty thousand
contrived to get away. And let me here do justice to Mr Freeborn, the
British consul, who saved much blood by issuing British passports to
these unhappy men when the French entered Rome. Twenty thousand, I shall
suppose, made good their flight. But thirty thousand and upwards are
still lacking. Where are your subjects, Pio N