and elevated to the bench, to do the work of their patrons?[7]
Such must show that they deserve promotion. The people loathe and dread
the _sbirri_, knowing that whatever they do in their official capacity
is done well, and speedily followed up by those in authority.

But there is a class in the service of the Pontifical Government yet
more wicked and dangerous. What! exclaims the reader, more wicked and
dangerous than the _sbirri_! Yes, the _sbirri_ profess to be only what
they are,--the base tools of a tyrannical Government, which seems to
thirst insatiably for vengeance; but there exists an invisible power,
which the citizen feels to be ever at his side, listening to his every
word, penetrating his inmost thought, and ready at any moment to effect
his destruction. At noonday, at midnight, in society, in private, he
feels that its eye is upon him. He can neither see it nor avoid it.
Would he flee from it, he but throws himself into its jaws. I refer to a
class of vile and abandoned men, entirely at the service of the
Government, whose position in society, agreeable manners, flexibility
of disposition, and thorough knowledge of affairs, which they study for
base ends, and handle most adroitly in conversation, enable them to
penetrate the secret feelings of all classes. They now condemn and now
applaud the conduct of Government, as the subject and circumstances
require, and all to extract an unfriendly sentiment against those in
authority, if such there be in the mind of the man with whom they are
conversing. If they succeed, the person is immediately denounced; an
arrest follows, or domiciliary restraint. The numbers that have found
their way to prison and to the galleys through this secret and
mysterious agency are incredible. Nor can any man imagine to himself the
dreadful state of Rome under this terrible espionage. The Roman feels
that the air around him is full of eyes and ears; he dare not speak; he
dreads even to think; he knows that a thought or a look may convey him
to prison.

The oppression is not of equal intensity in all cases. Some are
subjected only to domiciliary restraint. In this predicament are many
respectably connected young men. They are told to consider themselves as
prisoners in their own houses, and not to appear beyond the threshold,
but at the penalty of exchanging their homes for the common jail.
Others, again, whose apparent delinquency has been less, are allowed the
freedom of the open a