ture, to grant the _exequatur_ and to expel from their
residences all bishops who should not possess it. Not only did the
government withhold the incomes of the bishops, and confiscate the
revenues which the piety of the people had devoted for their support, it
also employed its gensd'armes and police agents in seizing the prelates at
their homes and casting them into the streets. The new rulers went further
still, and displayed their financial genius in a way peculiar to
themselves. They actually subjected to the tax on moveable property, the
alms which the bishops received from the Sovereign Pontiff, who, like
themselves, was robbed of his proper income. Thus did the beggarly
government make money out of the small resources of those who, when the
exchequer failed to fulfil its duties, endeavored themselves, as best they
could, to make up for this dereliction.

Military conscription is essentially tyrannical. It is particularly so
when used as an arm of offence against the church. It was applied to
ecclesiastical students, and even to such as were in holy orders,
expressly for the purpose of depriving the church of recruits from the
seminaries. None could now be found to renew the ranks of the clergy,
except such as were invalids or of weak constitutions, or who, by miracle,
persevered in their vocation, after four years' service in military
barracks.

The public robbers, notwithstanding their professions and guarantees,
audaciously laid sacrilegious hands on the properties of the Basilicas of
St. Peter and St. John Lateran, which they themselves had expressly
reserved for the use of the Holy See. They hesitated not even to seize the
funds of the celebrated missionary college--Propaganda. These properties
they did not simply annex, as they did so many, besides, that belonged to
the Church. They created a liquidating junta or commission, as they called
it, which should change all immovable ecclesiastical properties that were
not already confiscated into national rent. Such national rent, as is well
known, had only an ephemeral value. It was, at best, variable; and Italy,
which was partially bankrupt when it reduced the interest due to its
creditors, will, sooner or later, according to the opinion of the ablest
writers, land in complete bankruptcy. The rents substituted by force,
instead of real property, will then possess the value of the _assignats_
of the first French revolution.

The endowments of Propaganda, appoi