judge of Rome, the ordinary
residents of long standing, who care little about Italy and less about
the Pope, are, I fancy, unduly influenced by the advantages of their
exceptional position. There are few places in the world where a
stranger, especially an English stranger, is better off than in Rome. As
a rule, he has perfect liberty to do and say and write what he likes, and
almost inevitably he gets to think that a government which is so lenient
a one for him cannot be a very bad one for its own subjects. The cause,
however, of this exceptional lenity is not hard to discover. Much as we
laugh at home about the _Civis Romanus_ doctrine, abroad it is a very
powerful reality. Whether rightly or wrongly, foreign governments are
afraid of meddling with English subjects, and act accordingly. Then,
too, Englishmen as a body care very little about foreign politics, and
are known to live almost entirely among themselves abroad, and seldom to
interfere in the concerns of foreigners; and lastly, I am afraid that the
moral influence of England, of which our papers are so fond of boasting,
is very small indeed on the continent generally, and especially in Italy.
All the articles the _Times_ ever wrote on Italian affairs did not
produce half the effect of About's pamphlet or Cavour's speeches. I am
convinced that the influence of English newspapers in Italy is most
limited. The very scanty knowledge of the English language, and the
utter want of comprehension of our English modes of thought and feeling,
render an English journal even more uninteresting to the bulk of Italians
than an Italian one is to an Englishman; and the Roman rulers are well
aware of this important fact. Hard words break no bones, and the Vatican
cares little for what English papers say of it, and looks upon the
introduction of English Anti-Papal journals as part of the necessary
price to be paid for the residence of the wealthy heretics who refuse to
stop anywhere where they cannot have clubs and churches and papers of
their own. The expulsion of M. Gallenga, the _Times_ correspondent, was
in reality no exception to this policy. It was not as the correspondent
of an English newspaper, but as an ex-Mazzinian revolutionist and the
author of _Fra Dolcino_, that this gentleman was obnoxious to the Papal
authorities. Though a naturalized English subject, he had not ceased to
be an Italian, and his personal influence amongst Roman society might
have been c