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Even in the midst of her sufferings she not only repents not of her crimes, but she repeats them.

The Record newspaper gives a true but fearful account of her deeds on a very recent occasion:

"If anything were wanting to fill up the full measure of the administrative iniquities of the Holy See, an incident which has just found its way into the public prints would have amply supplied the omission. It will be remembered that, some few weeks ago, considerable credit was claimed by the more enthusiastic admirers of the Pontifical Government on the score of certain arrangements which it had made for the suppression of brigandage. It was announced that in future the Papal troops would heartily cooperate with those of Victor Emmanuel, and that notorious offenders would no longer be able to escape the penalty of their crimes by transferring their precious selves to the other side of a somewhat imaginary frontier line. As the announcement was shortly followed by the news that a small party of carabinieri, reinforced by a few Papal Zouaves, had, after being compelled to surrender at discretion, been quartered alive by the brigands, there appeared to be sound reasons for hoping that the new policy would be carried out in earnest. Hope, however, in this instance, as in so many others, told a flattering but a delusive tale. The brigands did, indeed, gradually disappear; and by some credulous individuals they were even supposed to have fallen into the hands

of the Roman police and to be awaiting their trial in prison.

"It was only the other day that the real state of the case transpired. About three months back, Cardinal Antonelli, as the recognized organ of the Vatican, proposed to M. De Sartiges, the French ambassador at Rome, that certain political refugees, whose attachment to the Bourbons had made them marked men in Italy, should have passports granted to them for emigration to Algeria rià Marseilles. Permission was granted for the transit of a limited number, and seems to have been afterwards somewhat extended. Every French steamer that has left Civita Vecchia for the last few weeks has accordingly taken on board a select number of these interesting émigrés. Last week, however, as the three who remained out of a batch numbering some thirty in all were afloat in the gulf of Lyons, information was received by the Italian Government which induced them to despatch a special telegram to Marseilles. Upon the arrival of the steamer the three political refugees were detained by the French police, acting on the orders of their superior officer, and turned out to be no other than Crocco, Pilane, and Viola, ruffians whose names are specially notorious even in the blood-stained annals of Italian brigandage. These monsters in human shape have for the last three years, under the guise of an allegiance to a fallen dynasty, simply indulged in the full licence of murdering, ravishing, and mutilating their fellow-subjects. To give full particulars

of the crimes which have been committed by these men in the columns of a newspaper would be to outrage public decency. Those who are curious in such matters may find the whole catalogue of the atrocities. for which they and the bands which they led are responsible in the reports made to the Italian Government by the officers in command of the southern district. Suffice it to say that the list of their offences comprised, in addition to every crime known to our English statute book, several for which Italy seems to enjoy an unenviable specialty.

"Now, the exportation of such scoundrels in the guise of political refugees may be advisable as a matter of policy, but what is to be said as to the justice of such a proceeding? Can it be conceived that any Government, except that presided over by the Sacred College, would, in the latter half of the 19th century, have ventured upon granting a practical amnesty to men of the stamp of Crocco and his confrères? We do not hesitate to say that, whatever may be the ultimate fate of these desperadoes, nothing can remove the stigma of infamy which must attach to those who were prepared thus to smuggle them out of Italy. We do not envy the feelings of Cardinal Antonelli when the news reached him of the arrest of his protegés. The whole transaction has added one more to the many proofs which already existed of the weakness and incapacity of the Papal government, and may be looked upon as one of those significant events which precede a final catastrophe. The straw is

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moving,' and there seems to be a fair chance that the spontaneous collapse of the temporal power may remove from the region of politics to that of facts a question that would otherwise be fraught with more than ordinary difficulties."

Such conduct seems almost incredible. But it is one of her brands that she neither repents nor reforms.

In the Times of August, 1867: "Wherever he looks around him the Pope sees the aid of constituted governments falling away from him. Austria is breaking through the trammels of the Concordat; Russia is bringing the Catholic hierarchy altogether under imperial control. All faith in the efficiency of carnal weapons is shaken, and, on the other hand, the Church thrives nowhere more prodigiously than in those free countries in which she only enjoys the blessings of equal toleration, and shares it with all other creeds and confessions. It is full time that those peaceful means of spontaneous persuasion which, if we may believe her own priests and bishops, win her such splendid victories in England or the United States, should be employed in Italy and in Rome itself, where, perhaps, they may lead to more satisfactory results than Antibes Legions or Dumont missions. The Papacy has tried sovereign power for a thousand years, and the result is a paltry territory with a beggared population, a bankrupt treasury, and a nest of brigands. If it has not yet learnt that its

kingdom is not of this world,' that salutary lesson should be no longer delayed."

Her last desperate effort at supremacy is to be made in England. Corrupting some-aweing others into submission-seducing statesmen by pleas of toleration, liberality, and promises of service, she will shake, but I believe she will not be able to shatter, "the fortress of heresy," to which, as Dr Manning states, it may have laid siege. This will be brought out more fully in our illustration of the action of the "three unclean spirits."

But in the midst of all, her power dies in her strongest holds. Even in Austria, so long her right hand, in the words of the foreign correspondent of the Times, of July 22, 1867, "The committee on religious affairs propose that a civil code of laws shall be introduced for the regulation of the marriages of Catholics, and also the introduction of civil marriage. They further propose the emancipation of schools from the Church, and that all religions shall be regarded as equal in the eye of the law."

The Spectator, July, 1867, remarks that "in less than twelve months the Papacy has lost the control of three great kingdoms, a province nearly as large as a kingdom, and property which in Italy, Mexico, and Poland must be worth at the very least a hundred millions sterling, and might twenty years hence have been valued at thrice that sum. It is a frightful list of misfortunes, yet we doubt if the whole together

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