For example's sake, the
Pope condemns him to a month's retirement in a convent.
Ah! if any sacrilegious hand were laid upon the holy ark; if a priest
were to be slain, a Cardinal only threatened, then would there be
neither asylum, nor galleys, nor clemency, nor delay. Thirty years ago
the murderer of a priest was hewn in pieces in the Piazza del Popolo.
More recently, as we have seen, the idiot who brandished his fork in
the face of Cardinal Antonelli, was beheaded.
It is with highway robbery as with murder. I am induced to believe
that the Pontifical court would not wage a very fierce war with the
brigands, if those gentry undertook to respect its money and
despatches. The occasional stopping of a few travellers, the clearing
out of a carriage, and even the pillaging a country house, are neither
religious nor political scourges. The brigands are not likely to scale
either Heaven or the Vatican.
Thus there is still good business to be done in this line, and
particularly beyond the Apennines, in those provinces which Austria
has disarmed and does not protect. The tribunal of Bologna faithfully
described the state of the country in a sentence of the 16th of June,
1856.
"Of late years this province has been afflicted by
innumerable crimes of all sorts: robbery, pillage, attacks
upon houses, have occurred at all hours, and in all places.
The numbers of the malefactors have been constantly
increasing, as has their audacity, encouraged by impunity.
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