Chapter 26

INFLUENCE OF ROMANISM ON TRADE--(CONTINUED).

Why does the Church systematically discourage Trade?--Railways--Much needed--Church opposes them--Could not a man take a journey of twenty or two hundred miles and be a good Catholic?--Motion is Liberty--Motion contributed to overthrow the Serfdom of the Middle Ages--Popes understand the connection between Motion and Liberty--Romans chained to the Soil--Gregory XVI. and the Iron-bridge--Gas in Rome--Spread of the Malaria--The Pontine Marshes--Neglect of Soil--Number of Paupers--How the Church prevents the Cultivation of the Campagna--Church Lands in England and Scotland--The price which Italy pays for the Papacy--Whether would the old Roman Woman or an old Scotch Woman make the better Ruler?

Let us pause here, and inquire into the cause of this most deplorable state of matters. Is not the Papal Government manifestly sacrificing its own interests? Would it not be better for itself were Italy covered with a prosperous agriculture and a flourishing trade? Were its cities filled with looms and forges, would not its people have more money to spend on masses and absolutions? and, instead of the Government subsisting on foreign loans, and being always on the eve of bankruptcy, it might fill its exchequer from the vast resources of the country, and have, moreover, the pleasure of seeing around it a prosperous and happy people.

This is all very true. None knows better the value of money than Rome; but she knows, too, the infinite hazard of acquiring it in the way of allowing trade and industry to enter the Papal States. Indeed, to do so would be to record sentence of banishment against herself. Every one must have remarked the difference betwixt the artizan of Birmingham and the peasant of Ireland. They seem to belong to two different races of men almost. The former is employed in making a certain piece of mechanism, or in superintending its working. He is compelled to calculate, to trace effects to their causes, and to study the relations of the various parts before him to the whole. In short, he is taught to think; and that thinking power he applies to all other subjects. His habits of life teach him to ask for reasons, and to accept of opinions only on evidence. The mind of the latter lies dead. Were Italy filled with a race of men like the first, the papacy could not live a day. Were trade, and machinery, and wealth to come in, the torpor of Italy would be broken up; and--terrible event to the papacy!--mind would awaken. What though the Pope reigns over a wasted land and a nation of beggars? he _does_ reign; he counts for a European sovereign; and his system continues to exist as a power. As men in shipwreck throw overboard food, jewels, all, to save life, so Romanism has thrown all overboard to save itself. Nothing could be a stronger proof of this than the fact that, as the effects and benefits of trade become the more developed, the pontifical Government tightens its restrictions. The note of Antonelli, the present ruling spirit of the papacy, was the most prohibitive ever framed against the introduction of iron, in other words, of civilization. This is the price which Italy must pay for the Pope and his religion. She cannot participate in the advantages of foreign trade; she cannot enjoy the facilities and improvements of modern times; because, were she to enjoy these, she would lose the papacy. She must be content to remain in the barbarism of the middle ages, covered with that moral malaria which has smitten all things in that doomed land, and under the influence of which, the cities, the earth itself, and man, for whom it was made, are all sinking into one common ruin.[3]

We have yet other illustrations of the pestiferous influence of Romanism on the temporal happiness of its subjects. We have already alluded to the determined manner in which the Pontifical Government has hitherto withstood the introduction of railways. And yet, if there be a country in Europe where railways are indispensable, it is the Papal States. The roads in the territory blessed by the Government of Christ's vicar, are more like canals than roads, with this difference, that there is too little water in them for floating a boat, and far too much for comfortable travelling. Besides, they are infested by brigands, whose pursuit a railway might enable you to distance. But a railway the subjects of the Pontifical Government cannot have. And why?

One would think that the mere mode of conveyance is a very harmless affair. What is it to the Pontifical Government whether the peasant of the Alban hills, or the citizen of Bologna, or the merchant of Ancona, visit Rome on foot, or in his waggon, or by rail? Is he not the same man? Will his ride convert him into a heretic, or shake his faith in Peter's successor? or will the laying down of a few miles of railroad weaken the foundations of that Church which boasts that she is founded on a rock, and that the gates of hell themselves shall not prevail against her? Or if it be said that it is not the mode of the journey, but the length of the journey, what difference can it make whether the man travel twenty miles or two hundred miles? The stability of the Church cannot be seriously endangered by a few miles less or more. Is the Pope's system of so peculiar a kind, that though it is possible for the man who walks twenty miles on foot to believe in it, it is wholly impossible for the man who rides two hundred miles by rail to do so? We know of no Roman doctor who has attempted to fix the precise number of miles which a good Catholic may travel from home without endangering his salvation. One would think that all this is plain enough; that there is no element of danger here; and yet the sharper instincts of the papacy have discovered that herein lies danger, and great danger, to its power. If the influence of Rome is to be preserved, it is not enough that the Bible be put out of existence, that the missionary be banished, and that the art of printing, and all means of diffusing ideas, be proscribed and exterminated: the very right of moving over the earth must be taken from man. Even _motion_ must be placed under anathema.

We have a saying that _knowledge is power_. I would say that _motion is liberty_. The serfdom of the middle ages was in good degree maintained by binding man to the soil. Astriction to the soil was at once the foundation and the symbol of that serfdom. The baron became the master of the body of the man; he became also the master of his mental ideas. But when the serf acquired the power of locomotion, he laid the foundation of his emancipation; and from that hour feudalism began to crumble. As the serfs' power of motion enlarged, their liberty enlarged. As formerly they had known slavery by its symbol _immovability_, so now they tasted freedom by its symbol _motion_. The serf travelled beyond the valley in which he was born; he saw new objects; he met his fellow-men; and learned to think. At last motion was perfected; the steam-engine hissed past him, and he felt that now he was completely unchained. I do not give this as a theory of the rise and progress of modern liberty; but unquestionably there is a close and intimate connection between motion and liberty.

The Popes are shrewd enough to see this connection; and herein lies their opposition to railroads. They have attempted, and still do attempt, to perpetuate papal serfdom, by tying their subjects to their paternal acres and their native town. Were my reader living in London or in Edinburgh, and wished to visit Chelsea or Portobello, how would he proceed? Go to the railway station and buy a ticket, and his journey is made. But were the country under the Pontifical Government, he would find it impossible to manage the matter quite so expeditiously. He must first present himself at the office of the prefect of police. He must state where he wishes to go to; what business he has there; how long he intends remaining. He must give his name, his age, his residence, and a certificate, if required, from his parish priest; and then, should the object of his journey be approved of, a description of his person will be taken down, a passport will be made out, for which he must pay some six or eight pauls; and after this process has been gone through, but not sooner, he may set out on his little journey. Very few of those who live in Rome were ever more than outside its walls. Even the nobles have the utmost difficulty in getting so far as Civita Vecchia; very few of them ever saw the sea. The Popes know that ideas as well as merchandise travel by rail; and that if the Romans are allowed to go from home, and to see new objects, new faces, and to hear new ideas, a process will be commenced which will ultimately, and at no distant day, undermine the papacy. But among men of ordinary intelligence there will be but one opinion regarding a system that sees an enemy not only in the Bible, but in the most necessary and useful arts,--in the steam-ship, in the railroad, in the electric telegraph; in short, in all the improvements and usages of civilized life. Such a system assuredly has perdition written upon its forehead.

The late Pope Gregory XVI. would not allow even an iron bridge to be thrown across the Tiber. The Romans solicited this, to get rid of a ferry-boat by which the Tiber is crossed at the point in question; but no; an iron bridge there could not be. And why? Ah, said Gregory, if we have an iron bridge in Rome, we shall next have an iron road; and if we have an iron road, "_adio_," the papacy will take its departure, and that by steam.

But the Pope had another reason for withholding his sanction from the iron bridge; and as that reason shows how some wretched crotchet, springing from their miserable system, is sure to start up on all occasions, and defeat the most needed improvement, I shall here state what it was. At the point where it was wished to have the bridge erected, the Tiber flows between two populous regions of the city. There is in consequence a considerable concourse, and the passengers are carried over, as I have said, in a ferry-boat, for which a couple of baiocchi is paid by each person to the ferryman. The money thus collected forms part of the revenues of a certain church in Rome, where the priests who receive it sing masses for the souls in purgatory. If you abolish the ferry-boat, it was argued, you will abolish the penny; and if you abolish the penny, what is to become of the poor souls in purgatory? and for the sake of the _souls_, the _living_ were forced to do without the bridge.

I need scarcely say that there is no gas in Rome. And sure I am, if there be a dark spot in all the universe,--a place above all others needing light of all kinds, moral, mental, and physical,--it is this dark dungeon termed Rome. It has a few oil-lamps, swung on cords, at most respectable distances from one another; and you see their hazy, sickly, dying gleam far above you, making themselves visible, but nothing besides; and after sunset, Rome is plunged in darkness, affording ample opportunity for assassinations, robberies, and evil deeds of all kinds. I know not how many companies have been formed to light Rome with gas. An attempt was made to light in this way the Eternal City during the pontificate of Gregory XVI. A deputation went to the Vatican, and told the Pope that they would light his capital with gas. "Gas!" exclaimed Gregory, who had an owl-like dread of light of all kinds; "there shan't be gas in Rome while I am in Rome." Gregory is not in Rome now; Pio Nono is in the Vatican: but the same oil-lamps which lighted the Rome of Gregory XVI. still flourish in the Rome of Pio Nono.[4]

All have heard of the Pontine Marshes,--a chain of swamps which run along the foot of the Volscian Mountains, and are the birthplace of the malaria,--a white vapour, which creeps snake-like over the country, and smites with deadly fever whoever is so foolhardy as to sleep on the Campagna during its continuance. These marshes, I understand, are increasing; and the malaria is increasing in consequence. That fatal vapour now comes every summer to the gates of Rome: it covers a certain quarter of the city, which, I was told, is uninhabitable during its continuance; and if nothing be done to lessen the malaria at its source, it will, some century or half century after this, envelope in its pestilential folds the whole of the Eternal City, and the traveller will gaze with awe on the blackened ruins of Rome, as he does on those of Babylon on the plain of Chaldea: so, I say, will he see the heaps of Rome on the wasted bosom of the Campagna deserted by man, and become the dwelling-place of the dragons and satyrs of the wilderness. But matters are not come to this yet. An English company (for every attempted improvement in Rome has originated with English skill and capital) was formed some years ago, to drain the Pontine Marshes. They went to the Vatican; and Sir Humphrey Davy being then in Rome, they induced him to accompany them, in the hope that his high scientific authority would have some weight with the Pontiff. They stated their object, which was to drain the Pontine Marshes. They assured the Pontiff it was practicable to a very large extent; and they pointed out its manifold advantages, as regarded the health of the country, and other things. "Drain the Pontine Marshes!" exclaimed Pope Gregory, in a tone of surprise and horror at this new project of these everlastingly scheming English heretics,--"Drain the Pontine Marshes! God made the Pontine Marshes; and if He had intended them to be drained, He would have drained them himself."

The barrenness that afflicts all countries which are the seat of a false religion is a public testimony of the Divine indignation against idolatry. For the sin of man the earth was originally cursed: and wherever wicked systems exist, there a manifest curse rests upon the earth. The Mohammedan apostacy and the Roman apostacy are now seated in the midst of wildernesses. And, to make the fact more striking, these lands, which are deserts now, were anciently the best cultivated on the globe. There stood the proudest of earth's cities,--there the arts flourished,--and there men were free after the measure of ancient freedom. All this is at an end long since. Ruins, silence, and a sickly and sinking population, are the mournful spectacles which greet the eye of the traveller in Papal and Mohammedan countries. Thus God bears outward testimony against the Papal and Mohammedan systems. He has cursed the ground for their sakes; not in the way of miracle,--not by sending an angel to smite it, or by raining brimstone upon it, as he did on Sodom: the angel that has smitten the dominions of the Pope and of the False Prophet,--the brimstone and fire which have been rained upon them,--are the wicked systems which have there grown up, and by which Government has been rendered blind, infatuated, and tyrannical, and man stupid, indolent, and vicious. But the laws the Almighty has established, according to which idolatry necessarily and uniformly blights the earth and the men who live upon it, only show that his indignation against these evil systems is unchangeable and eternal, and will pursue them till they perish. Of this the state of the plain around Rome, the _Agro Romano_, forms a terrible example.

I have endeavoured in former chapters to exhibit a picture of the frightful desolation of this once magnificent plain. He that set his mark on the brow of the first murderer has set his mark on this plain, where so much blood has been shed. "Now art thou cursed from the earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother's blood from thy hand. When thou tillest the ground it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength." But God has cursed this plain through the instrumentality of this evil system the Papacy, and I shall show you how.

I have already shown that there is not, and cannot be, anything like trade in Rome, beyond what is necessary to repair the consumpt of articles in daily use. In the absence of trade there is a proportionate amount of idleness; and that idleness, in its turn, breeds beggary, vagabondism, and crime. The French Prefect, Mr Whiteside tells us, published a statistical account of Rome; and how many paupers does he say there are in it? Why, not fewer than thirty thousand. Thirty thousand paupers in one city, and that city, in its usual state, of but about a hundred and twenty thousand inhabitants! Subtract the priests, the English residents, and the French soldiers, and every third man is a beggar. I was fortunate enough one evening to meet, in a certain shop in Rome, an intelligent Roman, willing to talk with me on the state of the country. The shopkeeper, as soon as he found the turn the conversation had taken, discreetly stepped out, and left it all to ourselves. "I never in all my life," I remarked, "saw a city in which I found so many beggars. The people seem to have nothing to do, and nothing to eat. There are here some hundred thousand of you cooped up within these old walls, and one half the population do nothing all day long but whine at the heels of English travellers, or hang on at the doors of the convents, waiting their one meal a-day. Why is this? Outside the walls is a magnificent plain, which, were it cultivated, would feed ten Romes, instead of one. Why don't you take picks, or spades, or ploughs,--anything you can lay hands on,--and go out to that plain, and dig it, and plant it, and sow it, and reap it, and eat and drink, and be merry?" "Ah! so we would," said he. "Then, why don't you?" "We dare not," he replied. "Dare not! Dare not till the earth God has given you?" "It is the Church's," he said. "But come now," said he, "and I will explain how it comes to be so." He went on to say, that one portion of the Campagna was gifted to the convents in Rome, another portion was gifted to the nunneries, another to the hospitals, and another to the pontifical families,--that is, to the sons and daughters, or, as they more politely speak in Rome, the nephews and nieces, of the Popes. These were the owners of the great Roman plain; and in their hands almost every acre of it was locked up, inaccessible to the plough, and inaccessible to the people. Even in our country it is found that corporations make the worst possible landlords, and that lands in the possession of such bodies are always less productive than estates managed in the ordinary way. But what sort of farming are we to expect from such corporations as we find in the city of Rome? What skill or capital have a brotherhood of lazy monks, to enable them to cultivate their lands? What enterprise or interest have a sisterhood of nuns to farm their property? They know they shall have their lifetime of it, and that is all they care for. Accordingly, they let their lands for grazing, on payment of a mere trifle of annual rent; and so the Campagna lies unploughed and unsown. A tract of land extending from Civita Vecchia to well nigh the gates of Rome,--which would make a Scotch dukedom or a German principality,--belonging to the _San Spirito_, does little more, I was told, than pay its working. The land labours under an eternal entail, which binds it over to perpetual sterility. It is God's, _i.e._ it is the Church's; and no one,--no, not even the Pope,--dare alienate a single acre of it. No Pope would set his face to such a piece of reformation, well knowing that every brotherhood and sisterhood in Rome would rise in arms against him. And even though he should screw his courage to such an encounter, he is met by the canon law. The Pope who shall dare to secularize a foot-breadth of land which has been gifted to the Church is by that law accursed. Here, then, is the price which the Romans pay for the Papacy. Outside the walls of the city lie the estates of the Church, depastured at certain seasons by a few herds, tended by men clad in skins, and looking as savage as the animals they tend; while inside the walls are some hundred thousand Romans, enduring from one year's end to another all the miseries of a partial famine. Nor is there the least hope that matters will mend so long as the Papacy lasts. For while the Papacy is in Italy, the Campagna, once so populous and rich, will be what it now is,--a desert.

And the Papal States, lapsed into more than primeval sterility, overrun by brigandage and beggary, are the picture of what Britain would be under the Papacy. Let the Roman Church get the upper hand in this country, and, be assured, the first thing it will do will be to demand back every acre of land that once belonged to it. Before the Reformation, half the lands of England, and a third of the lands of Scotland, were in the possession of the Church. She keeps a chart of them to this hour: she knows every foot-breadth of British soil that at any time belonged to her: she holds its present possessors to be robbers and sacrilegious men; and the first moment she has the power, she will compel them to disgorge what she holds to be ill-gotten wealth, and endow her with the broad acres she once possessed. Nor will she stop here. By haunting death-beds,--by putting in motion the machinery of the confessional,--by the threat of purgatory in this case, and the lure of paradise in that,--she will speedily add to her former ample domain. And what will our country then become? We shall have Mother Church for landlord; and while she feasts daily at her sumptuous board, we shall have what the Romans now have,--the crumbs. We shall have monks and nuns for our farmers; and under their management, farewell to the smiling fields, the golden harvests, and the opulent cities, of Scotland and England. Our country will again become what it was before the Reformation,--a land of moors, and swamps, and forests, with a few patches of indifferent cultivation around our convents and abbacies. Vagabondism, lay and sacerdotal, will flourish once more in Britain; trade and commerce will be put down, as savouring of independence and intelligence; indolence and beggary will be sanctified; and troops of friars, with wallets on their backs, impudence on their brows, and profanity and filthiness on their tongues, will scour the country, demanding that every threshold and every purse shall be open to them. This result will come as surely as to-morrow will come, provided we permit the Papacy to raise its head once more among us.

Let no one imagine that this terrible wreck of man, and of all his interests,--of civilization, of industry, of trade and commerce,--has happened of chance, and that there is no connection between this deplorable state of matters and the system which has prevailed in Italy. On the contrary, it is the direct, the necessary, and the uniform result of that system. The barbarian hates art because he does not understand its uses, and dreads its power. But the hatred the Pope bears to the useful arts is not that of the barbarian. It is the intelligent, the consistent hatred of a man who knows what he is about. It is the hatred of a man who comprehends both the character of his own system, and the tendency of modern improvements, and who sees right well, that if these improvements are introduced, the Papacy must fall. Self-preservation is the first law of systems, as of individuals; and the Papacy, feeling the antagonism between itself and these things, ever has and ever will resist them. It cannot tolerate them though it would. Speculatists and sentimentalists may talk as they please; but the destruction of that system is the first requisite to the regeneration of Italy.

Such, then, is the condition of Italy at this day. Were we to find a state of things like this in the centre of Africa, or in some barbarous region thousands and thousands of miles away from European literature, arts, and influences, where the plough and the loom had yet to be invented, it would by no means surprise us. But to find a state of matters like this in the centre of Europe,--in Italy, once the head of civilization and influence, the birthplace of modern art and letters,--is certainly wonderful. But the wonder is completed when we reflect that this state of things obtains under a Government claiming to be guided by a higher than mortal sagacity,--a Government which says that it never did, and never can, err,--a Government that is supernatural and infallible. Supernatural and infallible! Why, I say, go out into the street,--stop the first old woman you meet,--carry her to Rome,--put a three-storied cap on her head,--enthrone her on the high altar in St Peter's,--burn incense before her, and call her infallible,--I say that old woman will be a more enlightened ruler that Pio Nono. The old Scotch woman or English woman would beat the old Roman woman hollow.

The facts I have stated are sad enough; but the more harrowing picture of the working of the papal system has yet to be shown.