Chapter 5

The idler about the streets of Rome may, from time to time, catch sight, on blank walls and dead corners, of long white strips of paper, covered with close-printed lines of most uninviting looking type, and headed with the Papal arms--the cross-keys and tiara. If, being like myself afflicted with an inquisitive turn of mind, he takes the trouble of deciphering these hieroglyphic documents, his labour would not be altogether thrown away. Those straggling strips, stuck up in out-of-the- way places, glanced at by a few idle passers-by, and torn down by the prowling vagabonds of the streets after a day or two for the sake of the paper, are the sole public records of justice issued, or allowed to be issued, under the Pontifical government. Trials are carried on here with closed doors; no spectators are admitted; no reports of the proceedings are published. In capital cases, however, _after_ the execution of the criminal has taken place a sort of _Proces verbal_ of the case and of the trial is placarded on the walls of the chief towns.

During the period of my stay at Rome there were three executions in different parts of the Papal territory. Whether by accident or by design I cannot say, but all these executions occurred within a short period of each other, and, in consequence, three such statements were issued almost at the same time by the Government. With considerable difficulty I succeeded in obtaining copies of these statements, not, I am bound to say, because there seemed to be any reluctance in furnishing them, but because the fact of anybody wishing to obtain copies was so unusual, that there was no preparation made for supplying them; and, at last, I only succeeded in procuring them from a printer's devil to the Stanperia Apostolica. The facts narrated in them, and the circumstances alluded to, seem to me to throw a strange light on the administration of justice, and the daily life of this priest-ruled country. It is as such that I wish to comment on them. In these statements, be it remembered, there is no question of political or clerical bias. The facts stated are all facts, admitted by the authorities of their own free will and pleasure; and if, as I think, these facts tell most unfavourably on the judicial system of our clerical rulers, it is, at any rate, out of their own mouths they are convicted. All, therefore, that I propose to do is, having these official statements before me, to tell the stories that they contain, as shortly and as clearly as I can, adding no comment of my own but what is necessary to explain the facts in question. Let me take first the case, which is entitled "Cannara contro Luigi Bonci;" the township of Cannara, where the crime was committed, being what we should call in a civil suit the plaintiff, and the accused Bonci the defendant.