BOOKS.
FARINI'S ROMAN STATE.* THE author of this work is a Roman subject, who was twice exiled under Gregory the Sixteenth, and returned after the amnesty of Pins the Ninth. In March 1848, when the success of the French and other revolutions terrified the Papal authorities into an ad- mission of the lay element into government, Farini became Under- Secretary of State for the Home Department, sat in the Council of Deputies, and retired from office during Mamiani's Ministry'. In October, says Mr. Gladstone, " he was appointed Director of the Board of Health, [he had been bred to medicine,] but was ejected by the Triumvirs. -He resumed his post on the entry of the French, but was again dismissed by the triumvirate of Cardinals." He is now once more an exile ; having taken refuge in Turin, where he holds an appointment.
It is unnecessary to premise of a man who has been thrice exiled by the Papal Government, that he is a Liberal; but the Liberal- ism of Luigi Carlo Farini is of a very Conservative not to say Doctrinaire or Whiggish character. It seems indeed almost too fine for use amid the violence of Southern impulse and Italian faction— too refined, perhaps, for any place; unless opposition altogether ceased, and men turning schoolboys swallowed with the docility of obedient pupils all that politicians prescribed for their good. Italians who have not any deep religious feelings are upholders of the Pope, rather for Italian than Papal supremacy ; but Farini, though thoroughly opposed to an ecclesiastical government, is loyal to the Pope as a temporal sovereign, zealous and something more for the Pontiff and the Romish religion. He is opposed to the plans and politics of Mazzini as much as either Mariotti or Dandolo, and, like them, considers a federated Italy quite sufficient for nationality or constitutional freedom ; but he seems inclined to look more than they might be inclined to look to the Pope as a civil and religious President or Protector. This peculi- arity is perhaps less of party or principle than of personal character. As a patriot and politician in bad and violent times, with foreign conquerors, native oppressors, and an ecclesiastical tyranny to overcome, Farini's disposition inclines him to trust too much to the efficacy of rose-water. His mind wants rolitistness his training seems to have been too much in the studies of the school, too little in the affairs of the world ; which, indeed, it is not easy for a liberal Italian to attain to. If the book had no• other interest, the character of its author, as exhibited in his nar- rative and reflections throughout his work, would he a curious . subject of study. We have before us, modified by the nineteenth century and his own kliosyncracy, the Guelph of the middle ages. One can see how the mind shall bring itself to submit to the abso- lute authority of the Pope and yet retain a certain independence. The object of the work is to give a sketch of the Italian move- ments, and a pretty full history of the Ecclesiastical States, from the settlement of affairs at the Congress of Vienna, till the late reestablishment of the Papal throne by the French. The entire book is in three volumes, only two of which are as yet trans- lated. A large portion of the first consists of the history of the Pontificates of Pius the Seventh, who died in 1823 ; of Leo the Twelfth, from 1823 to 1829; of Pius the Eighth, who enjoyed his elevation but a short period, dying in 1830 ; and of the late Pope, Gregory the Sixteenth, who died in June 1846. The remainder of the first volume is devoted to the reign of Pius the Ninth, up to the military occupation of Ferrara by the Austrians, and the grant of a so-called constitution under the name of a Fundamental Statute. The second volume is occupied with the general wars and revolutions throughout Italy durinc. 1848, till the assassina- tion of Rossi and the escape of the Pope from Rome. The literary characteristics of Farini have some resemblance to those of his translator ; he is penetrating, refined, elegant, and copious. In aiming at comprehension, he is apt to become vague, and to generalize actions into indistinctness. In these instances his style is rather of the school than the world. He describes things less from themselves than from the established pattern which the classic historians and their imitators have left us. These qualities give to his narrative a slow or dragging character, such as might be tedious in a more remote or less important subject. The matter is the great attraction of the book ; and this is twofold. By going over the whole series of tyrannies, misgo- vernments, conspiracies, and open insurrections, that took place between the restoration of " legitimate " authority in 1815 and the latest revolts against the Pope, the Roman revolution not only appears a consistent but a necessary result. The downfall of the temporal power of the Popes, on the very first opportunity that their subjects obtained, was as certain as any event could be ; and as the mass of mankind cannot entertain or act upon logiial refinements, and as many of the more educated classes had become sceptics under the rule of the Church, the spiritual power was very likely to suffer with the temporal : whenever the French withdraw from Rome and the Austrians are otherwise occupied, the late drama will be repeat,ed, perhaps with aggravated excesses. The picture of affairs, from the time when Pius the Ninth began to be frightened at the turn events were taking, until his final escape from his subjects, is, owing to the author's position as actor or close observer, very striking and lifelike. Liberal in re- ligion the Pope never was ; and if really'religious, perhaps, a
• The Boman State, from 1815 to 1850. By Luigi Carlo Farini. Translated from the Italian, by the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, M.P. for the University of Oxford. Vols. I. and 11. Published by Murray.
Pope never can be. He was seemingly liberal in politics, because he was naturally a kind man ; because all persons, except the very fanatics of Absolutism, saw that the time had arrived when some reforms were imperatively necessary if the authority of the Popedom was to be upheld without direct violence ; and because ho seems te have had some idea of stimulating by means of politics a new religious movement, of which the Papacy should be the head. To carry out this policy in such stormy times as he quickly fell upon, was beyond his capacity or his courage. He was disturbed by his religious feelings, terrified by the aspect of unexpected events, determined not to part with any of the Pontifical powers, and in the earlier stages thwarted by the whole ecclesiastical bureaucracy, which he, wanted nerve to remove—if anything short of a revolutionary power could remove it. This is a picture of his mind at tho time when the Roman forces had advanced to assist Charles Albert, and a glimpse of the difficulties the laymen of his Ministries had to contend with.
" At the beginning of April the Pope sent Monsignor Corboli Bussi as his Legate Extraordinary to Charles Albert. The Government Gazette stated vaguely that he had a commission for Upper Italy. The commission was really this—to repair to the King's camp, remain there, and move together with it, in the capacity of the Pope's representative ; to hasten the adjust- ment of the terms for the Italian League; and to request that, with this view, Piedmont would send deputies to Rome ; finally, after having felt his way, he was to request a loan of money to defray the charges of our army. Let it then stand for a fact, that, after the war had broken out in Lombardy, the Pope sent a person to represent him in the Italian camp ; that this person was an ecclesiastic, the most distinguished man of the prelacy of Rome, the dearest, too, and, most devoted to Pius IX.; that same person who, a few mouths before, had gone as commissioner for the conclusion of the Customs' League : and further, let this stand, that the Roman Government ordered the commander of the Papal troops 'at once to place himself in communication with the head-quarters of his Majesty, and to act in concert with him.'
"Durando did not conceal from the Government that it was the very ardent wish of the volunteers to throw themselves across the Po, and a very difficult business to keep them, from it any longer : on the other hand, it was known by unquestionable signs that all those—and they were then many—who were hotly for the war of independence, were disgusted with the actual pro- cre.stMation. But the Ministry would not determine upon ordering Durando to act on the offensive without the Pope's explicit order. Accordingly they pointed out to his Holiness into what peril the peace of the country would be brought if that uncertainty should continue longer ; and gave him to un- derstand that they must resign office rather than undertake to abstain from giving cojAntenance to the war. To this the Pope replied, that he had not as yet ffiken any final resolution ; that he was waiting for intelligence from Piedmont about the proposal of a League, and that the Ministers therefore should not resign, but should act according to circumstances.' One of the Ministers remarked, that the question was not simply about sending our troops across the Po, but about sharing in a war which would necessarily in- volve the shedding of human blood, a responsibility which the conscience of a Christian statesman could not assume without the consent of his sovereign. Upon this the Pope guaranteed him against every scruple, by saying that there would always be time to recall the troops, in case he should decide upon taking no part in the war. Aldobrandini, the Minister of War, a frank and high-minded gentleman, who sought in any case to set his own con- science at ease, heard such language more than once, so that he was encou- raged to give orders to Durando to encamp beyond the Po."
The General, receiving orders to do all that he might judge requi- site for the tranquillity and advantage of the Pontifical States, took the field, and issued a proclamation, in which he certainly committed the Pope to the war, and made it out a sort of crusade blessed by his Holiness.
" This proclamation fixed the minds which had wavered, and every one in arms decked'his breast with the tricolor cross, from whence the force had afterwards the name of Crusaders. But that proclamation, and that sign of the cross, begot great uneasiness in the mind of the Pope, who complained of the mention of himself and of religion in a manner calculated to wound the scrupulous consciences among Catholics. He complained, and declared he could not remain silent ; the Catholic world would be scandalized and disturbed at such words from the Pope's general; he must address the Catholic world. The Ministers betook themselves to pacifying him, and thought they had succeeded, by inserting at his desire the following words in the Government Gazette of April the 10th. " An order of the day, dated Bologna, 5th of April, to the army, ex- presses certain ideas and sentiments as if they had come from the mouth of his Holiness. The Pope, when he wishes to make known his sentiments, speaks ex se, and never by the mouth of any subordinate person.' " But the Pope was not so entirely pacified as not to murmur repeatedly at that proclamation, and let it be understood that he entertained an idea of calming, by some public act, the consciences which it might have vexed."
" Pius IX. had applied himself to political reform not so much for the reason that his conscience as an honourable man and a most pious sovereign enjoined it, as because his high view of the Papal office prompted him to employ the temporal power for the benefit of his spiritual authority. A meek man and a benevolent prince, Pius IX. was, as a Pontiff; lofty even to sternness. With a soul not only devout but mystical, he referred everything God, and respected and venerated his own person as standing in God's
place. He thought it his duty to guard with jealousy the temporal sove- reignty of the Church, because he thought it essential to the safe keeping and the apostleship of the faith. Aware of the numerous vices of that temporal government, and hostile to all vice and all its agents, he had sought ou mounting the throne to effect those reforms which justice, public opinion, and the times, required. He hoped to give lustre to the Papacy by their means, and so to extend and to consolidate the faith. He hoped to acquire for the clergy that credit which is a great part of the decorum of religion, and an efficient cause of reverence and devotion in the people. His first efforts were successful in such a degree that no Pontiff ever got greater praise. By this he was greatly stimulated and encouraged, and perhaps he gave into the seduction of applause and the temptations of popu- larity more than is fitting for a man of decision, or for a prudent prince. But when, after a little, Europe was shaken by universal revolution, the work he heal commenced was, in his view, marred ; he then retired within himself, and took alarm. In his heart the Pontiff always came before the prince, the priest before the citizen ; in the secret struggles of his mind the pontifical and priestly conscience always outweighed the conscience of the prince and citizen. And as his conscience was a very timid one, it followed that his inward conflicts were frequent, that hesitation was a matter of course, and that he often took resolutions even about temporal affairs more from religious intuition or impulse than from his judgment as a man. Add
that his health was weak, and susceptible of nervous excitement, the dregs of his old complaint. From this he suffered most when his mind was most troubled and uneasy ; another cause of wavering and changefulness. When the frenzy of the revolution of Paris, in the Days of February, bowed the knee before the sacred image of Christ, and amidst its triumph respected the altars and their ministers, Pius IX. anticipated more favour to the Church from the new political order than it had from the indevout Monarchy of Orleans. Then he took pleasure in the religious language of M. Forbin Janson, envoy of the infant Republic, and in his fervent reverence for the Papal person ; and he rejoiced to learn, and to tell others, that he was the nephew of a pious French bishop. At the news of the violence suffered by the Jesuits in Naples, and threatened in his own states, he was troubled, and his heart conceived resentment against the innovators. Afterwards he was cheered by learning that one of the rulers of the new republic of Venice was Tommaseo, whom he valued as a zealous Catholic. He had a tenderness towards the dynasty of Savoy, illustrious for its saints, and towards Charles Albert, who was himself most devout. He learnt with exultation that Venice and Milan had emancipated their bishops from the censorship and, scrutiny of the government in their correspondence with Rome. It seemed, as if God were using the revolution to free the Church from the vexations entailed by the laws of Joseph II., which Pius IX. ever remembered with horror, and considered to be a curse weighing down the empire. Where he did not foresee or suspect injury to religion, he was in accordance with the friends of change. But everything disturbed his mind and soul which im- pugned or gave any token of impugning it, or imported disparagement to spiritual discipline or persons. And if, from his vacillating nature and his inborn mildness, he did not adopt strong resolutions, which would have given proof of his uneasy thoughts and feelings, yet they wrought on him in secret, and he had no peace till he could find some way to set his conscience at case. He had fondled the idea of making the people happy with guarded freedom, in harmony with their sovereigns ; of bringing both into harmony with the Papal See; of a Popedom presiding over the League of Italian States; of in- ternal repose and agreement ; of civilizing prosperity, and of splendour for religion. But events, as they proceeded from day to day, shattered this design. When, in the name of freedom and of Italy, and by the acts of the innovators, priests were insulted, excesses perpetrated, the Popedom or the ecclesiastical hierarchy assailed, Pius IX. ceased to trust them : then he began to regret and repent of his own work ; then he doubted whether by his mildness and liberality he had not encouraged a spirit irreverent to the Church, rebellious to the Popedom ; then he complained of tho ingratitude of mankind, faltered in his political designs, and prognosticated calamity!'
Nor were affairs and the Pope's character the only difficulties of a Roman Ministry : they had the mob to abuse them, and suitors still nearer home to trouble them.
" Ministries at Rome had to undergo another most signal infliction, mean the beleaguering of applicants and duns. The flood of this fry amounts to a very deluge ; they swarm incessantly and by myriads in the antecham- bers, to ask for offices, pensions, indulgences, and favours; and there is a gainful trade which is called that of an agent, and consists in dunning to ob- tain them. Repulsed hundreds of times over from one waiting-room to ano- ther, they return imperturbably to the attack upon the influential man ; they work from far, they examine into the attachments, the enmities, and the weak points of the man in power, to make of them their tool and their pro- fit ; and every smile, every civil word, they set down for an earnest of his favour. This is owing to the fact, that in Rome there is a large class ac- customed from time immemorial to live and revel in jobs, and with the money both of the public and of the Church; sycophants of such as are rich and powerful, be they what else they may ; a greedy and slothful herd, recruited from every class and rank of the population. This swarm of hangers-on by habit, tradition, and practice, had become all alive in consequence of the changes in men and measures; and, amidst the loudest vaunts of freedom, it never relaxed its begging and importuning for favours on the strength of anterior promises. Some assumed the attitude of victims of former Govern- ments; some put forward their claim as men amnestied, or men persecuted, and so by degrees as Liberals ; or, if they had no other plea, they then made that of want. To hear them they were all Liberals afflicted by the Gregorian Government; all of them covered their mishaps, real or invented, with some political pretext; some, in order to beg favours from the Government of Pius IX., bragged that they had betrayed the confidence of that of Gregory- Even some notorious Sanfedists puffed themselves to the Ministry, alleging that they had always sighed for the new order of things. One Bisoni, of Faenza, the very soul of Sanfedism and of its intrigues, and the manager of the vilest acts of the vile Gregorian police, wrote to the Minister Recehi in the capacity of a Liberal. It is right to brand with infamy such turpitude, too common in an age that bootlessly craves the praise of liberality ; and it is useful thus to analyze the materials out of which some pretend they can construct forsooth the Republic of Plato."
No new light is thrown upon the war in Lombardy and the Venetian territory: but the narrative is fresh, as Farini was for some time present in the camp of Charles Albert as an agent of the Ministry. A specific character is given to the outrages of some of the so-called Liberals or Volunteers, in an account of what took place at Bologna after the Austrians under Welden had been repulsed or withdrawn. That rabble, accomplished only in rapine, who had been let loose, and who felt themselves exulted and ennobled by the name of the people among whom they circulated, deemed the day come for their own dominion ; that day of liberty and empire, for which, in the criminal dreams of their gaols, they so long had sighed. They broke into the prisons, and set free their comrades ; plundered the residence of a rich gentleman that was at his villa in the environs ; imposed taxes on the town, and on the country folks ; com- mitted robbery on the highways and in the city ; dipped their hands in the blood of a judge, and sought the lives alike of judges, heads of the police, judges of inquest, policemen, and turnkeys. This anarchy threatened to spread into other provinces. One Zambianchi, a native of Forli, banished since 1832, had returned to Italy in that year of universal overthrow, and after the actions in Venezia, had plunged into our cities, to disturb their quiet, and to stimulate ferocious revenge. He had with him a letter, which proved the seditious correspondence of Alpi in Romagna, and with the letter the bearer of it, who confessed what was within his knowledge. Zambian- chi set out for Romagna, then hurried to Fork and Faenza, searched the houses of the suspected, arrested old people and women, such as Ugolini, a septuagenarian at Forli, and the Canon Laghi Faenza, with his sister and brother, and a maid-servant, put their limbs in fetters, dragged them to Ra- venna, pitched them, some head foremost, into a boat, and sent them pri- soners to Ancona ; then returned to Bologna, where he had a wider and more open field for violence. "When this miserable state of things became known in Rome, the mem- bers for the city of Bologna repaired to the Pope and the Ministry, beseech- ing them to provide a remedy with the utmost possible expedition and reso- lution. The Government, considering that Cardinal Amid was in Bologna as Commissioner for the four Legations, determined to send to assist him a person who might represent the Council of Ministers, might be charged to. apply, in coneert with him, to the redatabliehment of orders and should the Cardinkl not have arrived, might take into his own hands the supreme au- thority. These commissions his Holiness and the Ministry intrusted to me. I left Rome on the 30th of August, and on the 1st of September I reached York where there was a regiment of Swiss with General Latour, who com- manded them. The tidings from Bologna current at Forli, were so gloomy and hopeless, that the Cardinal Legate Marini and Latour did not think it prudent at once to despatch the Swiss in that direction, as they had neither cavalry nor artillery, both of which had returned to Bologna after the 8th of August. Thither I came unobserved about noon on the 2d. The bad had increased, and were still increasing ; in the streets and open places of the city, for two days the brigands had been slaughtering every man his enemy among the Government officers, some of them indeed disreputable and sorry fellows, others respectable. They killed with musket-shots, and if the fallen gave signs of life, they reloaded their arms in the sight of the people and the soldiers and fired them afresh, or else put an end to their victims with their knives. They hunted men down like wild beasts, entered their houses and dragged them forth to slaughter. One Bianchi, an Inspector of Police, was lying in bed reduced to agony by consumption ; they came in, set upon him, and cut his throat in the presence of his wife and children ; the corpses, a frightful spectacle, remained in the public streets. I saw it, saw death dealt about, and the abominable chase. Cardinal Amat, who had given notice of his arrival, came the day after ; and the armed commons es- corted him to the palace at the very time when the villains were continuing their murders. There were no longer any judges or any officers of the po- lice ; those who had escaped death, either had fled or had hidden themselves ; the Civic Guard was disarmed, the citizens skulked, the few soldiers of the line either mixed with the insurgents, or were wholly without spirit ; the carabineers and dragoons in hesitation, the volunteer legions and free corps a support to the rioters, not to the authority of Government. We sent to Horne for leave to declare Bologna in a state of siege ; but the answer was, that the Ministry having taken the opinion of the Council of State, considered that order might be restored without recourse to this extreme measure. All our best exertions were made to draw to the side of Government the earabi- neers and dragoons, as also Belluzzi and the honest leaders of the people, but with little success. It was reported that Belluzzi himself had given leave to kill what they called the spies ; one Alasina came before us, pro- posing by way of compromise, to banish those whose lives were threatened; armed men were in the very palace of Government, and we ourselves at their mercy. Accident, however, effected at a stroke what we could only have done slowly and with difficulty. An assassin attempted the life of a carabi- neer ; his companions, inflamed with anger, pursued him and caught him in a church. They then volunteered their most resolute efforts at repression."
Like Mariotti, our historian is severe on Maz,zini and his party : but there is this to be said for the Republican chief. In the period of revolutions, when every politician was trying his hand at con- stitution-making, Mazzini was the only man who could carry on a government ; the only man who could contend respectably against a regular army with the forces that revolution placed at his disposal ; the only man who struggled hopefully as long as hope existed, and then retired with dignity. And the cause of this seems to be that very nnbendingness of character and princi- ples which is made a charge against him. Amid the military un- certainty of Charles Albert, and the vacillations of Pope, princes, ministers, and mobs, Mazzini still held fast by one idea, however rashly, egotistically, or impracticably ; and he is the only man on the I(evolutionary side who comes out of the field of action with the -credit due to consistency, and to non-success where success was impossible from overwhelming interference.
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