MOR

THE ROMAN QUESTION.

ORE than once, since a recent visit to Italy, we have been asked our opinion of the condition of things in that country, and if what we had seen then had given us any hope of an early restoration of the temporal power of the Pope. The questions and the answers we had to give suggested the subject of the present article. In what we have to say we shall draw far less on personal observation than on our reading, and on conversations had with persons better acquainted with Italy than we can pretend to be.

Like all persons who had known Rome before 1870, and who have visited it since that time, we found it much improved, materially. The streets were cleaner than they used to be. New hotels, blocks, and even streets of private residences, in the style of the new Paris boulevards, and large public buildings, had arisen in all directions. Nowhere in Europe had we seen as many soldiers, and especially officers, out of quarters. The streets were filled with them. But though to our unprofessional eye their uniforms were all that could be desired, the men contrasted sadly with the soldierly police, dragoons, and Noble Guard of former days. There was a something about them that recalled an anecdote we had heard of the grandfather of the late King of Naples. He had been present at a review of his troops, at which they appeared for the first time in a new uniform. At the close of the manoeuvres he VOL. XI.-13

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was asked by the general in command what he thought of the men. You may dress them as you please,” replied his majesty; "they will run away."

Many property owners in Rome had, we were told, become pretty well reconciled to the new order of things. The reason of this was that since it had become the capital, real estate had increased threefold in value. The government had brought with it fifty thousand officials and about as many workmen, and these needed house accommodations, and put money in circulation. This was a serious temptation, even to a people as loyal as the Romans had ever been to the Popes, and it is not to be wondered at that some of them should have yielded to it, to the extent of trying to carry water on both shoulders.

The people, in outward bearing at least, seemed as decorous and grave as ever. The churches were as well attended, the smaller ones as crowded with devout worshippers as of old time. Two things only seemed to point to the growth of modern ideas in the Eternal City, the profanation of the Sunday in many places, ånd an evident falling off in the moral training of the young. Roman boys, even those of tender years, once so modest, can now smoke cigars and swear in the streets with as much ease and selfcomposure as those of any other city in Europe or America. This was all of evil that was seen on the streets. We were told, however, that in the theatres, and in too many other places, things were done the like of which had not been known in Rome since pagan times. But as nothing of the sort came under our personal observation, we prefer to pass such matters over in silence.

Business was very dull in Rome last May. It always is at that season. But store-keepers told us that even during the previous winter they had done little or nothing. Hotel-keepers had the same complaint to make. Both agreed that as many visitors had come as in previous years, but that they had remained only a short time and spent little. Everybody complained of the taxes, which amounted to over forty per cent. of every man's income or profits. An American physician, who had settled in Rome some years ago, told us he had attempted to practise his profession there last year, but finding that the tax on the profession exceeded any receipts he could reasonably hope for from it, he closed his office.

And, in point of fact, the whole country is overwhelmed by taxation. "There is nothing left us to tax but the air we breathe," said Senator Iacini, Chairman of the Committee of Agricultural Affairs in 1880. "Rural Italy," said this same gentleman last May, "has to bear an accumulation of taxes greater than that of any other nation in the world. We have in this touched the limits of the absurd." One-fourth of the income from land goes in direct

taxes; one-half the remainder goes to those who till it on shares, or a third to those who till it at the expense of the owner. The rest is all, or nearly all, spent in paying personal or other taxes, of which there are some forty-six in Italy. So that Italians. nowadays may be said to till the soil for the national, provincial and municipal treasuries. The Unita Cattolica of the 27th of last January informs us that the public debt of all the Italian States, before 1860, was about seven hundred and twenty-two millions of francs, and that it is now, under United Italy, eighteen milliards, eight hundred and eighty-two millions! On this is paid a yearly interest of about five hundred millions. The result of all this has been that tens of thousands of holdings have been sold every year for taxes. The Gazzetta Ufficiali of April 28th, 1885, puts the number for each year at thirty-four thousand. The occupants of those holdings have been compelled to emigrate, or go to swell the ever-increasing numbers of the dangerous classes. The confiscated church property, valued at two milliards of francs, has nearly all disappeared. One-half of it had been sold as early as 1870. On the fourth of July of that year, Deputy Bartolucci asked the Parliament if the money thus acquired had made them any richer, and if in that instance, too, the old proverb had not been verified, that "the devil's flour turns all to waste"? and added, on the authority of the Minister of Finance, that there remained of it then "only a black spot."

The prison reports of the Italian kingdom show that of late years it has attained a sad primacy in crime among civilized nations. Want and misery are everywhere on the increase; and even in Rome itself, the place most favored by the patronage and prestige of the government, the poor sometimes faint and die in the streets for hunger. Such a thing had never been heard of under the Popes.

There was no city in the world where the poor were as well cared for as in Rome before the advent of its present rulers. From time immemorial every Pope had his almoner residing near him in his palace, whose duty it was to help the needy poor. "There was not in Rome," says Morichini, "a religious association or institution that did not dispense relief, not a convent, or a monastery, that did not give some kind of food, not a noble or wealthy house that had not its fixed assignment for the poor." "It certainly does appear to be a matter next to an impossibility," says John Francis Maguire, in his book on "Rome, its Ruler and its Institutions,” "that one should die of starvation in Rome; for not only are the most ample resources applicable to every human want, and to which the poor may have immediate access, to be found there, but there exist all kinds of charitable associations, directed to the

sacred duty of feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the sick, and comforting the afflicted. Then there are many wellknown public institutions always open to the poor person in distress, and from whose doors want and destitution are never driven by surly porters, representing rather the selfishness of the ratepayer than the charity of the Christian."

Nor was this lavish charity allowed to encourage mere vagrancy, for, as Mr. Maguire remarks, "the most rigorous measures have been adopted by successive Popes, from the time of Pius V., in the sixteenth century, to Pius IX., in the nineteenth, to suppress vagrancy and punish imposture." There were also in Rome various societies, whose object it was to seek out the poor who were ashamed to beg, and give them needed assistance, such as the Arch-Confraternity of the Twelve Apostles, the Urbana Congregation, and the Congregation of Divine Mercy. "The first mentioned," says Mr. Maguire, "employs a number of physicians who visit the sick whom the members have found to stand in need of such succour. They also provide professional assistance for the defence of the poor, and they specially protect orphans and widows, and procure a safe shelter for girls in danger. They likewise arrange disputes and reconcile enemies. The Brothers, who are called 'Deputies,' are all of noble or wealthy families." There was also in Rome a society to give employment to the poor, and especially to the aged poor, on the public works, and one of lawyers and persons attached to the Curia, called the Society of St. Ivo, to defend them gratis in the courts.

There were asylums for all the orphans of both sexes in the city, where they were educated and taught trades, and from some of which the girls, after they had left and were about to marry, received a modest dower to enable them to go to housekeeping. There were in Rome no less than fourteen establishments of this description. In one of them, St. Michael's, there were, besides a number of old men and old women, about five hundred boys and girls. The boys were taught all trades, and when they displayed particular talent they were instructed by the best masters in music, painting, sculpture, architecture, and all other branches of the liberal arts. The first time we heard Italian opera was at this institution, and those present declared they had never heard it given with better effect than by the fresh young voices they then listened to. The leading tenor on the occasion soon afterwards acquired a European reputation.

Then in Rome, under the Popes, hospitals were so numerous and so well appointed that their accommodation could never be overtaxed. They had special wards, and even special buildings, set apart for different diseases, from the ordinary indisposition to

the malady that is incurable. And there were even institutions to receive convalescents who had left the hospitals, and keep them till their strength was sufficiently restored to enable them to resume their ordinary avocations.

Such was the charity of Rome under the Popes-a charity that taught men to see in the poor and the sick our Lord himself, and to think that what was done to them was done unto Him.

The Piedmontese seized all the institutions founded by this charity in the lapse of ages, and put them under almost exclusively secular management. The result has been that disorder, and more serious abuses than mere disorder, have crept into most of them; their revenues have been wasted by incompetent and dishonest officials, and the poor and the sick and the orphan have been left to suffer. One lamentable instance of this was brought to light last summer. The richest and the largest hospital in Rome was that of Santo Spirito. It was founded by Ina, king of the Saxons, about the year 728. It is located in the Leonine city, or Borgo, not far from the Vatican palace. The Popes, and especially Pius IX., expended vast sums in enlarging and adorning it, and providing it with all the best appliances which science had introduced for institutions of the kind. In 1870 it had 1680 beds, though the average number of patients was only from six to seven hundred. Its annual revenue was 1,138,678 francs. Of this, 759,539 francs went for the support of the sick and the foundlings of an asylum that was attached to it. Last June Augustus Silvestrelli was appointed director of this institution; but, before definitely accepting the position, he prudently resolved to look into its. financial condition. He did so, and in his report to the Hospital Commission of Rome, on the 20th of June, he informed that body that the annual revenue has been reduced from 1,138,678 to 64,018 francs. "This amount," he says, "is not sufficient to maintain even the conservatory, and nothing is left for the foundlings, or for the support of a single patient in the hospital!" "This immense deficit," he adds, “was at first concealed by the seeming regularity of the accounts, but was finally discovered; and now the true condition of things should be made known to everybody." And thus fifteen years of revolutionary rule sufficed to destroy what it took the Popes centuries to accumulate for the unfortunate in their capital. Some, even, of the radical journals, commenting on this fact, intimated that the same condition of things would be found to exist in only too many of the charitable institutions of the kingdom.

But, even apart from "irregularities" of this sort, the constant drain on charitable institutions, in the form of taxes and expenses of administration, is frightful. In 1878 the assets of these institu