"Bad as the Papal government is, indeed, it is by no means so bad as that beneath which a great part of Italy is groaning. Not so bad, for instance, as Naples; or Piedmont; or Genoa, abandoned to the merciless gripe of Sardinia; or ill-fated Lombardy ; or expiring Venice,"* &c. Italy, torn asunder by despots and Carbonari, and divided between priests and robbers, is full of bitter misery, as well as of the blackest darkness. While intellectual darkness pervaded the Roman states, the time at which the vial was poured upon the seat of the beast was a season of pestilence and famine in Rome, and the "same dreadful mortality extended over all Italy."

"The Italians," to quote the farther testimony of the learned Sismondi, "partook of all the privileges of the conquerors: they became with them accustomed to the dominion of the law, to freedom of thought, and to military virtue,-secure that at no very distant period, when their political education should be accomplished, they would again be incorporated in that Italy, to the future liberty and glory of which they now directed their every thought. Such was the work which the French accomplished by twenty years of victory; it was doubtless incomplete, and left much to be desired; but it possessed in itself the principle of greater advancement; it promised to revive Italy, liberty, virtue, and glory. It has been the work of the coalition to destroy all; to place Italy again under the galling yoke of Austria; take from her, with political liberty, civil and religious freedom, and even freedom of thought; to corrupt her morals; and to heap upon her the utmost degree of humiliation. Italy is unanimous in abhorring this ignominious yoke; Italy, to break it, has done all that could be expected of her. The people have only their unarmed hands, and their masses,

* Rome in the Nineteenth Century, p. 417.

unaccustomed to act together; nevertheless, in every struggle during these fifteen years in Italy, between the nation and its oppressors, the victory has remained with the people. At Naples, in Sicily, in Piedmont, in the states of the church, at Modena and Parma, unarmed masses have seized the arms of the soldiers; men chosen by the people have taken the places of the despots in their palaces. The Italians, everywhere victorious over their own tyrants, have, it is true, been everywhere forced back under the yoke with REDOUBLED CRUELTY by the league of foreign despots. Italy is crushed-she is chained and covered with blood."

"Be

Spain and Portugal, sunk in kindred ignorance, are associated with Italy in misery as in darkness. Of all the dark days of miserable Spain, naturally one of the first countries of Europe, but morally one of the most corrupt, that of the restoration of Ferdinand is one of the darkest. He who, while in exile, was an embroiderer to the Virgin, ceased not, when again a king, to maintain the authority of the church. fore his return, he had sworn to maintain the constitution, but he no sooner found himself surrounded by the nobles and clergy, whose rights and privileges that constitution had in a great measure swept away, than his royal oath yielded to the ambitious wish of reigning absolute sovereign of Spain. He immediately annulled the constitution, and seizing the reigns of absolute power, he established in all their deformity the abominations of the old government. His will again became the law; and, supported by a cabal of crafty and interested zealots, he stalked forth as the cruel persecutor of all who had in any degree lent their aid in accomplishing his own

* Sismondi's Hist. of the Italian Republics, pp. 364, 365.-1832.

restoration and the independence of their country. Sentences of imprisonment, exile, or perpetual servitude, were passed upon all the deputies of the Cortes who had shown any zeal in the cause of freedom. Many distinguished leaders in the Spanish armies met with similar treatment, while others withdrew from persecution by seeking an asylum in foreign countries. The yoke of despotism, however, was not borne without impatience. Occasional irruptions showed that the flame of liberty might be smothered, but was not extinguished. An attempt of Porlier at Corunna to accomplish a revolution upon the prin ciples of the oppressed liberals, was followed by others in Valentia, Catalonia, and Galicia, but were all attended with similar results, and equally disastrous to their promoters. The unfortunate issue of these designs checked for a time the spirit of opposition. If the term absolute can be applied to any monarch, the king of Spain at this period well deserved the appellation."*

Descriptive of the state of Spain, at the same period, the Annual Register, for successive years, bears the following melancholy record :

1815. Perhaps no country in Europe is at present in a more wretched and degraded state than is Spain. It is really disgusting to dwell on the character of Ferdinand. The case of Ferdinand will abundantly prove how much evil a despotic sovereign may punish his subjects with, even when he is the most imbecile in intellect. It is not surprising that a man so weak, and so blind to his own interest, should be the dupe of bigotted and cruel priests, or that he should readily agree to their design of establishing the inquisition. In short, the state of Spain, viewed either in a political or religious light, appears

* Brewster's Encyclop. vol. xviii. p. 304.

to be much worse now than it was even in the days of the most bigotted and tyrannical of the Philips. Indeed, till the Spaniards are more enlightened, and less under the dominion of superstition," (kingdom of the beast, full of darkness) "it is in vain to expect from them any efforts to raise themselves to their just rank in the scale of European nations."

1817. The affairs of Spain still present a melancholy picture."

1818. The little that is known of the state of Spain is, that the finances are still in a wretched condition-that there are no means to send out the expedition to South America-that poverty and oppression gain ground, and that the inquisition possesses more power than ever.

1820.- Much surprise was naturally excited that the Spaniards submitted so completely as they appeared to do, for such a length of time, (from 1814 to 1820) to the wretchedness of all descriptions with which they were overwhelmed. Agriculture, manufactures and commerce nearly annihilated; the finances in a most dilapidated state; the most enlightened patriots, those to whom the monarch and the country were most indebted, exiled or in prison,— formed the picture of Spain.”+

Spain is exclusively a province of the kingdom of the beast, and ruled by popery. Hence its yet impervious darkness, and miserable fate. The king himself is but the hound of the popish priesthood, and the leash is in their hands. "The clergy is the great and dominant body in Spain, which moves every thing at will, and gives impulse even to the machine of state. When we see a decree of the Spanish government breathing a spirit of bigotted intolerance, we are not to ascribe it to this or that minister,

* Annual Register, 1818, p. 356. + Ibid. 1820, pp. 386, 387.

but rather to some unseen bishop or father abbot behind the curtain. From these causes, then, and not from the sovereign will of a single individual, originate those persecuting decrees and apostolic denunciations which have brought on Ferdinand the appellation of bloody bigot, and all the hard names in the calendar of abuse."*

The disannulling of the constitution, the re-establishment of the inquisition, the absolute despotism of Ferdinand, himself the dupe of bigotted and cruel priests, led to the imprisonment, exile, or perpetual servitude of the bravest and most enlightened of her sons; and, notwithstanding abortive attempts for the recovery of liberty,-which served but to aggravate their pains and increase their bondage, reduced Spain to a worse state than it was even in the days of the most bigotted and tyrannical of the Philips, and, under the dominion of superstition, overwhelmed it with miseries of all descriptions.

Of the little that, in a time so full of darkness, could be known of Spain, all was misery; and the spirit of priestly domination or of religious or political fanaticism that preyed on Spain, and of which the most enlightened of her sons were the victims, may be exemplified in the fact, that when the " priest party was restored to preponderance and power," after the brief but troublous supremacy of the Cortes, "it was publicly proclaimed from a pulpit in Madrid to be no sin to kill the child of a constitutional, though in its mother's womb."+ And the inquisition was an engine of cruelty, and an instrument of torture, the very secrecy and seclusion of which aggravated the agony, such as nothing but faith could over

come.

It is much to be feared that the minds of the

*A Year in Spain, vol. ii. pp. 337, 345. + Ibid. p. 9.