from the banditti or prisons. There could be no trial but by secret and special commission. The common law was a dead letter. In every department there was the most odious tyranny. "Eyen the sacred office of the confessional was perverted; and under the garb of the priest was found the spy of the minister of state, or of Austria."* On the 16th of June, '46, Cardinal Ferretti, Bishop of Imola, or Pius IX, was elected Pope. He descended from a noble family, was educated as an officer in the army of Napoleon, but afterwards became a missionary at Chili, and at Montevideo, South America, and thence Bishop of Imola. In Pius, Italy found her true reformer, and with his reign the beginning of a brighter day. With twenty-two millions of people before him, depressed to the lowest point of endurance, he went boldly forward in reforms, which have extended his fame and praise over the globe. He suppressed the secret, cruel tribunals, for the seizure and trial of political offenders; appointed a council of six to deliberate on public affairs; gave public audience to the people; removed his tyrant minister, Lambruschini, still the tool of Austria; united the two highest offices of the State, and conferred them on a worthier man. His own brother was in exile, and by exiles from every quarter was he entreated. On the 16th of July he proclaimed a general amnesty for all political offenders, More than 3000 were then set at liberty, while the Pope headed a subscription for those who had been ruined by imprisonment. In August the Pope formed a special commission to investigate the subject, and provide a system of education for the poor. The old code of law was abolished, and six of the ablest men in the kingdom appointed to compile another. It gave trial by jury, and comprised, in the main, the judicial and penal systems of two of the ablest writers of Italy. The censorship of the press was abolished, and immediately ten newspapers, by reviving the old and establishing new, sprang into existence at Rome, the first printed in English. To public was added private liberality in the establishment of free evening schools for adults, and the opening of the Vatican library to all students at Rome. The influence of these reforms soon extended not only to all the states of Italy but to the heart of Austria and other powers on the continent. The jealousy of Austria was awakened; she feared the loss of power. She marched her forces through the Lombardo-Venetian territory, and encamped within the limits of the Pope. She attempted both by force and by entreaty to array all the princes of Italy against this liberal movement. But the desire for a higher free * See account of the reforms of Pope Pius, in Whig Review for November, 1847. By Senor Secchi de Cassali. + Marquis Beccaria on Crimes and their Punishment. He died Nov., 1793. Filangieri on the Science of Legislation-died 1788. dom had taken too deep a hold in the hearts of the people to be checked by either. The states of the Church, Sardinia, and Tuscany, now in the van of progress, were soon united in a compact, offensive and defensive, against these encroachments. Yet Austria, bolder still in aggression, occupied Ferrara, and through her emissaries plotted the foulest conspiracies against the life of the Pope. The national spirit and pride of Italy were thus roused to a pitch above any other period in her history, and in less than one month 32,000 volunteer soldiers had enrolled under the flag of Pius. Then commenced in earnest the struggle for Italian independence and nationality. Outbreaks and revolutions have succeeded, until the wayward and despotic spirit of the few Italian princes who had immovably arrayed themselves against the spread of free principles, is broken, and must ere long be entirely subdued, in the growing and vigorous national spirit which pervades and animates the Italian states. Pope Pius, though perhaps reluctantly, has been forced to yield the civil power into the hands of his ministry, thus virtually separating the church from the state. The latter is now free to raise and conduct a national army. The civil power is no longer legally or morally responsible to the church. The subjects of the church may extend beyond the domain of Italy, as the subjects of a foreign power, while the army, arrayed against that power in the national defence, no longer implicates the church as suicidal to itself. The church is, therefore, clear of the charge of war against her own brethren. As a distinct and controlling body, she ceases to be the agent or instrument of war. In the eyes of the Christian world she remains unsullied by its acts, while her numerical force becomes a tower of strength to the army. The civil power alone directs the arm of national defence, moving it with ten-fold strength without the pale of the church, and knowing its enemies only as enemies. This is the condition of Italy, under which all her states have united in an offensive and defensive league against foreign power. Austria has driven out from their territory a portion of her people. But the cloud which for a time rests over the prospects of the nation, will pass away. The German states have advanced too far towards a liberal constitutional, if not republican government, to permit even her strongest power, if it could, to sever these states, and destroy the nationality of Italy. And if the German Diet fail, the combined mediation or the sword of higher powers will assuredly intervene. Whatever, therefore, the trials of the present, Italy has already come into the possession of the great principle of free government. The retrograde of a half century cannot carry her back to the depression and weakness of the reign of her former sovereign. The freedom of speech, religious opinions, the press, are all essentially protected. The hopes of freedom have so quick ened the national heart as to renew her life and spirit in every extremity of her domain, from the Alpine border to the Sicilian shore. If we follow the progress of revolution to France, we have here a kingdom of 200,000 square miles, containing 34 millions of people,-mostly an extended plain, with the mildest of climates, capable of the highest cultivation, and whose vineyards annually occupy above five millions of acres. It has been the theatre of many great events in history: the scene of conflict for the defence of hoary monarchies; more than ten centuries ago the battle-ground of the Saracens at Tours; of the French and English in the middle ages at Crecy and Agincourt, and the theatre of action of the greatest warrior of modern times. The fortresses of ancient power, here strengthened for so many centuries, had become almost impregnable to the armies of the world. Yet the revolution of two brief days has swept away every vestige of this power, and France has become a free republic. More than half a century ago France was declared republican. In four months, her monarch (Louis XVI) was executed. Then followed Robespierre with a second constitution and the eighteen months' reign of blood and terror. With his fall came a third. In four years Napoleon became Consul, and gave a fourth. In the revolution of 1830 it was the design of the nation to establish forever the sovereignty of the people. But in calming the turbulence of those bloody three days, the Duke of Orleans and Guizot, the master-spirits of the time, averted this happy expected issue. The former ascended the throne under the specious title of Citizen King, while the constitution of their choice-the instrument under which the people have been more and more depressed for eighteen years-was but the old charter of Louis XVIII revived. This was the supposed liberal constitution under which the French were perpetually to be free, while the power reserved to the monarch was all but despotic. Its most striking feature was the absence of all power or method stipulated for its amendment. It could be done only by revolution. The weight of restriction which this charter imposed upon the people was at first apparently light. Prior to the revolution of 1830, Guizot had zealously supported the old charter, now to be revived. In so doing he made the English constitution his model, and aimed to unite the two aristocracies-the bourgeoise, or that of wealth, with that of privilege, or birth, on the same level. On the 30th of July, 1830, he was made minister of public instruction, and soon after Louis Philip had ascended the throne, on the 9th of the ensuing month, became minister of the interior. These two men directed or controlled all the changes in this charter, and from that day forward opposed the advance of the liberal, democratic party. Although of the party called "doctrinaires," and opposed by ultra |