The Roman Question

by Edmond About

Not that the Pope absolutely refuses to let assassins be pursued; that would be opposed to the practice of all civilized countries. But he takes care that they shall always get a good start of their pursuers. If they reach the banks of a river the pursuit ceases, lest they should jump into the water and be drowned without confession and absolution. If they seize hold of the skirts of a Capuchin Friar—they are saved. If they get into a church, a convent, or a hospital—saved again. If they do but set foot upon an ecclesiastical domain, or upon a clerical property (of which there is to the amount of £20,000,000 in the country), justice stands still, and lets them move on. A word from the Pope would reform this abuse of the right of asylum, which is a standing insult to civilization. On the contrary, he carefully preserves it, in order to show that the privileges of the Church are above the interests of humanity. This is both consistent and legal.

Should the police get hold of a murderer by accident, and quite unintentionally, he is brought up for trial. Witnesses of the crime are sought, but never found. A citizen would consider himself dishonoured if he were to give up his comrade to the natural enemy of the nation. The murdered man himself, if he could be brought to life, would swear he had seen nothing of the affair. The Government is not strong enough to force the witnesses to say what they know, or to protect them against the consequences of their depositions. This is why the most flagrant crime can never be proved in the courts of justice.

Supposing even that a murderer lets himself be taken, that witnesses give evidence against him, and that the crime be proved, even then the tribunal hesitates to pronounce the sentence of death.

The shedding of blood—legally—saddens a people; the Government has no fault to find with the murderer, so he is sent to the galleys. He is pretty comfortable there; public consideration follows him; sooner or later he is certain to be pardoned, because the Pope, utterly indifferent to his crime, finds it more profitable, and less expensive, to turn him loose than to keep him.

Put the worst possible case. Imagine a crime so glaring, so monstrous, so revolting, that the judges, who happen to be the least interested in the question, have been compelled to condemn the criminal to death. You probably imagine that, for example's sake, he will be executed while his crime is yet fresh in the popular recollection. Nothing of the sort. He is cast into a dungeon and forgotten; they think it probable he will die naturally there. In the month of July, 1858, the prison of the small town of Viterbo contained twenty-two criminals condemned to death, who were singing psalms while waiting for the executioner.

At length this functionary arrives; he selects one out of the lot and decapitates him. The populace is moved to compassion. Tears are shed, and the spectators cry out with one accord, "Poveretto!" The fact is, his crime is ten years old. Nobody recollects what it was. He has expiated it by ten years of penitence. Ten years ago his execution would have conveyed a striking moral lesson.

So much for the severity of penal justice. You would laugh if I were to speak of its leniency. The Duke Sforza Cesarini murders one of his servants for some act of personal disrespect. For example's sake, the Pope condemns him to a month's retirement in a convent.

Ah! if any sacrilegious hand were laid upon the holy ark; if a priest were to be slain, a Cardinal only threatened, then would there be neither asylum, nor galleys, nor clemency, nor delay. Thirty years ago the murderer of a priest was hewn in pieces in the Piazza del Popolo. More recently, as we have seen, the idiot who brandished his fork in the face of Cardinal Antonelli, was beheaded.

It is with highway robbery as with murder. I am induced to believe that the Pontifical court would not wage a very fierce war with the brigands, if those gentry undertook to respect its money and despatches. The occasional stopping of a few travellers, the clearing out of a carriage, and even the pillaging a country house, are neither religious nor political scourges. The brigands are not likely to scale either Heaven or the Vatican.

Thus there is still good business to be done in this line, and particularly beyond the Apennines, in those provinces which Austria has disarmed and does not protect. The tribunal of Bologna faithfully described the state of the country in a sentence of the 16th of June, 1856.