The Roman Question

by Edmond About

£1,000,000 goes to pay the interest of a continually accumulating debt, contracted by the priests, and for the priests, annually increasing through the bad administration of the priests, and carried by the priests to the debit of the nation.

£400,000 is devoured by a useless army, the sole duty of which has hitherto been to present arms to the Cardinals, and to escort the procession of the Host.

£120,000 is devoted to those establishments which of all others are the most indispensable to an unpopular government: I mean, the prisons.

£80,000 is the cost of the administration of justice. The tribunals of the capital absorb half the amount, because they enjoy the distinction of being for the most part composed of prelates.

The very modest sum of £100,000 is devoted to public works. This is chiefly spent in embellishing Rome, and repairing churches.

£60,000 goes in the encouragement of idleness in the city of Rome. A Charity Commission, presided over by a Cardinal, distributes this sum among a few thousand incorrigible idlers, without accounting for it to anybody. Mendicity is all the more flourishing, as is apparent to every one. From 1827 to 1858, the subjects of the Holy Father paid £1,600,000 in mischievous alms, among the injurious effects of which, the principal was to deprive labour of the hands it required. The Cardinal who presides over the Commission takes £2,400 a year for his private charities.

£16,000 defrays poorly enough the cost of the public education, which, moreover, is wholly in the hands of the clergy. Add this moderate sum, and the £80,000 devoted to the administration of justice, to a part of the £100,000 spent on public works, and you have all that can fairly be set down as money spent in the service of the nation. The remainder is of no use but to the Government,—in other words, to a parcel of priests.

The Pope and the partners of his power must be indifferent financiers, when, after spending such a pittance on the nation, they contrive to wind up every year with a deficit. The balance of 1858 showed a deficit of nearly half a million sterling, which does not prevent the government from promising a surplus in the estimates of 1859.

In order to fill up the gaps in the budget, the Government has recourse to borrowing, sometimes openly, by a loan from the house of Rothschild, sometimes secretly, by an issue of stock.

In 1857 the Pontifical Government contracted its eleventh loan with Rothschild's house; it was a trifle, something under £700,000. Nevertheless there were quiet issues of stock from 1851 to 1858, to the tune of £1,320,000. The capital of the debt for which its subjects are liable, amounts to £14,376,150. 5s. If you will take the trouble to divide this grand total by the figure which represents the population, you will find that every little subject born to the Pope comes into the world a debtor of something like £4. 10s., whereof he will contribute to pay the interest all his life, although neither he nor his ancestors have ever derived the least benefit from the outlay.