Rome takes no notice of these reports, and winks, as the saying is, at personal immorality, to obtain that which constitutes her moral code—wealth and dominion. For dealing in immoral acts, immoral agents are necessary. Would an honest man do for an Inquisitor? Would a follower of Christ, who said, speaking of man and wife, "Whom God hath joined, let no man put asunder,"—would he sow discord between them, and demoralize the wife, to make her betray in the basest manner her own husband? Does not an Inquisitor require to be one whose heart is hardened against every gentle and social feeling, so that he may not hesitate to commit barbarities which are unknown among the most savage nations?
Are the torments which are employed at the present day at the Inquisition all a fiction? It requires the impudence of an Inquisitor, or of the Archbishop of Westminster, to deny their existence. I have myself heard these evil-minded persons lament and complain that their victims were treated with too much lenity.
"What is it you desire?" I inquired of the Inquisitor of Spoleto.
"That which St. Thomas Aquinas says," answered he: "death to all the heretics."
Hand over then to one of these people a person, however respectable; give him up to one of the Inquisitors (he who quoted St. Thomas Aquinas to me was made an Archbishop;)—give up, I say, the present Archbishop of Canterbury, amiable and pious as he is, to one of these rabid Inquisitors: he must either deny his faith or be burned alive. Is my statement false? Am I doting? Is not this the spirit that invariably actuates the Inquisitors? And not the Inquisitors only, but all those who in any way defile themselves with the Inquisition, such as Bishops and their Vicars, and all those who defend it, as the Papists do. There is the renowned Cardinal Wiseman, the Archbishop of Westminster, according to the Pope's creation; the same who has had the assurance to censure me from his pulpit, and to publish an infamous article in the Dublin Review, in which he has raked together, as on a dunghill, every species of filth from the sons of Ignatius Loyola; nor is there lie or calumny that he has not made use of against me. Well, then, suppose I were to be handed over to the tender mercy of this Cardinal, and he had full power to dispose of me as he chose, without fear of losing his character in the eyes of the nation to which by parentage, more than by merit, he belongs; what do you imagine he would do with me? Should I not have to undergo some death more terrible than ordinary? Would not a council be held with the reverend fathers of the Company of Loyola, the same who have suggested the abominable calumnies above alluded to, in order to invent some refined method of putting me out of the world? I feel persuaded that if I were condemned by the Inquisition to be burned alive, my calumniator would have great pleasure in building up my funeral pile, and setting fire to it with his own hands; or, should strangulation be preferred, that he would, with equal readiness, tighten the cord around my neck: and all for the honour and glory of the Inquisition, of which, according to his oath, he is a true and faithful servant.
And since we are on this subject, allow me to relate a fact concerning myself, which strongly evinces the subtlety of the Inquisition, according to the practice of the Jesuits, in availing themselves, in foreign parts, of the assistance of Bishops and dignified personages.
Every one knows how miraculously I escaped a second time from the horrors of the Inquisition. All those who had any feeling rejoiced at it; and such as met with me expressed their satisfaction by kindness and polite attentions. In the month of January, 1850, I was at Paris, and was visited by a vast number of persons of every class, not only Protestants, but Catholics also, who expressed the interest they took in my recovered liberty. I waited upon the government ministers, and others who had assisted me, to thank them for their services; but they interrupted me by assuring me that they had done no more than follow the impulse of their own hearts and the dictates of humanity; that they had merely performed a duty; and were rejoiced to think that their interference had so well succeeded, that instead of being shut up in the prisons of the Inquisition, I was at liberty to walk about the streets of Paris as I thought proper.
In the midst of this universal pleasure, which appeared to animate all I met, and which was responded to by the public journals, I exclaimed to one of my friends:
"Observe how the voice of the whole people is with me; not a word is uttered on the contrary side, except by the journal of the Jesuits, which, to my credit be it spoken, thinks proper to abuse me in a foolish, senseless article, full of contradiction, written in the vulgarest language of the streets, or of their own sacristy, and only worthy of contempt."
One day a friend came to tell me that it appeared the Jesuits had employed some other party to vilify me.