CHAPTER XXVIII.
Injudicious policy of the Government at the Restoration—Non-fulfilment of the Motu proprio of Pius VII.—Disappointment of the pontifical subjects—Inability of Cardinals Consalvi and Guerrieri to contend against the narrow views of their colleagues—Reasons of Austria's animosity against the former—Guerrieri's projected reforms bring about his fall—The constitutional movement of 1820-21—Its effect in the Papal States—Abuse of Consalvi's instructions—Extreme political rigour under Leo XII.—Distracted condition of the country—The Sanfedisti rising of 1831—First Austrian armed intervention in Romagna—Conferences at Rome—Mr. Seymour's protest—Fresh disturbances in the Legations—the Austrians again occupy Bologna—The French land at Ancona—The reign of Gregory XVI.
The Italian princes summoned back from exile or captivity, by the downfall of Napoleon, to the exercise of sovereignty, bad, all of them, learnt a little from adversity. Upon none, however, had its lessons been so completely thrown away, as the Pope,—or, to speak more correctly, the Papacy.
From the first resumption of its functions, the aim of the Roman Government seems to have been to blot out all traces of the enlightened and vigorous administration of the French; not by continuing whatever they had introduced of good, or improving on whatever they had left imperfect, but by forcibly reviving the usages of an almost obsolete generation. It was seriously deemed possible, by the most puerile restrictions, the most inquisitorial surveillance, to compel men to recede a quarter of a century, and return submissively to the stagnation which characterized Italy before the Revolution—a period when literature, art, morals, were all at their lowest ebb, and the test of a good citizen was to be regular at his barber's, spotless in his ruffles, and assiduous as a cicisbee.
At the restoration of Pius VII., promises had been held out of a thorough revision of the Legislature; but before long the publication of a civil and criminal code, based upon by-gone institutions and totally opposed to the requirements of the age, coupled with the augmenting influence of the clergy, opened the way for a weary succession of evils. It soon became apparent that neither the moderation of the pontiff, nor the good intentions and activity of one or two amongst the cardinals could counterbalance the hostility of the vast majority of the Sacred College to aught connected with reform. Victims of one revolution, they fancied any innovation on time-hallowed observances would infallibly precipitate them into a second.
Consalvi and Guerrieri, the one Prime Minister, the other Cardinal-Treasurer, stood alone in their endeavours to remedy the most crying abuses. Unsupported as they were, for a few years at least they kept up a semblance of decency and justice. With their disgrace every vestige of common sense departed from the councils of the Vatican. Italians always date the commencement of their worst times from the triumph of the Austrian intrigues which brought about Cardinal Consalvi's downfall. Metternich had never forgiven his energetic protest at the Congress of Vienna against the occupation of the citadels of Ferrara and Commacchio in the papal territory. Though the protest remains a dead letter, and both received Austrian garrisons, the independence of spirit, the impatience of foreign control, which he had revealed, were little in accordance with imperial policy; and, conjoined to his successful opposition to designs upon Ancona in 1821, stamped him as too national for Austria to tolerate in the Church Cabinet. Immediately upon the decease of his firm friend Pius VII., Consalvi was displaced; and Cardinal Albani, of avowedly absolutist principles, succeeded him in the direction of affairs.
Guerrieri was the victim of his devotion to political economy, and his projected financial reforms. Amongst these was a thorough revision of the land-tax, to effect which he sent for experienced engineers from abroad. But Albani would not suffer him to carry out this much-needed undertaking. When interrogated as to the motive of this hostility, he is said to have replied: “My large estates in the Marche are not probably assessed at more than at third of their value. I do not choose to treble the tax at my expense.”
The years 1820-21 were equally memorable and disastrous for the whole of Italy. Revolutions broke out in Naples and Piedmont, of which the object was to obtain a Constitution. But neither Ferdinand of Bourbon, nor Charles Felix of Savoy, were reformers. Both monarchs had recourse to arms; the one solicited, the other accepted, the assistance of Austria, who, dreading nothing so much as the establishment of representative institutions in Italy, eagerly seized on this opportunity for intervention. Naples Was guarded for six years by the Imperial troops;—the Piedmontese sustained what they still remember as the indignity of a six months' occupation of the citadel of Alessandria.
Though the Roman States had taken no part in these disturbances, it was apparent that a dangerous amount of sympathy for their purpose existed in the population. The absolutist party urged stringent measures of precaution; and Austria was desirous of throwing a garrison into Ancona. By diplomatic address Consalvi eluded compliance with this proffer; but, to clear himself from the imputation of inability or disinclination to make head against the liberals, took a step which entailed consequences he was the first to deplore. He wrote to the four legates of the Romagne, authorizing them to send temporarily out of the country a certain number of individuals suspected to be members of the Carbonari, Freemasons, and other secret revolutionary societies. The cardinal-legates used this faculty with indiscriminating rigour; and drew upon themselves the prime minister's grave rebuke. Shocked at finding the arrests considerably exceeded one hundred, Consalvi declared that the pope would pass for the most relentless of persecutors, deprecated the abuse of force and of justice which had been employed, and gave orders to desist from any further proceedings.[9]
But this act had been as the letting in of waters. The proscriptions which Consalvi lamented as being so large, were insignificant to those that desolated the Romagne two years later under the blind intolerance of Leo XII., and Albani, when he himself had been thrust from office. Five hundred and eight persons were accused of high treason by the tribunals presided over by the fanatical Cardinal Rivarola. Of these offenders, a hundred and twenty-one, belonging to the upper classes of society, were exiled into Tuscany. But ere long the Government became apprehensive that they would conspire afresh if left at large. They were, therefore, summoned back to their own residences. With a fatal reliance on the good intentions of their sovereign, into which no Roman subject will ever again be betrayed, they obeyed the command. Scarcely had they entered the country when they were seized, imprisoned, and, after a protracted trial, condemned. Seven were beheaded, forty-five sent to the galleys, and the remainder imprisoned in State fortresses.