Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber : $b or, The influence of Romanism on trade, justice, and knowledgeWylie, J. A. (James Aitken)
History
Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber : $b or, The influence of Romanism on trade, justice, and knowledge
Wylie, J. A. (James Aitken)
Catholic Church -- Italy; Italy -- Description and travel
grated window, through which the day is breaking, holds it up with
trembling hands, and reads his doom. He is banished, it may be, or he
is sentenced to the galleys; or, more wretched still, he is doomed to
the scaffold. Unhappy man! 'twas but last eve that he laid him down in
the midst of his little ones, not dreaming of the black cloud that hung
above his dwelling; and now by next dawn he is in the Pope's dungeons,
parted from all he loves, most probably for ever, and within a few hours
of the galleys or the scaffold.
I saw these men taken out of Rome morning by morning,--that is, such of
them as were banished. They passed under the windows of my own apartment
in the Via Babuino. I have seen as many as twenty-four led away of a
morning. They were put by half-dozens into carts, to which they were
tied by twos, and chained together, as if they had been brigands. Thus
they moved on to the Flaminian gate, each cart escorted by a couple of
mounted gendarmes. The spectacle, alas! was too common to find
spectators; not a Roman followed it, or showed that he was conscious of
it, save by a mournful look at the melancholy cavalcade from his window,
knowing that what was their lot to-day might be his to-morrow. And what
the appearance and apparent profession of these men? Those I saw had
much the air of intelligent and respectable artizans; for I believe it
is this class that are now bearing the brunt of the papal tyranny. The
higher classes were swept off before, and the rage of the Government is
now venting itself in a lower and wider sphere. An intelligent
Scotchman, who had charge of the one iron-shop in the Corso, informed me
that now all the tolerably skilled workmen had been so weeded out of the
city by the Pope, that it was scarce possible to find hands to do the
little work that requires to be done in Rome. If there be among my
readers a mechanic who has been indifferent to the question between this
country and the Papacy, as one the settlement of which could not affect
his interests either way, I tell him he never made a greater mistake all
his life. If the Papacy succeed, his interests will be the very first to
suffer, in the ruin of trade. Nor will that suffice; if a skilled man,
he will be held to be a dangerous man; and, having taken from him his
bread, the Papacy will next take from him his liberty, as she is now
doing to his brethren in Rome.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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