"Two months have elapsed, my brothers, since we were promised that the foreign soldiery, the sole prop of the Papal rule, should be withdrawn; yet they still continue to crowd our streets, and, under futile pretenses, have even re-occupied the positions which they had previously evacuated, in accordance with the Convention of September, 1864. To us, then, thus betrayed, it remains to accomplish our liberty. We have borne far too patiently for the last eighteen years a doubly execrated rule--that of the stranger, and that of the priest. In these last years we have been ever ready to spring to arms, but we have been withheld by the advice of a hermaphrodite party in the State, styling themselves 'the Moderates,' in whom we can have no longer any confidence, because they have used their power to accumulate wealth for themselves, from the public treasury, which they are sucking dry, and they have invariably proved themselves ready to bargain with the stranger, and to trade in the national honor. Our friends outside are prepared, and blame us for being negligent and tardy. The army, excepting those members of it consecrated to base hopes, is with us. The arms which were expected have arrived, and are lodged in safety. We have also an abundance of ammunition. Further delay, under these circumstances, would be unpardonable. To arms! then, to arms! and to arms!" "To arms!" was the cry re-echoed by the three hundred conspirators assembled in the chamber. Where their ancestors held councils how to subjugate other nations, these modern voices made the old walls ring again while they vowed their resolve to emancipate enslaved Rome or perish in the attempt. Three hundred only! Yes, three hundred; but such was the muster-roll of the companions of Leonidas, and of the liberating family of Fabius. These, too, were equally willing to become liberators, or to accept martyrdom. For this they had high reason, because of what value is the life of a slave, when compared with the sublime conceptions, the imperious conscience, of a soul guided always by noble ideas? God be with all such souls, and those also who despise the power of tyrannizing in turn over their fellow-beings. Of what value can be the life of a despot? His miserable remorse causes him to tremble at the movement of every leaf. No outward grandeur can atone for the mental sufferings he endures, and he finally becomes a sanguinary and brutal coward. May the God of love hereafter extend to them the mercy they have denied to their fellow-men, and pardon them for the rivers of innocent blood they have caused to flow!