In foreign discussions on the papal question it is always assumed as an undisputed fact that the maintenance of the papal court at Rome is, in a material point of view, an immense advantage to the city, whatever it may be in a moral one. Now my own observations have led me to doubt the correctness of this assumption. If the Pope were removed from Rome, or if a lay government were established--the two hypotheses are practically identical--the number of the clergy would undoubtedly be much diminished, a large number of the convents and clerical endowments would be suppressed, and the present generation of priests would be heavy sufferers. This result is inevitable. Under no free government would or could a city of 170,000 inhabitants support 10,000 unproductive persons out of the common funds--for this is substantially the case in Rome at the present day. Every sixteen lay citizens--men, women, and children--support out of their labor a priest between them. The papal question with the Roman priesthood is thus a question of daily bread, and it is surely no want of charity to suppose that the material aspect influences their minds quite as much as the spiritual. It is, however, a Protestant delusion that the priests of Rome live upon the fat of the land. What fat there is is certainly theirs. It is one of the mysteries of Rome how the hundreds of priests who swarm about the streets manage to live. The clue to the mystery is to be found inside the churches. In every church--and there arty 866 of them--some score or two of masses are said daily at the different altars. The pay for performing a mass varies from sixpence to five shillings. The good masses--those paid for by private persons for the souls of their relatives--are naturally reserved for the priests connected with a particular church; while the poor ones are given to any priest who happens to apply for them. The nobility, as a body, are sure to be the supporters of an established order of things; their interests, too, are very much mixed up with those of the papacy. There is not a single noble Roman family that has not one or more of its members among the higher ranks of the priesthood. And in a considerable degree their distinctions, such as they are, and their temporal prospects, are bound up with the popedom. Moreover, in this rank of the social scale the private and personal influence of the priests through the women of the family is very powerful. The more active, however, and ambitious amongst the aristocracy feel deeply the exclusion from public life, the absence from any opening for ambition, and the gradual impoverishment of their property, which are the necessary evils of an absolute ecclesiastical government.--_Dicey's "Rome in 1860_." NOTE 4.