As regards his professional reputation, he may be said to have certainly occupied more than an average position, both as counsel and as a legal authority. His powers of eloquence were of no mean order; they were especially conspicuous in a law suit, in which he was engaged for the defence, and was opposed by the celebrated advocate Tizioni, well-known as a most formidable, and (as was said) unscrupulous opponent. It was about this period that the political condition of Italy began to engage, and shortly afterwards to absorb his attention; and, in this place, it will be best to notice a charge, openly brought against Panizzi, that he was a Carbonaro. The truth of this assertion must be at once and freely admitted; for although no one ever heard him confess it in England, nor is there in his book “Processi di Rubiera,” of which more hereafter, any allusion to his having been of the Association, yet it is indisputable that he was not only a Carbonaro, but one of the most active members of that Society. We have it on the evidence of Doctor Minzi (one of his greatest friends), that in the month of January, 1821, he, Dr. Minzi, and an ex-captain of the Napoleonic army were admitted by Panizzi as members of the Society, that such admission took place in Panizzi’s own bedroom, and that he himself had then been a member since the month of March, 1820. In this country all secret Societies are apt to be regarded—to use the mildest term—with disfavour. It is true that ridicule attaches to the general denunciation of Freemasonry indulged in by the Roman Catholic Church; for, except that the manner of creating a Freemason, and the sacred signs by which he may hereafter be known, are kept in darkness from the profane world, the Institution itself is about as much a secret society as a London club; there is, however, unfortunately, in a portion of these realms a dark and dangerous organisation,[A] unjustifiable, we conceive, as regards its purpose, and unscrupulous as to the means which it employs to carry out its designs. From the condition of this conspiracy, and of the country where it is carried on, we are doing an injustice to other and widely different nations to judge of the causes from which their societies spring by the same standard; for, let us frankly and impartially put ourselves in the place of some at least of these, and we may possibly find a sort of exculpation if not a justification even of the Carbonaro. ----- Footnote A: “Ribbonism” a society organised in Ireland about 1820, to retaliate on landlords any injuries done to their tenants, not scrupling even at assassination. An Act was passed to suppress it, 16th June, 1871. -----