either Papal partizans who, believing that "this is the best of all
possible worlds," wish to prove also that "everything here is for the
best," or else they are vehement friends of Italy, who are afraid of
damaging their beloved cause by an admission of the plain truth, that the
Romans are not as a people either honest, truthful or industrious. For
my own part, my faith is different. A bad government produces bad
subjects, and I am not surprised to find in the debasement and
degradation of a priest-ruled people the strongest condemnation of the
Papal system.




CHAPTER V. TRIALS FOR MURDER.


The idler about the streets of Rome may, from time to time, catch sight,
on blank walls and dead corners, of long white strips of paper, covered
with close-printed lines of most uninviting looking type, and headed with
the Papal arms--the cross-keys and tiara. If, being like myself
afflicted with an inquisitive turn of mind, he takes the trouble of
deciphering these hieroglyphic documents, his labour would not be
altogether thrown away. Those straggling strips, stuck up in out-of-the-
way places, glanced at by a few idle passers-by, and torn down by the
prowling vagabonds of the streets after a day or two for the sake of the
paper, are the sole public records of justice issued, or allowed to be
issued, under the Pontifical government. Trials are carried on here with
closed doors; no spectators are admitted; no reports of the proceedings
are published. In capital cases, however, _after_ the execution of the
criminal has taken place a sort of _Proces verbal_ of the case and of the