If you marvel at a system of extravagance which obliges the people to pay L4 for every L2. 15s. 10d. required for their mis-government, here is a fact which will enlighten you on the subject.

Last year the place of municipal receiver was put up to auction in the city of Bologna.  An offer was made by an honourable and responsible man to collect the dues for a commission of 1-1/2 per cent.  The Government gave the preference to Count Cesare Mattei, one of the Pope’s Chamberlains, who asked two per cent.  So this piece of favouritism costs the city L800 a year.

The following is the mode in which the revenue (after the abstraction of one-third in the course of collecting it) is disposed of.

L1,000,000 goes to pay the interest of a continually accumulating debt, contracted by the priests, and for the priests, annually increasing through the bad administration of the priests, and carried by the priests to the debit of the nation.

L400,000 is devoured by a useless army, the sole duty of which has hitherto been to present arms to the Cardinals, and to escort the procession of the Host.

L120,000 is devoted to those establishments which of all others are the most indispensable to an unpopular government:  I mean, the prisons.

L80,000 is the cost of the administration of justice.  The tribunals of the capital absorb half the amount, because they enjoy the distinction of being for the most part composed of prelates.

The very modest sum of L100,000 is devoted to public works.  This is chiefly spent in embellishing Rome, and repairing churches.

L60,000 goes in the encouragement of idleness in the city of Rome.  A Charity Commission, presided over by a Cardinal, distributes this sum among a few thousand incorrigible idlers, without accounting for it to anybody.  Mendicity is all the more flourishing, as is apparent to every one.  From 1827 to 1858, the subjects of the Holy Father paid L1,600,000 in mischievous alms, among the injurious effects of which, the principal was to deprive labour of the hands it required.  The Cardinal who presides over the Commission takes L2,400 a year for his private charities.

L16,000 defrays poorly enough the cost of the public education, which, moreover, is wholly in the hands of the clergy.  Add this moderate sum, and the L80,000 devoted to the administration of justice, to a part of the L100,000 spent on public works, and you have all that can fairly be set down as money spent in the service of the nation.  The remainder is of no use but to the Government,—­in other words, to a parcel of priests.

The Pope and the partners of his power must be indifferent financiers, when, after spending such a pittance on the nation, they contrive to wind up every year with a deficit.  The balance of 1858 showed a deficit of nearly half a million sterling, which does not prevent the government from promising a surplus in the estimates of 1859.