The blood which flows in Italian veins must be very generous, or so notable a portion of the plebeians of Rome as the people of the Trastevere, could never have preserved their manly virtues, as is notoriously the case with them.  I have met with men in this quarter of the city, coarse, violent, sometimes ferocious, but really men; nice as to their honour, to the extent of poniarding any one who is wanting in respect to them.  They are fully as ignorant as the people of the Monti; they have learnt the same lessons, and witnessed the same examples; they have the same improvidence, the same love of pleasure, the same brutality in their passions; but they are incapable of stooping, even to pick anything up.

A government worthy of the name would make something of this ignorant force, first taming, and then directing it.  The man who stabs his fellow in a wineshop might prove a good soldier on a battle-field.  But we are in the capital of the Pope.  The Trasteverini neither attack God nor the Government; they meddle neither with theology nor politics; no more is asked of them.  And in token of its appreciation of their good conduct, a paternal administration allows them to cut one another’s throats ad libitum.

Neither the people of the Trastevere nor of the Monti give the least sign of political existence, whereat the Cardinals rub their hands, and congratulate themselves upon having kept so many men in profound ignorance of all their rights.  I am not quite certain that the theory is a sound one.  Suppose, for example, that the democratic committees of London and Leghorn were to send a few recruiting officers into the Pope’s capital.  An honest, mild, enlightened plebeian would reflect twice before enrolling himself.  He would weigh the pros and the cons, and balance for a long time between the vices of the government, and the dangers of revolution.  But the mob of the Monti would take fire like a heap of straw at the mere prospect of a scramble, while the Trastevere savages would rise to a man, if the Papal despotism were represented to them as an attack upon their honour.  It would be better to have in these plebeians foes capable of reasoning.  The Pope might often have to reckon with them, but he need never tremble before them.

I trust the masters of the country may never more be obliged to fight with the plebeians of Rome.  They were easily carried away by the leaders of 1848, although the name of Republic resounded for the first time in their ears.  Have they forgotten it?  No.  They will long remember that magic word, which abased the great, and exalted the humble.  Moreover, the hidden Mazzinists, who agitate throughout the city, don’t collect the workmen in the quarter of the Regola to preach submission to them.