A criminal court of appeals, with the appellation of Sacra Consulta,—­how this sacred meets you at every turn!—­a council called Buon Governo, for the superintendence of municipal administration,—­one for roads, fountains, and water-courses, called the General Prefecture of Waters and Roads,—­a Council of “Economy,” a Council of Studies, a Council for the Examination of Accounts, in which four laymen sit side by side with four prelates, under the presidency of a cardinal, and the Congregation of the Census for the apportionment of taxes on real estate in the country, form the seven civil congregations by which the Pope is assisted in his labors, and the cardinals and prelates brought in to a share of the administration.  Add to these sixteen tribunals, or courts, civil and ecclesiastical, two Secretaries of State, a Secretary of Briefs and one of Memorials, a Camerlengo, a Treasurer, and a Governor of Rome, and you have an outline of the Roman Government under Gregory XVI.

The Secretaries of State are always cardinals; the Camerlengo, who is the official head of government during the vacancies of the Holy See, a cardinal; the Treasurer and Governor of Rome, prelates, who, on leaving office, become cardinals by right.  The only part of this complex machinery which was intrusted to laymen was the Tribunal of the Capitol and the Tribunal of Commerce:  the latter an institution of Pius VII., and directly connected with the Chamber of Commerce, from whose fifteen members two of its three judges are chosen, while the third is furnished by the bar; the former, the feeble representative of all that is left of the municipal government of Rome.

Rome has sixty noble families who enjoy the title of Conscript.  From these are chosen, every three months, three Conservatori and a Prior of the Wards, who form a committee for the superintendence of the walls and public monuments, and for the administration of the income of the Capitoline Chamber.  If we look at them in connection with the ancient government of Rome, we shall find them employed in functions not unlike those of the AEdiles.  From the same point of view, the Senator may be said to resemble the City Prefect; although, when you see him on public days, standing like a statue on the steps of the Pontifical throne, above the prelates, but a little lower than the cardinals, you can think neither of prefect nor of senate, nor of anything that recalls the days when Romans acknowledged no superior but the fellow-citizens whom they themselves had chosen as representatives of their sovereign will.

It requires no very profound examination of this system to see that it is purely and rigidly ecclesiastical.  The ecclesiastical leaven penetrates it in every part.  Wherever you go, either for business or for amusement, you find some representative of the Church.  Whichever way you turn, you see keen eyes peering upon you from under a three-cornered hat or a cowl.  And even when the path seems for a while to be leading you back to the world, through rows of shops, under the windows of bankers, within sight of sails and steam, or within sound of humming wheels, there are still shrines and oratories numberless by the way, and a church or a convent at the end.