During the period of my stay at Rome there were three executions in different parts of the Papal territory.  Whether by accident or by design I cannot say, but all these executions occurred within a short period of each other, and, in consequence, three such statements were issued almost at the same time by the Government.  With considerable difficulty I succeeded in obtaining copies of these statements, not, I am bound to say, because there seemed to be any reluctance in furnishing them, but because the fact of anybody wishing to obtain copies was so unusual, that there was no preparation made for supplying them; and, at last, I only succeeded in procuring them from a printer’s devil to the Stanperia Apostolica.  The facts narrated in them, and the circumstances alluded to, seem to me to throw a strange light on the administration of justice, and the daily life of this priest-ruled country.  It is as such that I wish to comment on them.  In these statements, be it remembered, there is no question of political or clerical bias.  The facts stated are all facts, admitted by the authorities of their own free will and pleasure; and if, as I think, these facts tell most unfavourably on the judicial system of our clerical rulers, it is, at any rate, out of their own mouths they are convicted.  All, therefore, that I propose to do is, having these official statements before me, to tell the stories that they contain, as shortly and as clearly as I can, adding no comment of my own but what is necessary to explain the facts in question.  Let me take first the case, which is entitled “Cannara contro Luigi Bonci;” the township of Cannara, where the crime was committed, being what we should call in a civil suit the plaintiff, and the accused Bonci the defendant.

CHAPTER V.—­continued.  THE “BONCI” MURDER.

Some three years ago, then, there lived in the hamlet of Cannara, near Perugia, a family called Bonci.  They belonged to the peasant class, and were poor, even among the Papal peasantry.  The family consisted of the father and mother, and of their son and daughter, both grown up.  Between the father and son there had long been ill-blood.  The cause of this want of family harmony is but indistinctly stated, but apparently it was due to the irregular habits of the son, and to the severity of the father; while all this domestic misery was rendered doubly bitter by the almost abject want of the household.  On the night of November the 9th, 1856, Venanzio Bonci, the father, Maria Rosa, his wife, and their daughter, Caterina, were at supper in the miserable room, which formed the whole of their dwelling, waiting for the return of the son, Luigi, who had been absent ever since the morning.  There had been frequent quarrels before between father and son about Luigi’s stopping out late, and now it was past midnight.  There was no light in the room except a faint flicker from the embers,