On the morrow this sentence is conveyed to Simonetti, who appeals.  With considerable expedition the Supreme Tribunal meet to hear the case on the 23rd of September.  The prisoner alleged before this court that his indignation had been excited by improper proposals made to him by the murdered man, and it was on this account their partnership had been dissolved.  Besides certain inherent improbabilities in this story, the court decides that it was incredible that, if true, Simonetti should not have made the statement at his previous trial.  The appeal was therefore dismissed, and the sentence of death confirmed.  This decision was notified to the prisoner on the 18th of November, who again appeals to the higher Court, which meets to try the appeal on the 29th of the same month.  This court at once decided that there was no ground for supposing the crime was not committed with “malice prepense,” or for modifying the verdict.  It is not stated when the sentence was submitted to the Pope, but on the 20th of January, 1860, the rejection of his final appeal is communicated to the prisoner, and on the 21st the execution takes place, and the report is published.

Now, if I had wished solely to decry the Papal system of justice, I should not have given the report of the last trial, which seems to me far the most favourable specimen of the set I have come across.  I am inclined to believe, from the meagre narratives before me, that all the criminals whose cases I have narrated were guilty of the crimes alleged against them, and fully deserved the fate they met with.  My object, however, has been to point out certain features which must, I think, force themselves on any one who has read these cases carefully.  The disregard for human life, the abject poverty, the wide-spread demoralization in the rural districts indicated by these stories, are startling facts in a country which has been for centuries ruled by the vicegerents of Christ on earth.  At the same time, the great protraction of the trials and the utter uncertainty about the date of their occurrence, the unsatisfactory nature of the evidence, the want of any cross-examination, the manner in which strict law is disregarded from a clerical view of justice, and the identity between the court and the prosecution, the abuse of the unlimited power of appeal, and the extent to which this appeal from a lay to a clerical court places justice virtually in the hands of the priesthood; and finally, the secret and private character of the whole investigation, coupled with the utter absence of any check on injustice through publicity, are all matters patent even to a casual observer.  If such, I ask, is Papal justice, when it has no reason for concealment and has right upon its side, what would it be in a case where injustice was sought to be perpetrated and concealed?

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