On the 4th of April, 1851, the Supreme Court of the Sacra Consulta met to try the prisoners—­nearly two years after the date of their arrest.  The court, as usual, was composed of six high dignitaries of the Church, and throughout the mode of procedure differed in nothing that I can learn from what I have described in the former trials, except that there is no allusion to any preliminary trial before the ordinary lay courts.  Whether this omission is accidental, or whether, as in other instances during the Papal “Vendetta” after ’49, the ordinary forms of justice were dispensed with, I cannot say.  Garibaldi, De Pasqualis, and David, “self-styled” General, Colonel, and auditor respectively of the Roman army, were summoned to appear and answer to the charge against them, or else to allow judgment to go by default.  The prisoners actually before the bar were

   Romolo Salvatori,
   Vincenzo Fenili,
   Luigi Grassi,
   Francesco Fanella,
   Dominico Federici,
   Angelo Gabrielli,
   Teresa Fenili.

It is curious, to say the least, that all the prisoners appear to have been leading members of the liberal party at Giulianello.  Salvatori was elected Mayor of the town during the Republic, and the next four prisoners held the office there of “Anziani” at the same period, an office which corresponds somewhat to that of Alderman in our old civic days.  The chief witnesses for the prosecution were Latini, who so narrowly escaped execution, and the widow of De Angelis, persons not likely to be the most impartial of witnesses.

The whole sentence is in fact one long “ex parte” indictment against Salvatori.  The very language of the sentence confesses openly the partizanship of the court.  I am told that, in May 1849, “The Republican hordes commanded by the adventurer Garibaldi, after the battle with” (defeat of?) “the Royal Neapolitan troops at Velletri, had occupied a precarious position in the neighbouring towns,” and a good number of these troops were stationed at Valmontone, under the command of the so-called Colonel De Pasqualis; that at this period, when “an accusation sent to the commanders of these freebooters was sufficient to ruin every honest citizen,” Salvatori, in order to gratify his private animosity against Santurri, De Angelis, and Latini, forwarded to De Pasqualis an unfounded accusation against them of intriguing for the overthrow of the Republic; and in order to give it a “colour of probability,” induced the above-named Anziani to sign it; and that, in order to accomplish his impious design, he wrote a private letter to De Pasqualis, telling him how the arrest of the accused might be effected.  Again, I learn that a search, instituted by Salvatori into the priest Santurri’s papers, produced no “evidence favourable to his infamous purpose,” that the accused were never examined, though “a certain David, who pretended to be a military auditor, made a few vague inquiries of Santurri, and noted the answers