So much for the Independenza e Papa, as the pamphlet is styled.  I have given, I fear, a somewhat lengthy account of it; not for its literary merits, which are small, but as being the best native defence of the Papacy I have come across.  The dull dead vis inertiae which formed the real strength of the Papacy has been of late exchanged for a petty useless fussiness.  Ever since Guerroniere’s pamphlet fell like a bomb upon the Vatican there has been a perfect array of paper-champions, sent forth to do battle for the Papal cause.  They are mostly, it is true, of foreign growth.  Extracts from Montalembert, De Falloux, and Berryer’s speeches, patched together and re-garnished; reprints of the Episcopal charges in France; editions of Count Sola della Margherita’s much be-praised work; and, I regret to say, translations of Lord Normanby’s speeches in the House of Lords, are advertised daily on the walls of Rome.  Of native and original productions there have been but few.  Literary talent does not flourish in Rome, and what little there is, is all retained against the Government.  The Eye-glance at the Encyclical, the Widow’s Mite, and the Tears of St Peter, are the titles of some of the anonymous pro-Papal tracts published under Government patronage; of these the Independenza e Papa, which is sold at the printing-office of the Giornale di Roma, is decidedly the ablest and most respectable.

CHAPTER VIII.  PAPAL LOTTERIES.

If ever anybody had cause to regret the suppression of lotteries, it is the whole tribe of play-writers and authors.  Never will there be found again a “Deus ex Machina,” so serviceable or so unfailing as the lottery.  If your plot wanted a solution, or your intrigue a denoument, or your novel a termination, you could always cut through all your difficulties by the medium of a lottery-ticket.  The virtuous but impoverished hero became at once a very Croesus, and the worldly-minded parent bestowed his daughter and his blessing on the successful gambler, who, by the way, never purchased his own ticket, but always had it bequeathed to him as a legacy.  Alas, lottery-tickets, like wealthy uncles and places under government, have gone out of date.  The fond glance of memory turns in vain towards the good old times, when the lottery was in its glory.  It is, however, some comfort to reflect, that if, as devout Catholics assert, the Papacy is eternal, then in Rome, at least, lotteries are eternal also.  In truth, the lottery is a great, I might almost say the great Pontifical institution.  It is a trade not only sanctioned, but actively supported, by the Government.  Partly, therefore, as a matter of literary interest, and partly as a curious feature in the economics of the Papal States, I have made various personal researches into the working of the lottery-system, and shall endeavour to give the theoretical not the practical result of my investigations; the latter result being, I am afraid, of a negative description.