They do not call it confiscating the church property.  That would sound too harshly yet.  But it amounts to that.  There are thousands of churches in Italy, each with untold millions of treasures stored away in its closets, and each with its battalion of priests to be supported.  And then there are the estates of the Church—­league on league of the richest lands and the noblest forests in all Italy—­all yielding immense revenues to the Church, and none paying a cent in taxes to the State.  In some great districts the Church owns all the property—­lands, watercourses, woods, mills and factories.  They buy, they sell, they manufacture, and since they pay no taxes, who can hope to compete with them?

Well, the Government has seized all this in effect, and will yet seize it in rigid and unpoetical reality, no doubt.  Something must be done to feed a starving treasury, and there is no other resource in all Italy —­none but the riches of the Church.  So the Government intends to take to itself a great portion of the revenues arising from priestly farms, factories, etc., and also intends to take possession of the churches and carry them on, after its own fashion and upon its own responsibility.  In a few instances it will leave the establishments of great pet churches undisturbed, but in all others only a handful of priests will be retained to preach and pray, a few will be pensioned, and the balance turned adrift.

Pray glance at some of these churches and their embellishments, and see whether the Government is doing a righteous thing or not.  In Venice, today, a city of a hundred thousand inhabitants, there are twelve hundred priests.  Heaven only knows how many there were before the Parliament reduced their numbers.  There was the great Jesuit Church.  Under the old regime it required sixty priests to engineer it—­the Government does it with five, now, and the others are discharged from service.  All about that church wretchedness and poverty abound.  At its door a dozen hats and bonnets were doffed to us, as many heads were humbly bowed, and as many hands extended, appealing for pennies—­appealing with foreign words we could not understand, but appealing mutely, with sad eyes, and sunken cheeks, and ragged raiment, that no words were needed to translate.  Then we passed within the great doors, and it seemed that the riches of the world were before us!  Huge columns carved out of single masses of marble, and inlaid from top to bottom with a hundred intricate figures wrought in costly verde antique; pulpits of the same rich materials, whose draperies hung down in many a pictured fold, the stony fabric counterfeiting the delicate work of the loom; the grand altar brilliant with polished facings and balustrades of oriental agate, jasper, verde antique, and other precious stones, whose names, even, we seldom hear —­and slabs of priceless lapis lazuli lavished every where as recklessly as if the church had owned a quarry of it.  In the midst of all this magnificence, the solid gold and silver furniture of the altar seemed cheap and trivial.  Even the floors and ceilings cost a princely fortune.