480 EUROPE AND HER DESPOTS. 



nich the fiery Hungarian, the proud Bohemian, and simple Tyrolean, 

 remember that they once possessed such a thing as a constition, and will, 

 before long, we venture to predict, teach the Austrian government,, that 

 it has scotched the snake not killed it ; that their liberties, however 

 depressed, are not utterly extinguished. 



Now if there really walks the earth a being so enamoured of tyranny 

 and oppression, as to wish to behold them in their abstract perfection, 

 it is not in any of the countries that we have passed in review, that he 

 will find it ; but if he directs his steps towards a small Italian princi- 

 pality at the foot of the Appenines, there, under the government of 

 Francesco the Fourth, Duke of Modena, he will have the glorious 

 spectacle of 400,0 JO of his fellow-creatures groaning beneath a studied 

 aggregation of every abuse that can tend to desolate and oppress, to 

 break the spirit of a people, to damp their industry, to quench their 

 hope. This pigmy sovereign is the abstract perfection of a despot and 

 he sports with the lives and properties of his subjects, as if they had 

 been created by Heaven as mere objects to gratify his caprice. 



When Napoleon overrun Italy, this duchino was sent to the right 

 about to Venice, on a pension from the directory, while his Lilliputian 

 state was incorporated with the less-Alpine republic, and afterwards 

 with the kingdom of Italy. On the downfall of the French emperor, 

 he was recalled by the Holy Alliance from his retirement, and rein- 

 stated in his dominions. The long interregnum had sharpened his 

 appetite for ducal power j he no sooner found himself once more in his 

 dominions, than he set to work in good earnest, to make up for lost 

 time. His first measure was to abolish every trace of the French 

 administration, and to substitute for their admirable judicial system, his 

 own arbitrary <f bon plaisir" The next was to re-establish the Jesuits, 

 who soon commenced a bitter crusade against freedom and intelligence. 

 They established a sort of inquisition to watch over the observance of 

 religious duties. The books of every private individual must be sub- 

 mitted to the controul of two commissioners appointed for that purpose; 

 the domiciliary visits of the police are frequent, and often are made in 

 the middle of the night. On one occasion a book was found in the 

 lodgings of a young student : this work was not even one of those 

 prohibited in the " Index expurgatium" of the ducal government, but 

 it merely wanted the seals of the two commissioners alluded to. It was 

 in vain that the unfortunate student alledged that the book in question 

 had been in the possession of his family long anterior to the enactment 

 of the law ; such a defence availed him nothing, he was thrown into a 

 dungeon and his property confiscated. 



Avaricious in the extreme, confiscation has become the order of 

 the day, and Carbonarism the pretext for the most iniquitous pro- 

 ceedings. In fact this " little tyrant," bleeds his people in all their 

 pores, and exhausts every refinement of cruelty and oppression. The 

 baneful effects of such a system in a small state, where interests and 

 families are united, can easily be conceived. Every class of society 

 has been implicated, and there are at this moment, wandering in the 

 exile of a foreign land, hundreds of his subjects condemned to deatli 

 not for any well-substantiated charge, but on mere suspicion. Thus 

 terror and distrust reigns on every side, and a veil of mourning hangs 

 over the land. 



Of all the sovereigns of Europe the Duke of Modena is the only one 



