1831.] Parliament — the Continent. 469 



tyranny can come. The first stage is anarchy^ the second civil war, the 

 third military despotism. And the progress is so inevitable, that in no 

 instance in the history of nations, has its havoc ever failed. But if 

 this spirit spread, it must master all resistance ! a hundred thousand 

 Austrian bayonets against the united furies of the peninsula, would be 

 but as chaff before the wind. 



Italy, some years since, contained, at the lowest estimate, fourteen 

 millions of people — she probably now contains eighteen ; if this whole 

 force were roused, and led by any one mind capable of given direc- 

 tion to its mighty mass, what force of Europe could shake it .-' Army 

 after army, sent across the Alps, would plunge down into the Italian 

 plains, with no more chance of return, than if they plunged into the 

 JMediterranean. 



Soon or late, the whole administrative system of Italy will be des- 

 troyed ; whether by the desperate means of Jacobin insurrection, or by 

 the calmer and more effectual vigour of an enlightened and deliberate 

 public judgment. With the trade of this fine country extinguished by 

 monopolies, with her agriculture cramped by imposts, with her revenues 

 absorbed by the waste of her little worthless courts, the payment of 

 the worst troops in the world, and the luxuries of the most contempti- 

 ble nobility, who can feel any degree of surprise at the general disaffec- 

 tion ? 



But the heaviest blow is already openly aimed at the Italian priesthood. 

 That body has long forfeited the few claims that could have atoned for 

 its guilty employment, as a tool of the Italian despotisms. Within the 

 last two centuries, it has totally lost all literary distinction. The Ita- 

 lian ecclesiastic writes nothing, probably reads nothing but his bre- 

 viary, and probably knows nothing but his chess-board, and the way 

 to my lord cardinal's patronage. Who ever hears of a book from the 

 pen of an Italian divine ? The sole known representative of classical 

 knowledge in the Italian church, is Angelo Mai, now a decrepid old 

 man, and at best, only a librarian and a copyist of old manuscripts ; 

 some drowsy essay or some fragment of antiquity, fished up from the 

 Tiber, or dug up from the Forum, alone attests from year to year, the 

 existence of the Romish clergy. The whole body are in an atrophy ; 

 and the nations are beginning to note the sloth and the stupidity of those 

 men, whom they once worshipped much more than the Heaven to 

 which this worthless priesthood pretended to lead the way. The Car- 

 bonari conspiracy has never been extinguished. The recollections even 

 of the brief triumph of that time, are still living among the furious and 

 the fantastic ; a new reinforcement has been added to the old dis- 

 affection, by the success of democracy in France ; and the period may 

 be brief which will see Italy republican, from the Alps to Calabria. 

 The slightest approach of war would pi'ecipitate the revolution at once, 

 and the unfurling of tlie French banner on the plains of Lombardy 

 would rouse every village in determined insurrection. 



Tlie Belgian question has been nominally settled by the ministers of 

 the five })owers. The basis of the ccmventicm is the extent of territorial 

 ])os8es.sion l)elonging to Holland, in 1790. The Butch, therefore, retain 

 all the territory on the left bank of the Scheldt. The navigation of 

 that river is to be regulated by the treaty of Vienna. The portion of 

 JiUxenibourg, assigned to Belgium, is more tlian half that province; 

 and in exchange, Holland obtains part of Limburg, containing a popu- 



