NEW EMPIRE OF ABYSSINIA. 7S 



lords). All the abuses of mortmain weighed heavily upon the peas- 

 ants, tenants of the Church, which had become grasping and rapa- 

 cious, while they were not compensated for it by the inviolability 

 which these privileged lands enjoyed in time of war. The negus 

 brought the iron hand of a victorious leyeller to bear upon this sacred, 

 institution : after a violent philippic against the vices of the clergy, 

 he declared mortmain an iniquity and a national evil, and made all 

 the church lands pass into the crown domain, securing a revenue for 

 the deserving, leaving to the abbeys ground enough to support their 

 inhabitants, and to the ahouna some fine possessions, as Addi-Aboun,. 

 near Adona, in Tigre, and Djenda, in Dembea. The people looked 

 upon this reform with considerable favour ; but in all conspiracies 

 and after revolts Theodore discovered without much astonishment the 

 mysterious hand of the ahouna and the numerous body of which he 

 was the head. 



The peculiarity of absolutism is a love of the see-sawing order of 

 politics presenting alternate rise and fall. To the ahouna, whom he 

 stripped and yet feared, Theodore, a little against his inclination, had 

 granted the proscription of Roman Catholicism. Personally, he sym- 

 pathized with Mgr. de Jacobis ; but in matters of religion he professes 

 the opinion of IlOuis XIV., that a well governed state should have 

 but one faith, that of its sovereign. Hardly had Mgr. de Jacobis 

 been escorted back to the frontier, than a strong body of cavalry fell 

 upon the peaceful village of Alitiena, near Halai, the retreat of the 

 Italian Bishop ; their intention was to sack the church and expel the 

 priests ; the peasantry defended their pastors at the price of their 

 blood, for one of them was killed and several wounded. All these 

 impolitic severities were a sad inauguration for the new reign, and 

 religious correspondence, marked with irritation, often pushed to 

 the length of injustice, announced to Europe the restorer of Ethiopia 

 as a second Diocletian. I have known the negus well enough to be 

 persuaded that he listened to no reasons but those of state, and 

 that fanaticism was not' an element in these outrages. He felt, how- 

 ever, that they might injure his European reputation, and, to guard 

 against this, he addressed a letter to the English and French Ambas- 

 sadors at Massaona in which he represented the measures taken against 

 the missionaries as the punishment of their political intrigues; which 

 he, as we have seen, was the first to provoke and make use of. He 

 declared, besides, that in order to prove that he had not been moved. 



