Rome in 1860 | Page 9

morality is enforced. Servants are instructed to report about their employers, wives about their husbands, children about their parents, and girls about their lovers. Every act of your life is thus known to, and interfered with, by the priests. I might quote a hundred instances of petty interference: let me quote the first few that come to my memory. No bookseller can have a sale of books without submitting each volume to clerical supervision. An Italian gentleman, resident here, had to my own knowledge to obtain a special permission in order to retain a copy of Rousseau's works in his private library. The Roman nobles are not allowed to hunt because the Pope considers the amusement dangerous. Profane swearing is a criminal offence. Every Lent all restaurateurs are warned by a solemn edict not to supply meat on fast days, and then told that "whenever on the forbidden days they are obliged to supply rich meats, they must do so in a separate room, in order that scandal may be avoided, and that all may know they are in the capital of the catholic world." Forced marriages are matters of constant occurrence, and even strangers against whom a charge of affiliation is brought are obliged either to marry their accuser, or make provision for the illegitimate offspring. In the provinces the system of interference is naturally carried to yet greater lengths. Nine years ago certain Christians at Bologna, who had opened shops in the Jewish quarter of the town, were ordered to leave at once, because such a practice was in "open opposition to the Apostolic laws and institutions." Again, Cardinal Cagiano, Bishop of Senigaglia, published a decree in the year 1844, which has never been repealed, to promote morality in his diocese. In that decree the following articles occur:
"All young men and women are strictly forbidden, under any pretext whatever, to give or receive presents from each other before marriage. All persons who have received such presents before the publication of this decree, are required to make restitution of them within three months, or to become betrothed to the donor within the said period. Any one who contravenes these regulations is to be punished by fifteen days imprisonment, during which he is to support himself at his own expense, and the presents will be devoted to some pious purpose to be determined on hereafter."
I could multiply instances of this sort indefinitely, but I know of none more striking than the last.
So much for the mode in which the system is worked, and now as to its practical result. To judge fully, it is necessary to get behind the scenes, a thing not easy for a stranger anywhere, least of all here. There is too the further difficulty, that when you have got behind the scenes, it is not very easy to narrate your esoteric experiences to the public. Even if there were no other objection, it would be useless to quote individual stories and facts which have come privately to my knowledge, and which would show Rome, in spite of its external propriety, to be one of the most corrupt, debauched, and demoralized of cities. Each separate story can be disputed or explained away, but the weight of the general evidence is overpowering. In these matters it is best to keep to the old Latin rule, "Experto crede." I have talked with many persons, Romans, Italians, and foreign residents, on the subject, and from one and all I have heard similar accounts. Every traveller I have ever met with, who has made like inquiries, has come to a like conviction. In a country where there is practically neither press nor public courts, nor responsible government, where even no classified census is allowed to be taken, statistics are hard to obtain, and of little value when obtained. Personal evidence, unsatisfactory as it is, is after all the best you can arrive at. With regard then to what, in its strictest sense, is termed the "morality" of Rome, I must dismiss the subject with the remarks, that the absence of recognized public resorts and agents of vice may be dearly purchased when parents make a traffic in their own houses of their children's shame, and that perhaps as far as the state is concerned the debauchery of a few is a less evil than the dissoluteness of the whole population. More I cannot and need not say. With respect to other sins against the Decalogue, it is an easier task to speak. There is very little drunkenness in Rome I freely admit, but then the Italians, like most natives of warm countries, are naturally sober. Rome is certainly not superior in this respect to other Italian cities; since the introduction of the French soldiery probably the contrary. At the street corners