Sicily, I think, has these dispositions in full as strong a degree. In
neither of these countries exists anything which very well deserves the
name of government or exact police.
[Sidenote: Ecclesiastical State.]
In the States of the Church, notwithstanding their strictness in
banishing the French out of that country, there are not wanting the
seeds of a revolution. The spirit of nepotism prevails there nearly as
strong as ever. Every Pope of course is to give origin or restoration to
a great family by the means of large donations. The foreign revenues
have long been gradually on the decline, and seem now in a manner dried
up. To supply this defect, the resource of vexatious and impolitic
jobbing at home, if anything, is rather increased than lessened. Various
well-intended, but ill-understood practices, some of them existing, in
their spirit at least, from the time of the old Roman Empire, still
prevail; and that government is as blindly attached to old abusive
customs as others are wildly disposed to all sorts of innovations and
experiments.
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