At present he is out of employment, and in disgrace. If
he should be elected Pope, or even come to have any weight with a new
Pope, he will infallibly conjure up a democratic spirit in that country.
He may, indeed, be able to effect it without these advantages. The nest
interregnum will probably show more of him. There may be others of the
same character, who have not come to my knowledge. This much is
certain,--that the Roman people, if once the blind reverence they bear
to the sanctity of the Pope, which is their only bridle, should relax,
are naturally turbulent, ferocious, and headlong, whilst the police is
defective, and the government feeble and resourceless beyond all
imagination.
[Sidenote: Spain]
As to Spain, it is a nerveless country. It does not possess the use, it
only suffers the abuse, of a nobility. For some time, and even before
the settlement of the Bourbon dynasty, that body has been systematically
lowered, and rendered incapable by exclusion, and for incapacity
excluded from affairs. In this circle the body is in a manner
annihilated; and so little means have they of any weighty exertion
either to control or to support the crown, that, if they at all
interfere, it is only by abetting desperate and mobbish insurrections,
like that at Madrid, which drove Squillace from his place.
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