A PROTESTANT WRITER ON ITALY.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IV, Issue 177, 18 August 1876, Page 13

A PROTESTANT WRITER ON ITALY.

The abolition of the religious institutions has been grievously felt throughout the country, and there are few even of the friends of Italian unity who have not had personal reason to experience its injustice. When "Days near Rome" appeared, one of the reviews regretted thsit its author should not rejoice that Italians were no longer called upon " to support swarms of idlers in vestments and hordes of sturdy beggars in rags." This is exactly what Italians with regard to the old ecclesiastical institutions were not called upon to do. The convents and monasteries were richly endowed; they had no need of being supported. Ie was, on the contrary, rather they who supported the needy, the sick, the helpless, and the blind among the people, who received their daily dole of bread aud soup from the convent charities. When the marriage portions of the nuns were stolen by the Government, there was scarcely any family of the upper classe> throughout central Itnly who did not suffer; for almost all had a sister, aunt, or cousin "in religion " upon whom a portion of £1000, £50u0, or £10,000 had been bestowed, and who was thrown back helpless upon their hands, her fortune confiscated, and with an irregularly paid pension of a few pence a day, quite insufficient for the most miserable subsistence Ihe English press is slow to Bee the injustice of these things when it affects other nations. It is strange that it should not see it as affecting Englishmen, as in the case of the large tract of land which was purchased by the Rev. E.Douglass upon the Esquiline, and which was confiscated by the government on the plea that it had been used for religious purposes. Those who declaim so loudly upon the advantages of Italian unity are often unaware of th« extreme difference which exists between the people and the language in the north and south of Italy — that a Venetian would not in the least be able to understand a Neapolitan, and vice versa. The difference often comes out when the absurd red-tapeism of the government is put into action. For instance, when, the heat makes it impossible for the troops in Naples and Palermo to support their winter clothing, the soldiers shivering on the icy streets of Parma and Piacenza are put into brown holland, because throughout " United Italy " the same order must take effect. — " Augustus J. C. Hare's New Book on Italy."