“Your Excellency—­Some of our comrades have been removed from us.  United to them in our studies, united, too, in our sentiments, we protest against a punishment so unjust and so partial.  When adulation and servility suggested to some amongst us the utterance of a falsehood which insulted the Pontiff, while it did no service to the Sovereign, we all rose in union to denounce those who, without our consent, constituted themselves the interpreters of our wishes.  This act was not the caprice of a section.  It was the vast majority amongst us who thus spoke out the truth.  The punishment, if punishment there is to be for speaking the truth, should not fall upon a few alone.

“We confess it openly, the act was the act of all; the measure of our conduct was the same for all.  We therefore demand from your Excellency that the expelled students should be allowed to return, or else that we should all be united with them in one common punishment, as we are proud of being united with them in a common love of truth and of our country.

   “The presence of our 400 students supplies the place of signatures.”

The last clause is open to question.  The plain fact is, that the students could not get their courage up to signing point.  A government of priests never forgives or forgets, and their vengeance though slow is very sure.  Any student who had actually affixed his signature to the address would have been a marked man for life; and instead of wondering that the whole body had not sufficient moral resolution to express their sentiments in writing, I am surprised that they had the courage to protest at all, even anonymously.  This hesitation, however, afforded the government a loop-hole, which they were wise enough to take advantage of; Cardinal Antonelli declined at once to give any reply to the address, on the ground that he could take no notice of an unsigned and unauthentic document; so the matter rested.  Logically, the Cardinal had the best of the dispute; but, practically, the remonstrants triumphed.  The students kept away from the classes, and after a short time the Sapienza college had to be closed, in order, if possible, to weed out the liberal faction amongst the pupils.  Numbers of the students were arrested or exiled.  As instances of Papal notions of justice and law, I may mention two instances connected with the government inquiry, which came to my knowledge.  One student was sent for to the police-office and asked if he was one of those who presented the address; on his replying in the negative, he was asked further, whether, if he had been on the spot, he would have joined in the presentation.  To this question, he replied, that the police had no right to question him as to a matter of hypothesis, but only as to facts.  The magistrate’s sole answer to this objection consisted in an order to leave Rome within twenty-four hours.  Another student was arrested by a gendarme