FATHER GAVAZZI'S FOURTH ORATION IN LONDON.

New Zealander, Volume 7, Issue 571, 4 October 1851, Page 3

FATHER GAVAZZI'S FOURTH ORATION IN LONDON.

The fearless spirit of the reforming monk and patriot priest 6eeras to have been kindled to every higher intensity than before, on Sunday last, by the presence of an enthusiastic crowd of his expatriated countrymen His subject was again the Inquisition, the horrors of which, he reminded his auditors, he denounced as a Christian, and not in the spirit of Voltaire, though he fully felt what amount of justification the scoffers at Christianity found in the abundant abuses of the Papacy. He compared the celibate officials of the Vatican with the eunuchs of oriental despotism: only wretches devoid of the sensibilities and sympathies of men, could be trusted witb the bowstring of the East, or in the torture chamber of the Church. He described as an eye-witness the aspect of matters in the head-quarters, or " hovse guards," of this sanguinary militia, when the Romans broke into its long impenetiable enclosure, and removed the superincumbent tons of rubbish which even the French in 1798 had not disturbed. He detailed tbe evidences which the demolition of thick walls brought to light, thp murderous traps for private executions, the immured skeletons, tbe deep wells where quicklime had not entirely calcinated the ossuary remains, the mural inscriptions still dimly legible in the dungeon cells, and all the sad suggestive appearances which in piesence of a body ot citizens and a notary public (Caggioti, who has been since rotting in gaol for the performance of a simple ministerial office), have been given to the public, and baffle all attempts at explanation on the part of the hirelings who have lied through thick and thin to palliate these atrocities. The recent book of Achilli, ''Dealings with the Inquisition," he said, is equally circumstantial on these points : in Rome to controvert them would he simply ridiculous. Kindling with the subject, the orator brought before his auditory vivid and striking delineations of the fourteen methods of toituie in piactical use, and forming the orthodox machinery for extorting avowals. The vigour and fei your of his sketches were powerfully impressive, especially when ho conjured up the image of the

crucified Saviour presiding over these Satanic scenes—the lighted candles, the chalice of redemption, the emblems of God's ineffable love for fallen maD, dragged down as monstrous accomplices of these blasphemous doings. He thence launched into a description of the marriage festival of Cbarleß of Spain and Louis of Orleans, when torches lit up the nuptial festivity with a heretic holocaust at Madrid, and painted devils ou San Benito caps, fire and faggot, friars and flunkeyt* , the shouts of the maddened mob and the roar of artillery, announced that the Church had bles?ed the bed by which a race of sanguinary idiots was to he perpetuated. And these wretches went to Mexico to put down the human immolations offered up to the idols of Montefcuraa ; and this "Catholic" majesty felt commissioned to communicate such Christianity to Sonth America! Well might the untutored aborigines hesitate to exchange their national system of slaughter id honour of their own grim deities for such a jirepoßteious propitiation to the " Lamb of God" slain once and for ever to redeem the regenerate mankind. But his audience were especially moved by an appeal to their hopes of Italy delivered : — " Have you not hopes in your bosoms incompatible in their realization with the presence of a mitred king in the heart of our once glorious peninsula? Have not I an apostleship in the vista of futurity ? Shall not our national tricolour unfurl again its cherished tints under our native sky, and scare once again and for ever the montrous emblem of two necked tyranny ? Yes, Spam might as well hope to enthral once more the free republics of South America, as any European despot to keep quiet possession of a land that long* trodden down has risen with a sudden convulsive effort, and grasped for an hour of ecstacy the fruition of fre- dom. Vienna and the Vatican may interchange civilities ; Pilate and Herod, hitherto at variance, may shake hands over the immolution of Italy ; but the hour of her resurrection has yet to come, and the foreign soldiers who now guard her sepulchre, blasted by the effulgence of recuperated glory, will be scattered at the uprising of her independence. This i 9 an eventuality which no Austrian inquisition can control, no pressure of rack or thumb-screw can retard, though the hoary-headed Radetzki preside at the clerical council of torture, and Torquemada revisit us in the hideous form of Haynau. Let others talk of Hungary, and horrors enacted on the Danube ; we know what that miscreant's achievements were among ourselves. The bttteheries of Brescia cry to God for vengeance ! Babes writhing on the bayonet's pomt — our maidens brutally violated — our old men cloven down within the sanctuary of the household — a prosperous and happy community suddenly swamped in a deluge of blood, and visited with the Bword of Attila and the torch of the Huns. Let the tiger look for sympathy to the Spanish Cardinal Wiseman ; but the heart of manhood still beats in England, and execration tracks the footsteps of a scoundrel. The first act of the Gaeta gang of felons, when the burglary of Home had heen accomplished, was to gag the inhabitants, and restore, in all its abhorred machinery, that instrument of tyranny, the Holy Office. Can Wiseman deny this? Can he brazen out the fact of over sixty clergyman being at this hour in its dungeons, from which Monsignor Gazzola and Dr. Achilli have been miraculously rescued? Is not their crime that of which I am guilty, and glory in, having been chaplain to a regiment of freemen bent on the devliverance of their country? Men of England keep your eyes fixed on Rome. See the political and social consequences of what is sought to be palmed off on you as a mere spiritual system. See in that prostrate and terrorstricken city, where a new Domenick has called to the aid of his tiara another Simon de Montford ; where the Bedouins and Algeiines of France assist at the brutalizing spectacle of a nation dragged backwards to the dismal phantasmagoria of the dark ages, blinded, gagged, manacled, and maimed ; look steadily at Rome ! We look, too, at our beloved, bleeding Italy ! We have learnt to measure the mercies of reaction, and we treasure up the hoarded memory of our wrongs; the day will yet dawn for retribution. The wrecched mitred king, the miserable eunuch of Florence, and the brutal Bomba, whom ten thousand families in their daily and nightly orisons to heaven curse with a wail of unutterable woe, shall know the full extent of our remembrance."

I Municipal Offices. — Municipal offices are rising in the public estimation — a fact at once creditable to the growth of intelligence and useful in itself. The vacancy in the Court of London Aldermen promised to bring forward good candidates. Mr. Travers is one of the most eminent traders in the city, and he enjoys much local influence ; Baron Lionel de Rothschild represents at once the highest class of wealth and the political claims of his race ; but neither of those gentlemen has fulfilled the expectation, on the contrary, the firms both of Rothschild and Travers appear among those who snpport the promotion of Mr. David Williams Wire from the Common Council. The offices of the Corporation have for some time been shunned by leading merchants. Petty local objects, and a spirit of cliquery, first brought the offices into disgrace; a false shame of civic counexion made the higher clnss draw back ; and the joint effect of these two processes was 10 stamp the acceptor of office as belonging to an inferior degree. The effects reacted upon the cause ; local affairs were abandoned to an inferior spirit, and the conduct of corporations justified the discredit under which they lay. But here was clearly an abandonment of public duty ; and there now appears a re-awakening to that duty. Public men are beginning to discover that acceptance of municipal office is not necessarily discreditable. In the provinces that idea has been gaining ground for some years past ; Mr. Cobden we remember among the aldermen of Manchester; Mr. Guinness, to whom Lord Clarendon, ascribes "an European reputation," is a successor to Daniel O'Connell as Lord Mayor of Dublin. Were we to look further back, we might find still more shining examples. The reader of Scott's Fair Maid of Perth will remember that the Lord Provost in the fourteenth century might be a man very different from our modern cockney notion of a Lord Mayor. We well remember what illustrious blood has supplied chief magistrates to the Italian cities of the middle ages. It is a mere matter of history that an alderman needs not be fat, nor vulgar, nor low-minded, nor in any other respect ridiculous. There are considerations beyond the mere public duty of a citizen. With the amount of business accumulating on the hands of civic corporations, they are resuming their character as a kind of local Parliament ; the demand for men of business — men with faculties partaking of the statesman's— is calculated to raise the scale ; and the local business, as it is now conducted, will probably serve mord and more as an apprenticeship to service in the legislature. Some of the very highest duties which nre developing themselves to the better understanding of our day belong to the province of local government— such as the improvement of towns for the better health of the people, or the temperate, just, and effective administration of police; to such duties as these the active and conscientious man is invited by the increasing amount of good that might be done. — Spectator.

The Victoria Gold Movement —A public meeting was held on the 30th ultimo, at the Mechanics' Institution, Melbourne, for the purpose of agreeing to an address to the Lieutenant-Governor, on the subject of the gold regulations, and other malters connected with the mineral resources of the colony- The Mayor of Melbourne presided. The following resolutions were agreed to :— " 1. That as it appears to this meeting that no gold field, or mine has as yet been profitably worked, or gold found in such quantity as to render the profit probable, it is highly inexpedient to impose any tax or monthly license, and that such a charge will only tend to check further discovery. 2. That this meeting is of opinion that not only gold, but other minerals abundantly exibt in this colony, and that their development is of vital impoitance to the whole community, and that immediate steps should be taken for the employment of qualified persons to examine ahd determine what mines mny be profitably worked. 3. That the Sydney Government having appointed two officers whose special duties were to develope^ the mineral resources ofihat province — this meeting is of opinion that similar officers should be appointed for Victoria. 4. That this meeting, concurring with the four Resolutions passed at a meeting ot the mineia held at the Buninyong diggings on Monday evening, the 25th of August, beg lespectfully to call ihe immediate and serious attention of the Government to the aforesaid resolutions appearing in the Geelong advertiser and Melbourne Argus, and trust that His Excellency the Lieutenant-Governor will immediately call a meeting of the Honorable the Executive Council to consider this important subject ; as this meeting is of opinion that should such a pioclamation be put in force on Monday next, a vast amount of labour and capital will be taken to the Ophir and Turon diggings thereby causing great distress and stagnation of business, 5. Jh'it me loregoing resolutions b« embodied in a peii ion to His Excellency the Lieu-enant-Governor, and i»t iheKight Woislnpf.il the Mayor, Messrs. Tboipe. Hart, Johnson, O'Connor, Crate, Gumbinner, and Montgomery, be appointed a Committee to draw up the patitioi , and that the Right Worshipful the Mayor be requested to sign and pieaent the same on bshalt of the inciting. 1

iNVKNUONOF Suol'LNolON BIUM.IS H\ rill CIUNLSF. 1600 Yf ari Aoo.—Tbe most lemaikable evidence of the mechanical scipncp and -kill of the Chinese at tins •■arlv period is to be found in (heir suspended bridges, the invention of which is assigned to the Han dynasty, according to the concmrent testimony of all their historical and geographical writer. Shansf-le.ing, the Com-mander-in-chief of the army under Kaou-tsoo, first oi the Hans undertook and completed the fovniation of roads through thp inountainoiis piovinces of Shen-se to the west of the Capital. Hitherto its lofty lulls and deep valleys had renderfd communication difficult and circuitous. With a body of 100,000 labourers, he cut passft£<"< over tbe mountain*, throwing the removed soil into the valleys; and where this was not sufficient to raise the road to the required hpi»ht, he constructed nrids-ps which rested on pillais or abutments. In other places he conceived and accomplished the daring project of suspending bridges from one mountain to another across a deep chasm. These bridges, which are culled by the Chinese writers very appropiiately " flying bridges," and represented to be numerous in the present day, are sometimes so hi«h that they cannot be traversed without alarm. One still existing in Shen-se, stretched 400 feet from mountain to mountain over a chasm of 500 feet. Most of these " flying bridges" are so wide that four horsemen can ride on them abreast, and balustrades are placed on each side to protect travellers. It is by no means improbable that, as the missionaries in China made known the fact moie than a century and a J half ago that the Chinese had suspension bridges, and that inanv of them were of iron, thp hint may have been takpn from thpnee for similar constructions by European engineers. — Thornton's lh\toiy of China.

Anti-Paval Agoiu-ssion Addresses.—A return has been obtained by Mr. Newdegatp, setting foith the number of addresses which have been proaenfpd to Her Majesty on the recent measures taken by the Pope with regard to this country, whence they emanated, and the number of signatures to each. The total number of these addresses is 3145, bearing 2,006,708 signatures, besides two Roman Catholic addresses expressing loyalty and fidelity, with 255,961 signatures.

Remarkable Incident.—On the banks of the Wabash the effects of a poor widow, who had been left comparatively destitute at the death of her husband, had been seized by a shenff for debt, and were being sold by auction; and among these effects an old family Bible was put up for sale. She b°gged the constable to spare this memento of her dear and honoured parents, but he was inexorable. The good book was about going for a few when the widow suddenly snatched it, and, declaring she would have some relic of those she loved, cut the thread that held the brown linen cover, with the intent of letaining it. The cover fell into her hands, and with it two flat pieces of thin, dirty paper. Surprised at the ciicumstance, she examined them, and what was her joy and delight to find that they each called for five hundred pounds on the Bank of England. On the back of one, in her mother's handwriting were the following words; — '* When sorrow overtakes you seek your Bible." And on the other, in her father's hand :—" Your Father's ears are nevpr deaf." The sale was immediately stopped, and the family Bible given to the rightful owner.