In fine, there is, in the ecclesiastical states, no activity of manufacture, although the low rate of wage might render the establishment of manufactures very advantageous. This results entirely from the vices of the administration.
All the branches of industry are there paralyzed. The poor want employment, and die of hunger, if the ecclesiastical establishments—that is to say, the government—do not give them food. The poor being nourished by charity, are badly nourished; thus their existence is physically wretched.
It is still more wretched in a moral aspect, since they live in idleness, which is the mother of all the vices and all the depredations with which that unhappy country is infested.
The third accusation of heresy which I bring against the pope, by reason of the defective and anti-Christian manner in which he governs his temporal subjects, is, therefore, well founded.
I accuse the pope, and al the present cardinals—I accuse all the popes and all the cardinals who have existed since the fifteenth century, of being, and of having been, heretics, under this fourth head.
I accuse them, in the first place, of having consented to the formation of two institutions diametrically opposed to the spirit of Christianity—that of the Inquisition and that of the Jesuits. I accuse them, in the second place, of having since this epoch granted, almost
The Grand Turk. I will cite a recent example: A baker of Rome was condemned in a heavy fine, for having sold bread at an illegal price. The motive for his condemnation was not that the seller had done wrong to the purchaser, in giving him a quantity inferior to that which he ought to have received, but quite the contrary. The fault consisted of doing injury to the vendors of bread, in treating the purchaser too advantageously. The explanation of this unjust judgment is very simple. Almost the whole of the bakehouses of Rome belong the the cardinals, who have consequently an interest in selling the bread as dear as possible, and who regard as a crime every thing that tends to diminish their revenues.
