Danger in the Dark - ZseZse

DANGER IN THE DARK. 243
superstition prevail, there the Roman Catholic Hierarchy
seem the least concerned to afford educational
advantages - this is a significant fact. Look at the
present condition of Italy: the people are ignorant,
'poor, and degraded - and their civil government
could scarcely be worse than it is. In the city of
Rome the Inquisition still exists: this fact, Bishop
Hughes, in a recent controversy with a Protestant,
was forced to admit-yet he denied its having an
existence elsewhere at the present time. Let it be
remembered then, that this monstrous tribunal, at
this very moment exists under the immediate eye of
the Pope, and with his approbation. Rome being
the fountain-head of Catholicity, shall we reckon the
Papal religion to have less purity there than in the
streams which flow from it 1 'T is indeed a melancholy
comment on Romanism, that in the very metropolis
of Ohristendom, as Papists consider it, the people
are found more ignorant, vicious, degraded, and miserably
poor, than in any other part of the earth, where
pretensions are made to civilization !"
"Pray, tell me what has become of the former
wealth of that country 1"
" Ah, go to the splendid churches, and look at the
coffersof the clergy if you would know where it has
gone. A greedy and avaricious priesthood has swallowed
up the wealth of the whole land: And there
is Spain too, once one of the most powerful kingdoms
in the world-now lying in ruins-wasted and desolated
by ferocious and protracted civil war; the people