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ESSAYS ON LIBERTY

the prelates, drove the best men a\vay frolll the service . of the State, and disposed the rest to long for a govern- ment which should throw open to them the higher prizes of their career. Even the country people, who were never tainted with the ideas of the secret societies, were not always well affected. It is more difficult for a priest than for a layman to put aside his private vie\vs and feelings in the administra- tion of justice. He is the servant and herald of grace, of forgiveness, of indulgence, and easily forgets that in human concerns the law is inexorable, that favour to one is often injury to many or to all, and that he has no right to place his own will above the la\v. He is still more disqualified for the direction of the police, which, in an absolute State and in troubled times, uses its unlimited po\ver without reference to Christian ideas, leave5 un- punished acts which are grievous sins, and punit3hes others \vhich in a religious point of view are innocent. I t is hard for the people to distinguish clearly the priestly character from the action of its bearer in the administration of police. The same indifference to the strict letter of the law, the same confusion between breaches of divine and of hUlnan ordinances, led to a practice of arbitrary imprisonment, which contrasts pain- fully with the natural gentleness of a priestly government. Hundreds of persons were cast into prison without a trial or even an examination; only on suspicion, and kept there more than a year for greater security. The immunities of the clergy were as unpopular as their po\ver. The la\vs and decrees of the Pope as a telTI poral sovereign were not held to be binding on them unless it was expressly said, or was clear from the context, that they were given also in his character of Head of the Church. Ecclesiastics were tried before their own tribunals, and had the right to be more lightly punished than laymen for the same delinquency. Those events in the life of Achilli, which came out at his trial, had not only brought down on him no severe punish- lnent, but did not stand in the way of his promotion.