Page:On papal conclaves (IA a549801700cartuoft).djvu/50

 From this moment the whole machinery of Government is suspended, and remains so until the creation of a Pope calls it again into activity. Formerly the Pope's demise was practically tantamount to a fact cancelling the titles of existing authorities—as if an intrusive Government had come to an end by the demise of its immediate representative, and usurped power had returned thereon to the people. All the jails in Rome used to be immediately thrown open, not by an irruption of the populace, but by intervention of the old civic magistracy, which, on the proclamation of an Interregnum, stepped forward at once on the public stage and claimed to represent the Roman people. This tradition of civic authority in Rome has not died out. On notification being received by the Senator of the Pope's death, he still summons the senatorial councillors and despatches officers of his own to open the two chief jails in the city, and let out, not indeed all the prisoners, but such as come within the vague category of light offenders. For all purposes of administra-