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But how shall I describe or group the horrors that have darkened and desolated the Papal States from that hour to this? What has their history been since, but one terrible tale of apprehensions, proscriptions, banishments, imprisonments, and executions, the full recital of which would make the ear of him that hears it to tingle?
Bonaparte's countenance darkened, and his brow was overspread with frowns. "Well, then," cried he, with threatening tone, "he is a Bourbon! Is he therefore by nature of so despicable a family? Because three Bourbons have been killed in France, must we therefore hunt down all the others? I cannot approve of proscriptions which thus fall upon a whole family, a whole class of people.
We estimate the importance of Sulla much too highly, or rather we dispose of those terrible proscriptions, ejections, and restorations for which there never could be and never was any reparation on far too easy terms, when we regard them as the work of a bloodthirsty tyrant whom accident had placed at the head of the state.
This information I had from Parson Hurt, who happened at the time to be in London, whither he had gone to receive clerical orders; and I was informed afterwards by Peyton Randolph, that it had procured me the honor of having my name inserted in a long list of proscriptions, enrolled in a bill of attainder commenced in one of the Houses of Parliament, but suppressed in embryo by the hasty step of events, which warned them to be a little cautious.
This public mockery of humanity was also a political error; it contributed not a little to envenom later revolutionary crises beforehand, and on that account even now a dark shadow deservedly rests on the memory of the author of the proscriptions.
Diocletian was generous after his victory, and, contrary to the common practice, there were no executions, proscriptions, or confiscations of property; he even retained most of the officers of Carinus in their places.
Surrounded by a population which had not only gone through a most vicious and corrupting discipline, and had been utterly ruined by the license of revolutionary times, and the bloodiest proscriptions, but had even been extensively changed in its very elements, and from the descendants of Romulus had been transmuted into an Asiatic mob; starting from this point, and considering as the second feature of the case, that this transfigured people, morally so degenerate, were carried, however, by the progress of civilization to a certain intellectual altitude, which the popular religion had not strength to ascend but from inherent disproportion remained at the base of the general civilization, incapable of accompanying the other elements in their advance; thirdly, that this polished condition of society, which should naturally with the evils of a luxurious repose have counted upon its pacific benefits, had yet, by means of its circus and its gladiatorial contests, applied a constant irritation, and a system of provocations to the appetites for blood, such as in all other nations are connected with the rudest stages of society, and with the most barbarous modes of warfare, nor even in such circumstances without many palliatives wanting to the spectators of the circus; combining these considerations, we have already a key to the enormities and hideous excesses of the Roman Imperator.
Under this decree the Duke of Orleans became a member of that august and influential body. And now commenced the reign of what was called the Terreur Blanche, or White Terror, consisting of a series of proscriptions and bloody executions, under the white flag of the Bourbons, which shocked the spirit of humanity. Unrelenting revenge was dominant.
Catilina, Piso, and their fellows entered readily into any plan which gave the prospect of proscriptions and cancelling of debtor-books; the former had moreover special hostility to the aristocracy, because it had opposed the candidature of that infamous and dangerous man for the consulship.
The difference was of great importance to me, but if I could not get two dollars, I was glad to get one; and so I went to work for Mr. French as a common laborer. The consciousness that I was free no longer a slave kept me cheerful under this, and many similar proscriptions, which I was destined to meet in New Bedford and elsewhere on the free soil of Massachusetts.
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