ABSTRACT
When the emperor Tiberius had taken from the Roman people their right of public meetings, and the privilege of electing and deposing their magistrates,—when his barbarous successors broke up that brilliant corps of universal denization which had long associated the talents and co-operation of the known world, Rome, becoming the seat of sanguinary tyranny, ceased to be an object of ambition to her states and dependencies. The present government of Rome has not dared to annul the confiscations of the late regime; and the monasteries and convents, when the first flush of reaction subsides, must inevitably decline, for want of the means of supporting their useless societies. Since the Restoration, the Lancastrian system, so well received in Lombardy and Tuscany, is resisted at Rome. One of the first good acts of the French in Rome was the formation of an Institute.
