Schools And Emigration Have Now Brought Sounder Ideas Among The People, And The Secularization Of Convents With The Abolition Of Ecclesiastical Right Of Asylum (Sixtus V Had Wisely Done Away With It) Has Broken Up The Prosperous Old Bond Between Monks And Malefactors.

What the government has done towards establishing decent communications in this once lawless and pathless country ranks, in its small way, beside the achievement of the French who, in Algeria, have built nearly ten thousand miles of road.

But it is well to note that even as the mechanical appliance of steam destroyed the corsairs, the external plague, so this hoary form of internal disorder could have been permanently eradicated neither by humanity nor by severity. A scientific invention, the electric telegraph, is the guarantee of peace against the rascals.

These brigand chiefs were often loaded with gold. On killing them, the first thing the French used to do was to strip them. "On le depouilla." Francatripa, for instance, possessed "a plume of white ostrich feathers, clasped by a golden band and diamond Madonna" (a gift from Queen Caroline) - Cerino and Manzi had "bunches of gold chains as thick as an arm suspended across the breasts of their waistcoats, with gorgeous brooches at each fastening." Some of their wealth now survives in certain families who gave them shelter in the towns in winter time, or when they were hard pressed. These favoreggiatori or manutengoli (the terms are interconvertible, but the first is the legal one) were sometimes benevolently inclined.

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