.jpg)
The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 1
Note C
Note C.
Extract of a letter from a Paris Correspondent of the "Morning Post," dated "Paris, Sunday, 7th January, 1849
"Now that Pio Nono has escaped from Rome, and is partially released from the troubles of his Pontifical duties, he really should turn his attention to the high crimes and misdemeanours in which the Romish priesthood are wont to indulge. The French papers are constantly compelled to chronicle the condemnation by the law courts of some member of the sacerdotal order, for infringements of that which the social order has ever held sacred. To-day their columns are polluted with the accounts of a priest, who employed his leisure hours in the commission of crimes which are too hideous to enumerate. Well may Dryden ask,—
"'How can incest suit with holiness,
Or priestly orders with a princely state?'
"The frightful mass of pollution which was placed before the public during the trial of the Freri Leotade, at Toulouse, has again been stirred up. In another part of the French papers is to be found the sentence passed on a priest for embezzlement of the parish funds; so that you see the office of sacerdos in this country is too frequently coupled with that of either, bos, fur, or sus.