prelates brought in to a share of the administration. Add to these
sixteen tribunals, or courts, civil and ecclesiastical, two Secretaries
of State, a Secretary of Briefs and one of Memorials, a _Camerlengo_, a
Treasurer, and a Governor of Rome, and you have an outline of the Roman
Government under Gregory XVI.

The Secretaries of State are always cardinals; the _Camerlengo_, who is
the official head of government during the vacancies of the Holy See, a
cardinal; the Treasurer and Governor of Rome, prelates, who, on leaving
office, become cardinals by right. The only part of this complex
machinery which was intrusted to laymen was the Tribunal of the Capitol
and the Tribunal of Commerce: the latter an institution of Pius VII.,
and directly connected with the Chamber of Commerce, from whose fifteen
members two of its three judges are chosen, while the third is furnished
by the bar; the former, the feeble representative of all that is left of
the municipal government of Rome.

Rome has sixty noble families who enjoy the title of Conscript. From
these are chosen, every three months, three _Conservatori_ and a Prior
of the Wards, who form a committee for the superintendence of the walls
and public monuments, and for the administration of the income of the
Capitoline Chamber. If we look at them in connection with the ancient
government of Rome, we shall find them employed in functions not unlike
those of the _Ædiles_. From the same point of view, the Senator may be
said to resemble the City Prefect; although, when you see him on public
days, standing like a statue on the steps of the Pontifical throne,
above the prelates, but a little lower than the cardinals, you can think
neither of prefect nor of senate, nor of anything that recalls the days
when Romans acknowledged no superior but the fellow-citizens whom they
themselves had chosen as representatives of their sovereign will.