Pagina 952 van 1118

In seasons of public calamity, when confusion takes the place of

order, we often behold a display of the sublimest virtue, but

more frequently, alas! an increase of vice and crime. Instances

of the latter were not wanting during the present unhappy period.

The profligate, spared by the plague, found in the common

confusion, and in the slackening of the restraints of law, new

occasions for mischief, and new assurances of impunity. And

further, power itself had passed into the hands of the boldest

among them. There were scarcely found for the functions of

monatti and apparitori any, but those over whom the attraction of

rapine and licence had more sway than dread of the contagion.