ascended the throne_" etc.

etc.
Thus we find that the _not long ago_ of the Count de Rayneval is an exact date.

It means, in good French, "before the election of Pius IX.," or again, "up to the 16th of June, 1846." Thus also M.de Brosses, if he could have returned to Rome in 1846, would have found there, by the admission of the Count de Rayneval himself, the worst government in Europe.
And thus the most absolute of governments, as M.de Tournon calls it, still existed in Rome in 1846.
Up to the 16th of June, 1846, Catholicity owned the six millions of acres of which the Roman territory consists; the Pope was the administrator, the guardian, the steward; and the citizens of the State seem to have been the ploughmen.
Up to this era of deliverance, a systematic despotism had deprived the subjects of the Pope, not only of all participation in public affairs, but of the simplest and most legitimate liberties, of the most innocuous progress, and even--I shudder as I write it--of recourse to the laws.

The whim of one man had arbitrarily reversed the decisions of the courts of law.

And lastly, an incapable and disorderly caste had wasted the public finances without rendering an account to any one, occasionally even without rendering it to themselves.