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 TWO LETTERS 
 
 C. 
 
 THE EARL OF ABERDEEN, 
 
 STATE PROSECUTIONS 
 
 THE NEAPOLITAN GOVERNMENT. 
 
 BY THE RIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE, 
 
 M.P. FOR THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD. 
 
 SECOND EDITION. 
 
 LONDON; 
 
 JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET. 
 
 1851.
 
 LONDON : PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SON?, STAMFOKD-STREET.
 
 ADVERTISEMENT 
 
 TO THE FIRST EDITION OF THE FIRST LETTER. 
 
 I PROPOSE to publish forthwith a Second Letter, in further 
 
 elucidation of the subject, and in explanation of the long delay 
 
 which has occurred since the following pages were addressed to 
 
 Lord Aberdeen. 
 
 W. E. G. 
 
 6, Carlton Gardens, Wtk July, 1851. 
 
 *

 
 L E T T E R I., 
 
 Sfc. Sfc, 
 
 6, Carlton Gardens, April 7, 1851. 
 
 My dear Lord Aberdeen, 
 
 I MUST begin a letter, which I fear you will find painful, 
 nay revolting, to the last degree, with offering you my cordial 
 thanks for the permission to address it to you. 
 
 After a residence of between three and four months at Naples, I 
 have come home with a deep sense of the duty incumbent upon me 
 to make some attempt towards mitigating the horrors, I can use 
 no weaker word, amidst which the Government of that country is 
 now carried on. 
 
 As I shall have to detail startling facts, and as I cannot avoid 
 in describing them the use of the strongest language, I must state 
 at the outset, that it was not for the purposes of political criticism 
 or censorship that I went to Naples. Circumstances purely domestic 
 took me and kept me there. I did not carry with me the idea, that 
 it was any part of my duty to look for grievances in the adminis- 
 tration of the Government, or to propagate ideas belonging to 
 another meridian. I admit, in the most unqualified manner, the 
 respect that is due from Englishmen, as from others, to Govern- 
 ments in general, whether they be absolute, constitutional, or re- 
 publican, as the representatives of a public, nay, of a Divine autho- 
 rity, and as the guardians of order. I do not know that there is 
 any other country in Europe, I am sure there is none unless it is 
 in the South of Italy, from which I should have returned with any- 
 thing like the ideas and intentions which now press upon my mind. 
 On this, among other grounds, I am grateful for your consent to 
 be the recipient of my statement, because it will give weight to 
 my asseveration, that this grievous subject has forced itself upon 
 me, that I am sincere in disclaiming what is called political pro- 
 pagandism, that I have not gathered wholesale and without
 
 6 STATE PROSECUTIONS OF 
 
 examination the statements I am about to make, that an important 
 part of them are within my own personal knowledge, and that as 
 to the rest of those which are stated without qualification, after no 
 want of care in examining their sources and their grounds, I firmly 
 and deliberately believe them. 
 
 Without entering at length into the reasons which have led me 
 thus to trouble you, I shall state these three only : first, that the 
 present practices of the Government of Naples, in reference to 
 real or supposed political offenders, are an outrage upon religion, 
 upon civilisation, upon humanity, and upon decency. Secondly, 
 that these practices are certainly, and even rapidly, doing the work 
 of republicanism in that country : a political creed, which has little 
 natural or habitual root in the character of the people. Thirdly, 
 that as a member of the Conservative party in one of the great 
 family of European nations, I am compelled to remember, that 
 that party stands in virtual and real, though perhaps unconscious, 
 alliance with all the established Governments of Europe as such ; 
 and that, according to the measure of its influence, they suffer more 
 or less of moral detriment fi-om its reverses, and derive strength 
 and encouragement from its successes. This principle, which 
 applies with very limited force to the powerful States, whose 
 Governments are strong, not only in military organization, but in 
 the habits and affections of the people, is a principle of great 
 practical importance in reference to the Government of Naples, 
 which, from whatever cause, appears to view its own social, like its 
 physical, position, as one under the shadow of a volcano, and which 
 is doing everything in its power from day to day to give reality to 
 its own dangers, and fresh intensity, together with fresh cause, to 
 its fears. 
 
 In approaching the statement of the case, I must premise that I 
 pass over an important prefatory consideration, with respect to the 
 whole groundwork of governing authority in the kingdom of the 
 Two Sicilies at this moment ; and that I shall not inquire whether, 
 according to reason and social right, the actual Government of that 
 country be one with or without a title, one of law or one of force. 
 I shall assume that the Constitution of January 1848, spontaneously 
 given, sworn to as irrevocable with every circumstance of solemnity, 
 and never to this day either legally or even ostensibly revoked, 
 (although contravened in alniof^t every acf of the Government,)
 
 THE NEAPOLITAN GOVERNMENT. 7 
 
 never existed, and is a pure fiction. 1 will not appeal to it, be- 
 cause such an appeal might give colour to the idea that my desire 
 was to meddle with the form of Government, and might thus inter- 
 fere with those purposes of humanity which, and which alone in 
 the first instance, I propose to myself and to you : whereas, in 
 truth, I am firmly of opinion that this very important matter may 
 much more safely and wisely, and indeed can only with propriety 
 be regarded as an internal question, which it is for the Sovereign 
 of the country to settle with his subjects, apart from any interven- 
 tion of ours ; unless indeed ([uestions should incidentally arise 
 affecting it under the treaty of 1844 between the Two Sicilie? 
 and England, upon some parts of which, as a colleague of your 
 Lordship, I had the honour to be employed. With such a topic 
 at present I can have nothing to do ; nor should I have alluded to 
 the Neapolitan Constitution in this place at all, but because a 
 recollection of the main facts connected with it is necessary in 
 order in any manner to explain the recent conduct of the Govern- 
 ment of Naples, and to give full credibility to statements so 
 astonishing as those which I shall have to make. 
 
 I must not suppress the expression of my full persuasion, that 
 in reading this letter you will feel disposed to ask, how can con- 
 duct so inhuman and monstrous be pursued without a motive, and 
 w hat can be the motive here ? To answer that question fully, I 
 must enter upon the history of the Neapolitan Constitution. But 
 for the present, and so long as I have the hope of any prompt 
 amendment without a formal controversy, I am content at what- 
 ever disadvantage to leave that question unanswered, though a 
 reply to it is certainly essential to the entire development of my 
 case. 
 
 One other prefatory woi*d yet remains. In these pages you 
 will find no reference to the struggle waged, and waged success- 
 fully, by the King of Naples against his Sicilian subjects, or to the 
 conduct of any of the parties either immediately or indirectly con- 
 cerned in it. My subject-matter is wholly different : it is the 
 conduct of the Government of that Sovereign towards the Nea- 
 politan or continental subjects, through whose fidelity and courage 
 the subjugation of Sicily was effected. 
 
 There is a general impression that the organization of the Go- 
 vernments of Southern Italy is defective — that the administration
 
 8 STATE PROSECUTIONS OF 
 
 of justice is tainted with corruption — that instances of abuse or 
 cruelty among subordinate public functionaries are not uncommon, 
 and that political offences are punished with severity, and with no 
 great regard to the forms of justice. 
 
 I advert to this vague supposition of a given state of things, for 
 
 the purpose of stating that, had it been accurate, I should have 
 
 spared myself this labour. The difference between the faintest 
 
 outline that a moment's handling of the pencil sketches, and the 
 
 deepest colouring of the most elaborately finished portrait, but 
 
 feebly illustrates the relation of these vague suppositions to the 
 
 actual truth of the Neapolitan case. It is not mere imperfection, 
 
 not corruption in low quarters, not occasional severity, that I am 
 
 about to describe : it is incessant, systematic, deliberate, violation 
 
 of the law by the Power appointed to watch over and maintain it. 
 
 It is such violation of human and written law as this, carried on 
 
 for the purpose of violating every other law unwritten and eternal, 
 
 human and divine ; it is the wholesale persecution of virtue when 
 
 united with intelligence, operating upon such a scale that entire 
 
 classes may with truth be said to be its object, so that the 
 
 Government is in bitter and cruel, as well as utterly illegal, hostility 
 
 to whatever in the nation really lives and moves, and forms the 
 
 main-spring of practical progress and improvement ; it is the 
 
 awful profanation of public religion, by its notorious alliance, in 
 
 the governing powers, with the violation of every moral law under 
 
 the stimulants of fear and vengeance ; it is the perfect prostitution 
 
 of the judicial office, which has made it, under veils only too 
 
 threadbare and transparent, the degraded recipient of the vilest 
 
 and clumsiest forgeries, got up wilfully and deliberately, by the 
 
 immediate advisers of the Crown, for the purpose of destroying 
 
 the peace, the freedom, aye and even if not by capital sentences 
 
 the life, of men among the most virtuous, upright, intelligent, 
 
 distinguished, and refined of the whole community ; it is the 
 
 savage and cowardly system of moral, as well as in a lower degree 
 
 of physical, torture, through which the sentences extracted from 
 
 the debased courts of justice are carried into effect. 
 
 The effect of all this is, total inversion of all the moral and 
 social ideas. Law, instead of being respected, is odious. Force, 
 and not affection, is the foundation of Government. There is no 
 association, but a violent antagonism, between the idea of freedom
 
 THE NEAPOLITAN GOVERNMENT. 9 
 
 and that of order. The governing power, which teaches of itself 
 that it is the image of God upon earth, is clothed, in the view of 
 the overwhelming majority of the thinking public, with all the 
 vices for its attributes. I have seen and heard the strong and too 
 true expression used, " This is the negation of God erected into a 
 system of Government." * 
 
 I confess my amazement at the gentleness of character, which 
 has been shown by the Neapolitan people in times of revolution. 
 It really seems as if the hell-born spirit of revenge had no place 
 whatever in their breasts. I know that at any rate some illus- 
 trious victims are supported by the spirit of Christian resignation, 
 by their cheerful acceptance of the will of God. But the present 
 persecution is awfully aggravated, as compared with former ones ; 
 it differs too in this, that it seems to be specially directed against 
 those men of moderate opinions, whom a Government well stocked 
 even with worldly prudence, whom Macchiavelli,had he been minis- 
 ter, would have made it his study to conciliate and attach. These 
 men, therefore, are being cleared away ; and the present efforts 
 to drive poor human nature to extremes cannot wholly fail in 
 stirring up the ferocious passions, which never, to my belief, since 
 the times of the heathen tyrants, have had so much to arouse, or 
 so much to palliate when aroused, their fury. 
 
 I must first speak of the extent and scale of the present pro- 
 ceedings. 
 
 The general belief is, that the prisoners for political offences in 
 the kingdom of the Two Sicilies, are between fifteen, or twenty, 
 and thirty thousand. The Government withholds all means of 
 accurate information, and accordingly there can be no certainty 
 on the point. I have, however, found that this belief is shared by 
 persons the most intelligent, considerate, and well-informed. It is 
 also supported by what is known of the astonishing crowds confined 
 in particular prisons ; and especially by what is accurately known 
 in particular provincial localities, as to the numbers of individuals 
 missing from among the community. I have heard these numbers 
 for example at Reggio, and at Salei'no ; and from an effort to 
 estimate them in reference to population, I do believe that twenty 
 
 * £ la negazione di l)to eretta a sistema di govemo.
 
 10 STATE PROSECUTIONS OF 
 
 thousand is no unreasonable estimate. In Naples alone, some 
 hundreds arc at this moment under indictment capitalhj ; and when 
 I quitted it, a trial was expected to come on immediately, (called 
 that of the fifteenth of May,) in which the number charged was 
 between four and five hundred ; including (though this is a digres- 
 sion) at least one or more persons of high station, whose opinions 
 would in this country be considered more Conservative than your 
 own. 
 
 The Neapolitan Government, indeed, appears to have some- 
 thing of the art, wdiicli Mr. Burke declared to be beyond him ; he 
 " did not know how to frame an indictment against a people." 
 After considering what I have said, pray consider next, that the 
 number of refugees and persons variously concealed, probably 
 larger, perhaps much larger, than that of the prisoners, is also to 
 be reckoned. We must then remember, that a very large propor- 
 tion of these prisoners belong to the middle class, (though there 
 are also considerable numbers of the working class,) and further, 
 that the numbers of the middle class, in the kingdom of Naples, (of 
 which region I shall speak all through, meaning the Regno, or 
 continental dominion?, of his Sicilian Majesty,) must be a much 
 smaller part of the entire population, than they are among our- 
 selves. We must next consider that of these persons very few have 
 independent means of support for their families ; not to mention 
 that, as I hear, confiscation or sequestration upon arrest is frequent. 
 So that generally each case of a prisoner or refugee becomes the 
 centre of a separate circle of human misery ; and now there may be 
 some inkling of the grounds for saying that the system, the character 
 of which I am about to examine further, has whole classes for its 
 object, and those classes the very classes, upon which the health, 
 solidity, and progress of the nation mainly depend. 
 
 But why should it seem strange that the Government of Naples 
 should be at open war with those classes ? In the schools of the 
 country it is, I have heard, compulsory to employ the political Cate- 
 chism ascribed to the Canonico Apuzzi, of which I have a copy. 
 In this catechism, civilization and barbarism are represented as 
 two opposite extremes, both of them vicious ; and it is distinctly 
 taught, taught therefore by the Government of Naples, that 
 happiness and virtue lie in a just mean between them.
 
 THE NEAPOLITAN GOVERNMENT. 1 1 
 
 But again. Sliortly after I reached Naples I heard a man 
 of eminent station accused, with much vituperation, of having 
 stated that nearly all those who had formed the " Opposition " in 
 the Chamber of Deputies under the Constitution were in prison or 
 in exile. I frankly own my impression was, that a statement 
 apparently so monstrous and incredible deserved the reprobation 
 it was then receiving. It was (I think) in November last. The 
 Chamber had been elected by the people under a Constitution 
 freely and spontaneously given by the King : elected twice over, 
 and with little change, but that little in favour of the Opposition. 
 No one of the body, I think, had then been brought to trial (al- 
 though I may state, in passing, one of them had been assassinated 
 by a priest named Peluso, well known in the streets of Naples 
 when I was there, never questioned for the act, and said to receive 
 a pension from the Government). So that I put down the state- 
 ment as a fiction, and the circulation of it as, at the very least, a 
 gross indiscretion or more. What was my astonishment when I 
 saw a list in detail which too fully proved its truth ; nay, which in 
 the most essential point proved more. 
 
 It appears, my dear Lord, that the full complement of the 
 Chamber of Deputies was 164; elected by a constituency which 
 brought to poll about 117,000 votes. Of these about 140 
 was the greatest number that came to Naples to exercise the 
 functions of the Chamber. An absolute majority of this number, 
 or seventy-six, besides some others who had been deprived of offices, 
 had either been arrested or had gone into exile. So that after 
 the regular formation of a popular representative Chamber, and 
 its suppression in the teeth of the law, the Government of Naples 
 has consummated its audacity by putting into prison, or driving 
 into banishment for the sake of escaping prison, an actual ma- 
 jority of the representatives of the people. 
 
 I have now said enough upon the scale of these proceedings ; 
 and I pass to the examination of their character : and first their 
 character in point of law, because I have charged the Government 
 with systematic violation of it. 
 
 The law of Naples, as I have been informed, requires that 
 personal liberty shall be inviolable, except under a warrant from 
 a Court of Justice authorised for the [)urpose. I do not mean
 
 12 statp: prosecutions of 
 
 the Constitution, but the hiw anterior to and independent of the 
 Constitution. This warrant, I understand, must proceed upon 
 actual depositions, and must state the nature of the charge, or it 
 must be communicated immediately afterwards, I am not sure 
 which. 
 
 In utter defiance of this law, the Government, of which the 
 Prefect of Police is an important member, through the agents of 
 that department, watches and dogs the people, pays domiciliary 
 visits, very commonly at night, ransacks houses, seizing papers and 
 effects and tearing up floors at pleasure under pretence of search- 
 ing for arms, and imprisons men by the score, by the hundred, 
 by the thousand, without any warrant whatever, sometimes without 
 even any written authority at all, or anything beyond the word of 
 a policeman ; constantly without any statement whatever of the 
 nature of the offence. 
 
 Nor is this last fact wonderful. Men are arrested, not because 
 they have committed, or are believed to have committed, any of- 
 fence ; but because they are persons whom it is thought conve- 
 nient to confine and to get rid of, and against whom therefore some 
 charge must be found or fabricated. 
 
 The first process, therefore, commonly is to seize them and im- 
 prison them ; and to seize and carry off books, papers, or what- 
 ever else these degraded hirelings may choose. The correspond- 
 ence of the prisoner is then examined, as soon as may be fomid 
 convenient, and he is himself examined upon it : in secret, without 
 any intimation of the charges, which as yet in fact do not exist ; or 
 of the witnesses, who do not exist either. In this examination he 
 is allowed no assistance whatever, nor has he at this stage any 
 power of communication with a legal adviser ! He is not examined 
 only, but, as I knoic, insulted at will and in the grossest manner, 
 under pretence of examination, by the oflScers of the police. And 
 do not suppose this is the fault of individuals. It is essential to 
 the system, of which the essential aim is, to create a charge. What 
 more likely than that, smarting under insult, and knowing with 
 what encouragement and for whose benefit it is offered, the pri- 
 soner should for a moment lose his temper, and utter some expres- 
 sion disparaging to the sacred majesty of the Government ? If he 
 does, it goes down in the minutes against him : if he does not, but
 
 THE NEAPOLITAN GOVERNMENT. 13 
 
 keeps his self-command, no harm is done to the great end in 
 view. 
 
 His correspondence is examined as well as himself. Suppose 
 him a man of cultivated intelligence : he has probably watched 
 public affairs and followed their vicissitudes. His copies of lett(!rs, 
 or the letters to him which he may have kept, will contain allusions 
 to them. The value of this evidence as evidence would of course 
 depend upon giving full effect to all these allusions taken in con- 
 nection one with the other. But not so : any expression which im- 
 plies disapproval (since nothing is easier than to construe disap- 
 proval into disaffection, disaffection into an intention of revolution 
 or of regicide) is entered on the minutes. Suppose there happens 
 to be some other, which entirely destroys the force of the former, 
 and demonstrates the loyalty of the victim : it is put by as of no 
 consequence ; and if he remonstrate, it is in vain. In countries 
 where justice is regarded acts are punished, and it is deemed un- 
 just to punish thoughts ; but in this case thoughts are forged in 
 order that they may be punished. I here speak of what I know to 
 have happened, and have imagined or heightened riothing. 
 
 For months, or for a year, or for two years, or three, as the case 
 may be, these prisoners are detained before their trials ; but very 
 generally for the longer terms. I do not happen to have heard of 
 any one tried at Naples on a political charge, in these last times, 
 with less than sixteen or eighteen months of previous imprisonment. 
 I have seen men still waiting, who had been confined for six and 
 twenty months ; and this confinement, as I have said, began by an 
 act not of law but of force in defiance of law. There may be cases, 
 doubtless there are, of arrest under warrant, after depositions : but 
 it is needless to enter upon what is, I believe, purely exceptional. 
 
 I do not scruple to assert, in continuation, that when every eflfbrt 
 has been used to concoct a charge, if possible, out of the perversion 
 and partial production of real evidence, this often fails : and then 
 the resort is to perjury and to forgery. The miserable creatures 
 to be found in most communities, but especially in those where the 
 Government is the great agent of corruption upon the people, the 
 wretches who are ready to sell the liberty and life of fellow- 
 subjects for gold, and to throw their own souls into the bargain, are 
 deliberately employed by the Executive Power, to depose accord-
 
 )4 STATE PROSECUTIONS OF 
 
 iiig to their inventions against the man whom it is thought 
 desirable to ruin. Although, however, practice should by this 
 time have made perfect, these depositions are generally made in 
 the coarsest and clumsiest manner ; and they bear upon them the 
 evidences of falsehood in absurdities and self-contradictions, ac- 
 cumulated even to nausea. But what then ? Mark the calcula- 
 tion. If there is plenty of it, some of it, according to the vulgar 
 phrase, will stick. Do not think I am speaking loosely. I 
 declare my belief that the whole proceeding is linked together 
 from first to last ; a depraved logic runs through it. Inventors 
 must shoot at random, therefore they take many strings to their 
 bow. It would be strange indeed, and contrary to the doctrine 
 of chances, if the whole forged fabric were dissolved and over- 
 thrown by self-contradiction. Now let us consider practically 
 what takes place. Suppose nine -tenths too absurd to stand even 
 before the Neapolitan Coiu*ts ; of this portion some is withdrawn 
 by the police and not carried into the trial at all, after they have 
 been made aware, through the prisoner's or his counsel's assistance, 
 of its absurdity ; the rest is overlooked by the judges. In any 
 other country it would of course lead to inquiry, and to a pro- 
 secution for perjury. Not so there ; it is rather regarded as so 
 much of well-meant and patriotic effort, which, through untoward 
 circumstances, has failed. It is simply neutralized and stands at 
 zero. But there remains the one-tenth not self-contradicted. 
 Well, but surely you will say the prisoner will be able to rebut 
 that, if false, by counter-evidence. Alas ! he may have counter- 
 evidence mountains high, but he is not allowed to bring it. I 
 know this is hardly credible, but it is true. The very men tried 
 while I was at Naples, named and appealed to the counter- 
 evidence of scores and hundreds of men of all classes and pro- 
 fessions — military, clergy, Government functionaries, and the rest; 
 but in every instance, with, I believe, one single exception, the 
 Court, the Grand Criminal Court of Justice, refused to hear it : 
 and in that one case the person, when called, fully bore out the 
 statement of the prisoner. Of course the assertion of the accused, 
 however supported by the evidence of station and character, goes 
 for nothing against the small remaining fragment not self-destroyed 
 of the fictions of the vilest wretch, however such a fragment be
 
 THE NEAPOLITAN GOVERNMENT. 1 5 
 
 buried beneath presumptions of falsehood ; and this fragment, 
 being thus secured from confutation, forms the pillow on which 
 the consciences of the judges, after the work of condemnation, 
 calmly and quietly repose. 
 
 I ought, however, to point out, for the sake of accuracy, that 
 when the forged testimony has been procured, the Government 
 are in a condition to present it to the Court, obtain a warrant, 
 and so far legalize the imprisonment. 
 
 Now, how are these detenuti treated during the long and awful 
 period of apprehension and dismay between their illegal seizure 
 and their illegal trial ? The prisons of Naples, as is well known, 
 are another name for the extreme of filth and horror. I have 
 really seen something of them, but not the worst. This I have 
 seen, my Lord : the official doctors not going to the sick prisoners, 
 but the sick prisoners, men almost with death on their faces, 
 toiling upstairs to them at that charnelhouse of the Vicaria, 
 because the lower regions of such a palace of darkness are too 
 foul and loathsome to allow it to be expected that professional 
 men should consent to earn bread by entering them. As to diet, 
 I must speak a word for the bread that I have seen. Though 
 black and coarse to the last degree, it was sound. The soup, 
 which forms the only other element of subsistence, is so nauseous, 
 as I was assured, that nothing but the extreme of hunger could 
 overcome the repugnance of nature to it. I had not the means of 
 tasting it. The filth of the prisons is beastly. The officers, ex- 
 cept at night, hardly ever enter them. I was ridiculed for reading 
 with some care pretended regulations posted up on the wall of an 
 outer room. One of them was for the visits of the doctors to the 
 sick. I saw the doctors with that regulation over them, and men 
 with one foot in the grave visiting them, not visited by them. I 
 have walked among a crowd of between three and four hundred 
 Neapolitan prisoners : murderers, thieves, all kinds of ordinary 
 criminals, some condemned and some uncondemned, and the 
 politically accused indiscriminately : not a chain upon a man of 
 them, not an officer nearer than at the end of many apartments, 
 with many locked doors and gratings between us ; but not only 
 was there nothing to dread, there was even a good deal of polite- 
 ness to me as a stranger. They are a self-governed community.
 
 16 STATE PROSECUTIONS OF 
 
 the main authority being that of the gamorristi^ the men of most 
 celebrity among them for audacious crime. Employment they 
 have none. This swarm of human beings all slept in a long low 
 vaulted room, having no light except from a single and very mode- 
 rate sized grating at one end. The political prisoners, by payment, 
 had the privilege of a separate chamber off the former, but there 
 was no division between them. 
 
 Tliis is not well, but it is far from being the worst. I will now 
 give your Lordship another specimen of the treatment administered 
 at Naples to men illegally arrested, and as yet uncondemned. 
 From the 7th of December last to the 3rd of February, Pironte, 
 who was formerly a judge, and is still a gentleman, and who was 
 found guilty on or about the last named day, spent his whole days 
 and nights, except when on his trial, with two other men, in a cell 
 at the Vicaria, about eight feet square, below the level of the 
 ground, with no light except a grating at the top of the wall, out 
 of which they could not see. Within the space of these eight 
 feet, with the single exception I have named, Pironte and his com- 
 panions were confined during these two months ; neither for Mass 
 were they allowed to quit it, nor for any other purpose what- 
 soever ! This was in Naples, where by universal consent matters 
 are far better than in the provinces. The presence of strangers 
 has some small influence on the Government : the eye of humanity, 
 or of curiosity, pierces into some dark crannies here, that are 
 wholly unpenetrated in the remoteness of the Provinces, or in those 
 lonely islands scattered along the coast, whose picturesque and 
 romantic forms delight the eye of the passing voyager, ignorant 
 what huge and festering masses of human suffering they conceal. 
 This, I say, was in Naples ; it was the case of a gentleman, a 
 lawyer, a judge, accused but uncondemned. Do not suppose it is 
 selected and exceptional. I had no power to select, except from 
 what happened to become known to me, from among a sample 
 quite insignificant in comparison with what must have remained 
 unknown to me. And now, after this one fact, does not the 
 strange and seemingly mad charge I have made against the 
 Neapolitan Government begin, as the light of detail flows in upon 
 it, to assume method and determinate figure ? 
 
 There was another case that I learned, which I believe I can
 
 THE NEAPOIJTAX GOVERNMENT. 17 
 
 report with accuracy, though ray knowledge of it is not quite tiie 
 same as of the last. When I left Naples, in February, the Baron 
 Porcari was confined in the Maschio of Ischia. He was^ accused 
 ■of a share in the Calabrian insurrection, and was awaiting his trial. 
 This Maschio is a dungeon without light, and 24 feet or palms (I 
 am not sure which) below the level of the sea. He is never 
 allowed to quit it day or night, and no one is permitted to visit 
 him there, except his wife — once a fortnight ! 
 
 I have now probably said enough of the proceedings previous to 
 trial ; but there is one small gap to fill up. If the arrest is contrary 
 to law, why not, it may be asked, bring an action for false im- 
 prisonment ? I have made some inquiry upon that head. I 
 understand that as in other points, so neither in this, is the imo 
 defective ; that such an action might probably be brought, and 
 might in ai'gument be made good, but the want is that of a Court 
 which would dare to entertain it. This will be better understood 
 when I come to speak of the political sentences : for the present I 
 pass on. 
 
 And nov/, perhaps, I cannot do better than to furnish a thread 
 to my statement by dealing particulai-ly with the case of Carlo 
 Poerio. It has every recommendation for the purpose. His 
 father was a distinguished lawyer. He is himself a refined and 
 accomplished gentleman, a copious and eloquent speaker, a re- 
 spected and blameless character. I have had the means of ascer- 
 taining in some degree his political position. He is strictly a 
 Constitutionalist ; and while I refrain from examining into the 
 shameful chapter of Neapolitan history which that word might 
 open, I must beg you to remember that its strict meaning there is 
 just the same as here, that it signifies a person opposed in heart 
 to all violent measures from whatever quarter, and havino; for his 
 political creed the maintenance of the monarchy on its legal basis 
 by legal means, and with all the civilizing improvements of laws 
 and establishments which may tend to the welfare and happiness 
 of the community. His pattern is England, rather than America 
 or France. I have never heard him charged with error in 
 politics, other than such as can generally be alleged with truth 
 against the most highminded and loyal, the most intelligent and 
 constitutional, of our own statesmen. I must say, after a pretty 
 
 c
 
 18 STATE niOSECUTIONS OF 
 
 full examination of his case, that the condemnation of such a man 
 for treason is a proceeding just as much conformable to the laws 
 of truth, justice, decency and fair play, and to the common sense 
 of the community, in fact just as great and gross an outrage on 
 them all, as would be a like condemnation in this country of any of 
 our best known public men, Lord John Russell, or Lord Lansdowne, 
 or Sir James Graham, or yourself. I will not say it is precisely 
 the same as respects his rank and position, but they have scarcely 
 any public man who stands higher, • nor is there any one of the 
 names I have mentioned dearer to the English nation — perhaps 
 none so dear — as is that of Poerio to his Neapolitan fellow- 
 countrymen. 
 
 I pass by other mournful and remarkable cases, such as that of 
 Settembrini, who, in a sphere by some degrees narrower, but with 
 a character quite as pure and fair, was tried with Poerio and 
 forty more, and was capitally convicted in February, though 
 through an humane provision of the law the sentence was not 
 executed ; but he has, I fear, been reserved for a fate much 
 harder: double irons for life, upon a remote and sea-girt rock : 
 nay, there may even be reason to fear that he is directly subjected 
 to physical torture. The mode of it, which was specified to me 
 upon respectable though not certain authority, was the thrusting 
 of sharp instruments under the finger-nails. 
 
 I shall likewise say very little upon the case of Faucitano, who, 
 like Settembrini, was tried with Poerio in the same batch of forty- 
 two prisoners during the winter. His case is peculiar, since 
 there really was a foundation for the charge. The charge was 
 an intention to destroy, by means of some terrible explosive 
 agents, several of the Ministers and other persons. The founda- 
 tion was, that he had in his breast-pocket, on a great public 
 occasion, a single bottle, which exploded there without injuring 
 him in hfe or limb ! It is likely that he had intended some freak 
 or folly, but he was condemned to death. Till within a few hours 
 of the time appointed, it was believed he would be executed. 
 Tlie Bianchi were in the streets, collecting alms to purchase 
 masses for his soul. He was in the chapel of the condemned, 
 with the priests about him, when during the night, his case 
 having been discussed at a council in the daytime, there came
 
 THE NEAPOLITAiN GOVEKNMEM 19 
 
 down from Cascvta a messenger with orders for his reprieve. 1 
 have learned the agency through which that reprieve was pro- 
 cured, but the notice of it is unnecessary for my present purpose. 
 
 Carlo Poerio was one of the Ministers of the Crown under the 
 Constitution, and had also one of the most prominent positions in 
 the Neapolitan Parliament. He was, as regarded the Sicilian 
 question, friendly to the maintenance of the unity of the kingdom. 
 He was also friendly to the War of independence, as it was 
 termed ; but I have never heard that he manifested greater zeal 
 in that matter than the King of Naples ; it is a question, of 
 course, wholly irrespective of what we have now to consider. 
 Poerio appeared to enjoy the King's full confidence ; his resigna- 
 tion, when offered, was at first declined, and his advice asked 
 even after its acceptance. 
 
 The history of his arrest, as detailed by himself, in his address 
 of February 8, 1850, to his judges, deserves attention. The 
 evening before it (July 18, 1849), a letter was left at his house 
 by a person unknown, conceived in these terms : — " Fly ; and fly 
 with speed. You are betrayed ! the Government is already in 
 possession of your correspondence with the Marquis Dragonetti. 
 — From one who loves you much." Had he fled, it would have 
 been proof of guilt, ample for those of whom we are now speaking. 
 But he was aware of this, and did not fly. Moreover, no sucli 
 correspondence existed. On the 19th, about four in the after- 
 noon, two persons, presenting themselves at his door under a false 
 title, obtained entry, and announced to him that he was arretted 
 in virtue of a verbal order of Peccheneda, the Prefect of Police. 
 He protested in vain : the house was ransacked : he was carried 
 into solitary confinement. He demanded to be examined, and to 
 know the cause of his arrest within twenty-four lionrs, according 
 to law, but in vain. So early, however, as on the sixth day, he 
 was brought before th;3 Commissary Maddaloni ; and a letter, 
 with the seal unbroken, was put into his hands. It was addressed 
 to him, and he was told that it had come under cover to a friend 
 of the Marquis Dragonetti, but that the cover had been openeil 
 in mistake by an officer of the police, who happened to have the 
 same name, though a different surname, and who, on perceiving 
 what was within, handed both to the authorities. Poerio was 
 
 c 2
 
 20 STATE PROSECUTIONS 01" 
 
 desired to open It, and did open it, in the presence of the Com- 
 missary. Thus far, nothing could be more elaborate and careful 
 than the arrangement of the proceeding But mark the sequel. 
 The matter of the letter of course was highly treasonable ; it 
 announced an invasion by Garibaldi, fixed a conference with 
 Mazzini, and referred to a correspondence with Lord Palmerston, 
 whose name was miserably mangled, who promised to aid a 
 proximate revolution. " I perceived at once," says Poerio, " that 
 the handwriting of Dragonetti was vilely imitated, and I said so, 
 remarking that the internal evidence of sheer forgery was higher 
 than any amount of material proof whatever." Dragonetti was 
 one of the most accomplished of Italians ; whereas this letter was 
 full of blunders, both of grammar and of spelling It is scarcely 
 worth while to notice other absurdities ; such as the signature of 
 name, surname, and title in full, and the transmission of such a 
 letter by the ordinary post of Naples. Poerio had among his 
 papers certain genuine letters of Dragonetti's ; they were pro- 
 duced and compared with this ; and the forgery stood confessed. 
 Upon the detection of this monstrous iniquity, what steps were 
 taken by the Government to avenge not Poerio, but' public jus- 
 tice ? None whatever : the papers were simply laid aside. 
 
 I have taken this detail from Poerio himself, in his Defence ; 
 but all Naples knows the story, and knows it with disgust. 
 
 Poerio's papers furnished no matter of accusation. 
 
 It was thus necessary to forge again ; or rather perhaps to act 
 upon forgeries which had been prepared, but which were at first 
 deemed inferior to the Dragonetti letter. 
 
 A person named Jervolino, a disappointed applicant for some 
 low office, had been selected for the work both of espionage and of 
 perjury ; and Poerio was now accused, under information from 
 him, of being among the chiefs of a republican sect, denominated 
 the Unita Italiana, and of an intention to murder the King. He 
 demanded to be confronted with his accuser. He had long before 
 known, and named Jervolino to his friends, as having falsely de- 
 nounced him to the Government; but the authorities refused to 
 confront them ; the name was not even told him ; he went from 
 one prison to another ; he was confined, as he alleges, in places fit 
 for filthy l)rutes rather than men ; he was cut off from the sight of
 
 THE NEAPOLITAN GOVERNMENT. 21 
 
 friends ; even his mother, his sole remaining near relation in the 
 country, was not permitted to see him for two months together. 
 Thus he passed some seven or eight months in total ignorance of 
 any evidence against him, or of those who gave it. During that 
 interval Signor Anton'.o de' Duchi di Santo Vito came to him, and 
 told him the Government knew all ; but that if he would confess, 
 his life would be spared. Pie demanded of his judges on his trial 
 that Santo Vito should be examined as to this statement : of 
 course it was not done. But more than this. Signor Peccheneda 
 himself, the director of the police, and holding the station of a 
 cabinet minister of the King, went repeatedly to the prison, sum- 
 moned divers prisoners, and wiih flagrant illegality examined them 
 himself, without witnesses, and without record. One of these was 
 Carafa. By one deposition of this Carafa, who was a man of noble 
 family, it was declared, that Peccheneda himself assured him his 
 matter should be very easily arranged, if he would only test'fy 
 to Poerio's acquaintance with certain revolutionary handbills. It 
 could not be ; and the cabinet minister took leave of Carafa with 
 the words — " Very well, sir ; you wish to destroy yourself; I leave 
 you to your fate." 
 
 Such was the conduct of Peccheneda, as Poerio did not fear to 
 state it before his judges. I must add, that I have heard upon in- 
 dubitable authority of other proceedings of that minister of the 
 King of Naples, which fully support the credibility of the 
 charge. 
 
 Besides the denunzia, or accusation, of Jervolino, on which the 
 trial ultimately turned, there was against Poerio the evidence 
 given by Romeo, a printer, and co-accused, to the effect that he 
 had heard another person mention Poerio as one of the heads of 
 the sect. The value of this evidence may be estimated from the 
 ftict that it included along with Poerio two of the persons then 
 ministers, the Cav. Boi^zelli and the Principe di Torella. It was 
 in fact abandoned as worthless, for it spoke of Poerio as a chief in 
 the sect ; but this was in contradiction with Jervolino, and the 
 charge of membership only was prosecuted against him. But 
 again, you will remark, the prisoner in no way took benefit from 
 the explosion or failure of any charge ; all proceedings went on 
 the principle that the duty of Government was to prove guilt, bv
 
 22 STATE PROSECUTIONS OF 
 
 means true or false, and that public justice has no interest in the 
 acquittal of the innocent. 
 
 There was also the testimony of Margherita, another of the 
 co-accused. lie declared, upon an after thought, that Poerio 
 attended a meeting of the high council of the sect. He declared 
 also that, as a member of this republican and revolutionary sect, 
 Poerio was one of three, who contended for maintaining the 
 monarchical constitution ; and that he was accordingly expelled I 
 On this ground, not to mention others, the evidence of Margherita 
 was unavailable. 
 
 It is too easy to understand why these efforts were made by the 
 eo-accused at mculpating Poerio and other men of consideration. 
 But they did not issue in relief to the parties who made them, 
 perhaps because their work was so ill-executed, or even their 
 treachery not thought genuine. Margherita was confined at 
 Nisida, in February, in the same room with those whom he had 
 denounced. Nay, he had actually been chained to one of them. 
 I shall hereafter describe what this joint chaining is. 
 
 The accusation then of Jervolino * formed the sole real basis of 
 the trial and condemnation of Poerio. 
 
 Upon this evidence of a man without character or station, and 
 who was a disappointed suitor for office that he thought he should 
 liave had by Poerio's means, a gentleman of the highest character, 
 I'ccently a confidential and favoured servant of the King, was put 
 upon trial for his life. 
 
 The matter of the accusation was this. Jervolino stated that, 
 having failed to obtain an office through Poerio, he asked him to 
 enrol him in the sect of the Unita Italiana. That Poerio put 
 him in charge of a person named Attanasio, who was to take him 
 to another of the prisoners, named Nisco, that he might be ad- 
 mitted. That Nisco sent him to a third person named Ambrosio, 
 who initiated him. He could not recollect any of the forms, nor 
 the oath of the sect ! Of the certificate or diploma, or of the 
 meetings, which the rules of the sect when published (as the 
 Government professed to have found them) proved to be indis- 
 pensable for all its members, he knew nothing whatever ! 
 
 * Poerio was named ia the evidence of Carafa; but in a manDer tending posi- 
 ively to prove his innocence.
 
 THE NEAPOLITAN GOVERNMENT. 23 
 
 How did he know, said Poerio, that I was of" the sect when he 
 asked me to admit him ? No answer. Why could not Nisco, 
 who is represented in the accusation as a leader, admit him ? No 
 answer. If I, being a Minister of the Crown at the time, was 
 also a member of the sect, could it be necessary for me to have 
 him thus referred to one person, and another, and a third, for 
 admission ? No answer. Why has not Ambrosio, who admitted 
 him, been molested by the Government ? No answer. Could I 
 be a sectarian when, as a Minister, I was decried and reviled 
 by the exalted party in all their journals for holding fast by the 
 Constitutional Monarchy ? No answer. Nay, such was the 
 impudent stupidity of the informer, that, in detailing the confi- 
 dences which Poerio, as he said, had made to him, he fixed the 
 last of them in May 29, 1849 ; upon which Poerio showed that 
 on May 22, or seven days before, he was in possession of a written 
 report and accusation, made by Jervolino, as the appointed spy 
 upon him, to the police : and yet, with this in his hand, he still 
 continued to make him a political confidant ! 
 
 Such was a specimen of the tissue of Jervolino's evidence ; such 
 its contradictions and absurdities. Jervolino had, shortly before, 
 been a beggar; he now appeared well dressed and in good con- 
 dition. I have stated that the multitudes of witnesses called by 
 the accused in exculpation were in no case but one allowed to be 
 called. That one, as I have learned it, was this : — Poerio alleged, 
 that a certain archpriest declared Jervolino had told him he re- 
 ceived a pension of twelve ducats a month from the Government 
 for the accusations he was making against Poerio : and the arch- 
 priest, on the prisoner's demand, was examined. The archpriest 
 confirmed the statement, and mentioned two more of his relatives 
 who could do the same. In another case I have heard that six 
 persons to whom a prisoner a])pealed as witnesses in exculpation, 
 were thereupon themselves arrested. Nothing more likely. 
 
 I myself heard Jervolino's evidence discussed, for many hours, 
 in court ; and it appeared to me that the tenth part of what I 
 heard should not only have ended the case, but have secured his 
 condign punishment for perjury. 
 
 I must, however, return to the point, and say, even had his 
 evidence been self-consistent and free from the grosser presump- 
 tions of untruth, the very fact of his character, as compared with
 
 24 iJTATE PROSECUTIUNS UF 
 
 Poerio's, was enough to have secured the acquittal of the accused 
 with any man who had Justice for his object. Nor do I believe 
 there is one man in Naples, of average intelligence, who believes 
 one word of the accusation of Jervolino. 
 
 Two exceptions were taken in the course of these proceedings. 
 It was argued by tlie counsel for Poerio, that the Grand Court 
 Extraordinary, before which the trial took place, was incompetent 
 to deal with the case, because the charge referred to his conduct 
 while a minister and a member of the Chamber of Deputies : and 
 by the 48th Article of the Constitutional Statute all such charges 
 were to be tried by the Chamber of Peers. The exception was 
 rejected : and the rejection confirmed upon appeal. 
 
 The second exception was this. It was distinctly charged 
 against the ])risoners that their supposed sect had conspired 
 against the life of some of the Ministers, and of the judge Domenic- 
 antonio Navarro, the President of the Court ; first, by means of 
 the bottle that exploded in the pocket of Faucitano ; secondly, by 
 means of a body oi pugnalatori or assassins, who were to do the 
 work if the bottle failed. This intention purported to be founded 
 on the cruelty of the judgments he had pronounced upon innocent 
 persons. The prisoners protested against being tried by him, and 
 he himself presented a note to the Court stating he felt scruples 
 about proceeding with the case, and desired to be guided by the 
 yest of the Court, 'i he Court unanimously decided that he 
 ought to sit and judge these men upon a charge including the 
 allegation of their intent to murder him ; and fined the prisoners 
 and their counsel 100 ducats for taking the objection ! This 
 decision, too, was confirmed upon appeal ; and the Courts both 
 sagely observed, that the scruple felt by Navarro was itself such 
 a proof of the impartial, delicate, and generous nature of his 
 mind, as ought to show that he could not possibly be under any bias ; 
 while they admitted, that under the law of Naples, if he had even 
 within five years been engaged in any criminal suit as a party 
 against them, he could not have sat. So this delicate, impartial, 
 and .generous-minded man, accordingly, sat and tried the prisoners. 
 In the case where I have heard the detail of the voting of the 
 judges, Navarro voted for condemnation, and for the severest 
 form of punishment. I have been told, and I believe he makes 
 no secret of his opinion, that all persons charged by the King's
 
 THE NEAPOLITAN GOVERNMENT. 25 
 
 Government ought to be found guilty. I have been told, and I 
 fully believe, that Poerio, whose case was certainly a pretty strong 
 one, even for the Neapolitan judges, would have been acquitted 
 by a division of four to four (such is the humane provision of the 
 law in case of equality) had not Navarro, by the distinct use of 
 intimidation, that is of threats of dismissal, to a judge whose name 
 has been told ma, procured the number necessary for a sentence.* 
 But I need not go into these foul recesses. I stand upon the fact 
 that Navarro, whose life, according to the evidence for the charge, 
 was aimed at by the prisoners, sat as President of the Court that 
 tried them for their lives ; and I ask whether language can 
 exaggerate the state of things in a country where such enormities 
 are perpetrated under the direct sanction of the Government ? 
 
 So much for the exceptions. I must observe on another curious 
 point, with reference to the court of justice. It did not sit as an 
 ordinary, but as a special, Court. When a Court sits specially, 
 it is with a view to dispatch. On these occasions the process is 
 shortened by the omission of many forms, most valuable, as I am 
 assured, for the defence of the prisoner. Above forty persons, 
 on that single occasion, were thus robbed of important aids, with a 
 view to expedition ; and yet these men had been sixteen or 
 eighteen months and upwards in prison before they were brought 
 to trial ! 
 
 I shall now give an indication, not of the impartiality of the 
 Court, but of the degree of decency with which its partiality is 
 veiled. In two cases it happened to be within the knowledge of 
 the counsel for the prisoners that the perjured witnesses against 
 them did not even know them by sight. In one of these the 
 counsel desired to be allowed to ask the witness to point out the 
 accused persons among the whole number of those charged, who 
 were all sitting together. The Court refused permission. In the 
 other case, the counsel challenged the witness to point out the 
 man of whose proceedings he was speaking. If I am rightly in- 
 formed, Navarro, whom I have so lately mentioned, affecting not 
 to hear the question, called out to the prisoner, " Stand up. Signer 
 Nisco ; the Court has a question to ask you." This was done, 
 
 * He appears to have been finally found guilty (of belonging to the sect) by six 
 of his Judges. — Note; July 11, 1851.
 
 2G STATE TROSECUTIONS OF 
 
 and Counsel then informed that he might pursue his examination. 
 A hiugh of bitter mockery ran through the Court. 
 
 I must now place before you an example of the humanity, with 
 which invalid prisoners are treated by the Grand Criminal Court 
 at Naples. The statement is not mine ; but it proceeds from a 
 gentleman and an eye-witness, and one who thoroughly under- 
 stands the language. 
 
 " The original number of the persons under trial for forming 
 I)art of the imaginary society christened by the police the Unita 
 Italiana, was forty-two. The list was headed by the name of 
 Antonio Leipnecher, now no more. His illness prevented the 
 Court sitting for some days. At last Navarro informed the medi- 
 cal men attached to the prisons, that their consciences must find 
 means to certify the possibility of Leipnecher's attendance on the 
 following morning. 
 
 " On the following morning I was on ray way to the tribunal 
 with a friend, when we met one of the doctors with whom my friend 
 was acquainted. He began to talk about Leipnecher, and said 
 the man was dangerously ill, but that his position was such that 
 he could not safely certify to the impossibility of his attendance, 
 and that he had consequently informed the President that Leip- 
 necher might be brought into Court in a sedan chair, provided 
 restoratives were allowed him and no question icere asked him. 
 
 " I entered the Court, and after the other prisoners had taken 
 their places a sedan chair was brought in fi*om which Antonio 
 Leipnecher was led, or rather carried, in a state of mental and 
 bodily prostration. 
 
 " Navarro opened the proceedings by calling upon the Cancel- 
 Here to read the interrogatorio of Antonio Leipnecher, and when 
 finished, called upon him for his observations. His lawyer said 
 that he had already endeavoured to speak to him, but that he was 
 unable to answer or understand. Navarro then addressed him in 
 a menacing tone, cautioning him that by shamming illness he was 
 ruining his own cause. Leipnecher made some inaudible observa- 
 tions, which were repeated by another prisoner, to the effect that 
 the doctors had not taken any pains to cure him. ' Oh !' said 
 Navarro, ^ write down that he says the doctors would not cure 
 him.' The Procuratore Generale, Angelillo, then desired that the
 
 THE NEAPOLITAN GOVERNMENT. 27 
 
 doctors might be again called in to give their opinion as to his 
 present state, which they did in an hour, and reported him suffer- 
 ing from an acute fever and unable to remain. ' But,' said An- 
 gelillo, ' as he is here, why can he not remain ?' ' He cannot,' 
 said the doctors, ' without immediate danger to his life.' The 
 Court then broke up, and when it again met in the course of two 
 or three days Leipnecher was in his grave." 
 
 But I know that, after what I have said of the Grand Criminal 
 Court of Naples, I must have stirred up incredulity in the breast 
 of any one accustomed to perceive in the judges of a country the 
 very highest impersonation of the principles of honour and dis- 
 passionate equity. I do not then intend to urge that the judges 
 of Naples are all monsters, but they are slaves. They are very 
 numerous, very ill-paid, and they hold their offices during pleasure. 
 They are in general of far less eminence and weight, and of a 
 lower moral standard, than the higher members of the Bar who 
 plead before them. The highest salary of any person on the bench 
 of judges is, I believe, 4000 ducats a year. Perhaps the eight 
 judges who are now trying political prisoners by the hundred in 
 Naples, may have among them about half the salary of one 
 English Puisne Judge. But the main element in the case is, the 
 tyrannical severity with which they are treated in case of their 
 defeating the accusations brought by Government. Not, indeed, 
 that acquittal in all cases signifies much. As the Government 
 arrest and imprison without any warrant, or any charge ; so, on 
 the same broad and cherished principle of illegality, they think 
 nothing of keeping men in prison after they have been first punished 
 by some two or three years of imprisonment and terror, and then 
 solemnly declared guiltless. For example, out of the forty-one* 
 prisoners (reduced from forty-two by the death of Leipnecher) 
 whose cases were finally disposed of by the sentences of last 
 February, six, I think, were acquitted ; and the last I heard of 
 those six persons, some time after their acquittal, was that they 
 were all still in prison ! Under these circumstances, it will perhaps 
 excite no surprise that the judges escaped with impunity, in con- 
 sideration of their having condemned thirty-five to punishments 
 
 * This number, I think, should be forty : the number acquitted, eight : the 
 number coudcmu-jd, thirty-two. — Note, July 11, 1851,
 
 28 STATE PROSECUTIONS OF 
 
 for the most part awfully severe. But woe be to the judges them- 
 selves if they baulk* the main object of a prosecution. In Naples 
 itself, I understand that a gentleman of eighty years of age, who 
 had exercised the office of judge for half a century, was turned 
 out upon the world a short time ago, for having acquitted the 
 parties charged with having composed or published an obnoxious 
 article in a newspaper. A more notorious case has recently hap- 
 pened at Reggio. A batch of prisoners were there brought to 
 trial for some matter connected with the period of the ill-fated 
 Constitution. They w^ere acquitted ; and the arm of vengeance 
 descended upon the judges. After such an outrage on their part, 
 the entire Court, as if an Augean stable, was swept clear. Two, 
 I believe — probably the docile minority — had only a nominal 
 deprivation, being classed as disponibili, and held qualified for 
 new appointments, which, for all I know, they may now have 
 received. But six judges, the offending majority, w^ere mercilessly 
 and absolutely dismissed. How can '.ve be surprised that, with 
 this perfection of discipline, the word of command should even by 
 judges be readily obeyed ? 
 
 Three of the forty-one prisoners in what I may call the Poerio 
 case were condemned to death — Settembrini, Agresti, and Fauci- 
 tano. Poerio himself was condemned to twenty-four years of irons- 
 I believe the vote on him was as follows : — Three judges for ac- 
 quittal ; two for irons ; three (including the delicate, scrupulous, 
 and impartial mind of Navarro) for death — on that testimony of 
 Jervolino, which I have sufficiently described. The two latter sec- 
 tions then joined in voting for the lighter punishment, aud thus 
 the majority was obtained, one vote having been at first drawn off 
 from the side of acquittal by the bullying process to which I have 
 before referred, and which was fitly intrusted to the delicate, 
 scrupulous, impartial, and generous Navarro. 
 
 A strange error is stated to have occurred. It seems that the 
 Neapolitan law humanely provides, that when three persons are 
 found guilty capitally, the sentence can be pronounced only on 
 one ; but that this was forgotten by the judges, and only found out 
 by the Procurator-General, or some other party, after they thought 
 they had finished. I have even heard it stated that Settembrini 
 and Agi'esti received, as of mercy, a reprieve, to which they were
 
 THE NEAPOLITAN GOVERNMEN'J'. 29 
 
 entitled as of right. As to Faucitano, I will not enter into de- 
 tails of what occurred at Caserta in the palace, but I have heard 
 them, and minutely too ; and there appears to me too good reason 
 to believe that the threat of the withdrawal of certain useful sup- 
 port from the Government of Naples, and not humanity, dictated, 
 at the last moment, the commutation of his punishment. 
 
 Now there is no doubt that the infliction of capital punishment, 
 under judicial sentences, is extremely rare in the kingdom of 
 Naples ; but whatever capital punishment may be in other points 
 of view, I do not hesitate to say it would be a refined humanity, in 
 respect to the amount of suffering which it inflicts, in whatever 
 form, through the agency of man, as compared with that which is 
 actually undergone in sentences of imprisonment. Yet even on the 
 severity of these sentences I would not endeavour to fix attention 
 so much as to draw it off from the great fact of illegality, which 
 seems to me to bo the foundation of the Neapolitan system : ille- 
 gality, the fountain-head of cruelty and baseness, and every other 
 vice ; illegality which gives a bad conscience, that bad conscience 
 creates fears, those fears lead to tyranny, that tyranny begets re- 
 sentment, that resentment creates true causes of fear where they 
 were not before ; and thus fear is quickened and enhanced, the 
 original vice multiplies itself with fearful speed, and old crime 
 engenders a necessity for new. 
 
 I have spoken of Settembrini and his reputed and too credible 
 torture ; I come now to what I have either seen, or heard on the 
 most direct and unquestionable authority. 
 
 In February last, Poerio and sixteen of the co-accused (with 
 few of whom, however, he had had any previous acquaintance) 
 were confined in the Bagno of Nisida near the Lazaretto. For 
 one half hour in the week, a little prolonged by the leniency of the 
 superintendent, they were allowed to see their friends outside the 
 prison. This was their sole view of the natural beauties with 
 which they were surrounded. At other times they were exclu- 
 sively within the walls. The whole number of them, except I 
 think one, then in the infirmary, were confined, night and day, in 
 a single room of about sixteen palms in length by ten or twelve 
 in breadth, and about ten in height ; I think with some small yard 
 for exercise. Something like a fifth must be taken ofl" these num-
 
 30 STATE PROSECUTIONS OF 
 
 bers to convert palms into feet. When tlie beds were let down at 
 night, there was no space whatever between them ; they could only 
 get out at the foot, and being chained two and two, only in pairs. 
 In this room they had to cook or prepare what was sent them by 
 the kindness of their friends. On one side, the level of the ground 
 is over the top of the room ; it therefore reeked with damp, and 
 from this, tried with long confinement, they declared they suffered 
 greatly. There was one window — of course unglazed — and let 
 not an Englishman suppose that this constant access of the air in 
 the Neapolitan climate is agreeable or innocuous ; on the contrary, 
 it is even more important to health there than here to have the 
 means of excluding the open air, for example, before and at sun- 
 set. Vicissitude of climate, again, is quite as much felt there as 
 here, and the early morning is sometimes bitterly cold. 
 
 Their chains were as follows. Each man wears a strong leather 
 girth round him above the hips. To this are secured the upper 
 ends of two chains. One chain of four long and heavy links de- 
 scends to a kind of double ring fixed round the ancle. The 
 second chain consists of eight links, each of the same weight and 
 length with the four, and this unites the two prisoners together, 
 so that they can stand about six feet apart. Neither of these chains 
 is ever undone, day or night. The dress of common felons, which, 
 as well as the felon's cap, was there worn by the late cabinet- 
 minister of King Ferdinand of Naples, is composed of a rough 
 and coarse red jacket, with trowsers of the same material — very 
 like the cloth made in this country from what is called devil's dust ; 
 the trowsers are nearly black in colour. On his head he had a 
 small cap which makes up the suit ; it is of the same material. 
 The trowsers button all the way up, that they may be removed 
 at night without disturbing the chains. 
 
 The weight of these chains, I understand, is about eight rotoli, 
 or between sixteen and seventeen English pounds for the shorter 
 one, which must be doubled when we give each prisoner his half 
 of the longer one. The prisoners had a heavy limping movement, 
 much as if one leg had been shorter than the other. But the re- 
 finement of suffering in this case arises from the circumstance that 
 here we have men of education and high feeling chained inces- 
 santly together. For no purpose are these chains undone ; and
 
 THE NEAPOLITAN GOVERNMENT. 31 
 
 the meaning of these last words must be well considered ; they are 
 to be taken strictly. 
 
 Well, it may be thought, the practice is barbarous, and ought 
 not to prevail ; still, as it does prevail, it might be difficult to 
 exempt these persons, although gentlemen, from it. But this, my 
 Lord, is not the true explanation. On the contrary, it was for the 
 sake of these very gentlemen that the practice of chaining two 
 and two was introduced into the Bagno of Nisida. I was assured 
 that two or three weeks before, among eight hundred prisoners in 
 that bagno (which to the passer-by looks hardly bigger than a 
 martello tower) these double irons were totally unknown ; and 
 there were many political offenders then there, but they were men 
 of the lower class, to whom this kind of punishment would have 
 been but a slight addition. But just about the time when Poerio 
 and his companions were sent to Nisida, an order came from 
 Prince Luigi, the brother of the King, who, as Admiral, has 
 charge of the island, ordering that double irons should be used for 
 those who had been brought into the prison since a certain rather 
 recent date — I think July 22, 1850. Thus it was contrived to 
 have them put on Poerio and his friends, and yet to have a plea, 
 such as it is, for saying that the measure was not adopted with a 
 view to their case, and to the extreme moral (as well as the not 
 slight physical) suffering which it would secure for them. Among 
 these, as I had already said, had been chained together the in- 
 former Margherita and one of his victims. Among these, I myself 
 saw a political prisoner, Romeo, chained in the manner I have 
 described, to an ordinary offender, a young man with one of the 
 most ferocious and sullen countenances 1 have seen among many 
 hundreds of the Neapolitan criminals. 
 
 The inspector of this prison, General Palomba, had, I was in- 
 formed, never, or not for a very long time, visited it. But he had 
 come just before I was there ; and it is impossible to avoid the 
 inference that he came in order to make certain, that the orders 
 for increased severity were not evaded or relaxed. 
 
 I had heard that the political offenders were obliged to have 
 their heads shaved ; but this had not been done, though they had 
 been obliged to shave away any beard they might have had. 
 
 I must say I was astonished at the mildness with which they
 
 32 STATE PROSECUTIONS OF 
 
 spoke of those at whose hands they were enduring these abominable 
 persecutions, and at their Chrif^tian resignation as well as their 
 forgiving temper, for they seemed ready to undergo with cheer- 
 fulness whatever might yet be in store for them. Their health 
 was evidently suffering. I saw the ainit of one of these prisoners, 
 a man of about eight and twenty, weep when she spoke of his 
 altered looks, and of the youthful colour but a few w-eeks before in 
 his cheeks. I should have taken him for forty. I had seen Po- 
 erio in December, during his trial ; but I should not have known 
 him at Nisida. He did not expect his own health to stand, 
 although God, he said, had given him strength to endure. It was 
 suggested to him from an authoritative quarter, that his mother, 
 of whom he was the only prop, might be sent to the King to im- 
 ]ilore his pardon, or he might himself apply for it. He steadily 
 refused. That mother^, when I was at Naples, w-as losing her men- 
 tal powers under the pressure of her afflictions. It seemed as if 
 God, more compassionate than her fellow-creatures, were taking 
 them away in mercy, for she had, amidst her sorrow^ trances and 
 visions of repose ; she told a young physician, known to me, that 
 she had been seeing her son, and with him another person. The 
 two were in different gaols, and she had seen neither. 
 
 Since I have left Naples, Poerio has sunk to a lower depth of 
 calamity. He has been taken, I understand, from Nisida to 
 Ischia, farther from public interest, and perhaps to some abode 
 like the Maschio of Porcari. What I saw was quite enough. 
 Never before have I conversed, and never probably shall I converse 
 again, with a cultivated and accomplished gentleman, of whose 
 innocence, obedience to law, and love of his country I was as firmly 
 and as rationally assured as of your Lordship's or that of any 
 otlrer man of the very highest character, whilst he stood before me 
 amidst surrounding felons, and clad in the vile imiform of guilt 
 and shaine. But he is now gone where he will scarcely have the 
 opportunity even of such conversation. I cannot honestly suppress 
 my conviction, that the object in the case of Poerio, as a man of 
 mental power sufficient to be feared, is to obtain the scaffold's aim 
 by means more cruel than the scaffold, and without the outcry 
 which the scaffold would create. 
 
 It is time for me to draw to a close. I might, indeed, detail
 
 THE NEAPOLITAN GOVERNMENT. 33 
 
 circumstances to show that language is used by the liighcst au- 
 thority in Naples, demonstrating that attachment to the Constitu- 
 tion, that is the fundamental law of the State, is there regarded 
 and punished as a crime ; and again, to show that men, aye 
 ecclesiastics as well as laymen, are confessedly detained in prison 
 there not because they have committed crime, not because they 
 are even suspected of it, but because it is thought that through 
 their means may possibly be obtained at some future time, some 
 imaginable information tending to inculpate somebody else. But 
 I will wind up this repulsive narration, with noticing a circum- 
 stance that too clearly shows what value is placed by those in 
 power at Naples upon human life as such. 
 
 I have spoken of the Neapolitan prisons. It appears that, not 
 long ago, exasperated by the treatment they received, the inmates 
 of the State prison of Procida revolted, and endeavoured to gain 
 possession of the prison. The mode of quelling this revolt was as 
 follows. The soldiers in charge of them threw hand-grenades 
 among them, and killed them to the number of one hundred and 
 seventy-five. In this number were included seventeen invalids in 
 the infirmary, who had no part in the revolt. I have been told 
 that, for perpetrating this massacre, the Serjeant who commanded 
 the troops was decorated with, and may now be seen wearing, a 
 military order. I refer to this incident without forgetting that a 
 revolt or riot in a prison is a formidable thing, and requires strong 
 measures ; but with the overwhelming force everywhere at the com- 
 mand of the Executive power, and with the mild character of Nea- 
 politans, even as criminals, taken into view, no one will believe that 
 there was the slightest call for this wholesale slaughter. 
 
 Enough, it seems to me, has now been said to show that there 
 are the strongest reasons for believing that, under the veil of 
 secrecy, which covers the proceedings of the Government of Na})les, 
 there lie hid the gigantic horrors, to which I have alluded as 
 afflicting that country, desolating the entire classes upon which 
 the life and growth of the nation depend, undermining the founda- 
 tion of all civil rule, and preparing the way for violent revolution 
 by converting the Power, wiiich is set up in human societies to 
 maintain law and order, and to defend innocence and j)unish crime, 
 into the grand law-breaker and malefactor of the country ; the first 
 
 D
 
 34 STATE TEOSECUTIONS OF 
 
 in rank among oppressors, tlie deadly enemy of freedom and intel- 
 ligence, and the active fomenter and instigator of the vilest cor- 
 ruption among the people. 
 
 While I speak thus freely and strongly of the acts of the 
 Neapolitan Government, I have deliberately refrained (with the 
 exception of certain clear cases) from any attempt to point out the 
 agents, or to distribute or fix the responsibility. Beyond the 
 limits I have named I know not, and have not the desire to know, 
 to whom it belongs. I am aware that, although the Sovereign be 
 the effective governor of the country, an impenetrable veil may 
 pass between his eyes and the actual system of means by which 
 this main department of his Government is worked ; I know it to 
 be the belief of some persons that this is actually the case ; I 
 must add that I am acquainted with an instance of a direct and 
 unceremonious appeal to the King's humanity, which met with a 
 response on his part evidently sincere ; although, according to 
 the latest accounts I have received, his intentions have as yet 
 been thwarted by other influences, and have not taken practical 
 effect. 
 
 And now, my dear Lord, I conclude, as I began, with ex- 
 pressing my gratitude to you for allowing me to place this letter 
 in your hands. But for this permission, I might have found 
 myself wholly without the means of putting any such engine into 
 operation as would offer me the least hope of quietly producing a 
 salutary effect upon the proceedings of the Neapolitan Govern- 
 ment. I took leave, indeed, of Naples with a fixed resolution to 
 strain every nerve for effecting that purpose, and for effecting it 
 with promptitude. But I am very sensible of the hazards attend- 
 ing any appeal to the public opinion of this and other countries, 
 and how such an appeal, if strong enough to be eflfective, must 
 also be so strong as to run some risk of quickening the action of 
 the elements of social and political disorder. I freely own that 
 my sense of the actual evils pressing upon the Neapolitan people, 
 of the other and opposite evils which these are rapidly engendering, 
 and of the obligations arising out of the whole, is so deep and so 
 intense, that I must, but for the expectation of some prompt and 
 marked signs of improvement, to be brought about through the 
 channels which your just personal weight will, as I trust, open for
 
 THE NEAPOLITAN GOVERNMENT. 35 
 
 mc, have at once encountered the hazards of publicity, wliatever 
 they might be, as I might still, in contingencies I am unwilling to 
 contemplate, be compelled to encounter them. 
 
 But this I must add. Into some one or more particulars of the 
 statements I have made, error of form, and even error of fact, may 
 have crept. I am prepared for the possibility, that if those state- 
 ments should in any manner reach the persons whose conduct 
 they principally concern, they may be met with general denial, 
 and that denial may even be supported and accredited with some 
 instance or instances of apparent, nay, possibly of real confutation. 
 I now state that I cannot and shall not entail upon your Lordship 
 the charge of handing to and fro replications and rejoinders. I 
 will not discuss the correctness of my statements with those who 
 alone are likely to impugn them, because I cannot do it upon 
 equal terms. First, inasmuch as in Naples secrecy is the almost 
 universal rule of the proceedings of Government, and the perfect 
 servitude of the press cuts off the means of sifting controverted 
 matter, and thus the ordinary avenues to truth. Secondly, 
 because my entering upon such details would infallibly cause 
 unjust suspicion to light upon individuals, and would thus at once 
 give rise to further persecutions. Thirdly, and even most of all, 
 because I am so entirely certain of the accuracy of my statements 
 in the general picture they present, and the general results to which 
 they lead, as to feel that they are beyond bond fide dispute, and 
 that to engage in any such dispute would be to postpone, perhaps 
 indefinitely, the attainment of the practical ends which I propose 
 to myself the hope of gaining. I have the less scruple in attaching 
 my own credit to them, because I am convinced that as a whole 
 they are within the truth. Not in one word or syllable, of 
 course, have I consciously heightened the colouring of the case 
 beyond the facts ; I have omitted much, which even my short 
 residence in Naples forced upon my knowledge ; I have endea- 
 voured to avoid multiplicity of detail, and have referred parti- 
 cularly to the case of Poerio, not because I have the slightest 
 reason to believe it more cruel or wicked than others, but because 
 I was able to follow it somewhat better through its particulars, and 
 because it is one which will more readily than most others attract 
 interest out of his own country. Criminc ab uno disce omnes. It is 
 
 D 2
 
 36 STATE PROSECUTIONS, &c. 
 
 time that either the veil should be lifted from scenes fitter for 
 hell than earth, or some considerable mitigation should be volun- 
 tarily adopted. I have undertaken this wearisome and painful 
 task, in the hope of doing something to diminish a mass of human 
 suffering as huge, I believe, and as acute, to say the least, as any 
 that the eye of Heaven beholds. This may, as I fondly trust, be 
 effected, through your Lordship's aid, on the one hand without 
 elusion or delay, on the other without the mischiefs and incon- 
 veniences which I am fully sensible might, nay in some degree 
 must, attend the process, were I thrown back on my own unaided 
 resources. 
 
 I remain, my dear Lord Aberdeen, 
 
 Most sincerely yours, 
 
 W. E. Gladstone. 
 
 T/ie Earl of Aberdeen y 'K.T., 
 il'c. St'c. Sfc.
 
 LETTER II.
 
 LETTER II. 
 
 Sfc. Sfc. 
 
 My dear Lord Aberdeen, 
 
 The letter, of which this contains the sequel, was of a per- 
 sonal and private nature ; and was addressed to you with the ardent 
 and even sanguine hope, that it need never have to bear any 
 other character. I had such a conviction of the general truth and 
 strength of the statements it contained, and of the extreme urgency 
 of the case, and I knew so well, as indeed all men know, the just 
 weight attaching to your Lordship's name, even while you act in 
 a personal and private capacity alone, that when at my request 
 you consented to make my representations known in those quarters 
 to which it appeared most desirable to resort, my mind was dis- 
 burdened of a heavy weight, and I cheerfully anticipated some 
 such practical consequences as, even if small in themselves, might, 
 notwithstanding, by their character, have encouraged and justified 
 a patient waiting for more considerable results from farther and 
 more mature deliberation. 
 
 It was in itself a thing so reasonable, that private representation 
 and remonstrance should in the first instance be attempted, that I 
 cannot regret the course that was taken, though it entailed the 
 serious delays required for your own mature consideration of the 
 case, and for making it known in those other spheres to which I 
 have referred. But the manner in which it had been received in 
 the quarter directly affected by my allegations, had entirely con- 
 vinced me that it would not be warrantable to trust any longer 
 in this case to the force of mere expostulation, before, driven from 
 the definite hopes, which I had founded upon your assistance, I 
 committed my first letter to the press. I wish, however, to 
 make it clearly understood, that I am alone responsible for that 
 proceeding.
 
 40 STATE PROSECUTIONS OF 
 
 I hiive felt it, then, my bounden duty to remit my statements 
 by publication to the bar of general opinion — of that opinion which 
 circulates throughout Europe with a facility and force increasing 
 from year to year, and which, however in some things it may fall 
 sliort or in others exceed, is, so far at least, impregnated with the 
 spirit of the Gospel, that its accents are ever favourable to the 
 diminution of human suffering. 
 
 To have looked for any modification whatever of the reactionary 
 policy of a government, in connection with a moving cause so 
 trivial as any sentiments or experience of mine, may be thought pre- 
 sumptuous or chimerical. What claim, it may be asked, had I, 
 one among thousands of mere travellers, upon the Neapolitan 
 Government ? The deliberations which fix the policy of States, 
 especially of absolute States, must be presumed to have been 
 laborious and solid in some proportion to their immense, their 
 terrific power over the practical destinies of mankind ; and they 
 ought not to be unsettled at a moment's notice in deference to the 
 wishes or the impressions of insignificant, or adversely prepossessed, 
 or at best irresponsible individuals. 
 
 My answer is short. On the Government of Naples I had no 
 claim whatever ; but as a man I felt and knew it to be my duty to 
 testify to what 1 had credibly heard, or personally seen, of the 
 needless and acute sufferings of men. Yet, aware that such testi- 
 mony, when once launched, is liable to be used for purposes 
 neither intended nor desired by those who bear it, and that in 
 times of irritability and misgiving, such as these are on the Con- 
 tinent of Europe, slight causes may occasionally produce, or 
 may tend and aid to produce, effects less inconsiderable, I willingly 
 postponed any public appeal until the case should have been seen 
 in private by those whose conduct it principally touched. It has 
 been so seen. They have made their option ; and while I reluc- 
 tantly accept the consequences, their failing to meet it by any 
 practical improvement will never be urged by me as constituting 
 an aggravation of their previous responsibilities. 
 
 It may, again, disajipoint some persons that I should now 
 simply appear in my personal capacity through the press, instead 
 of inviting to this grave and painful question the attention of that 
 House of Parliament to which I have the honour to belong. To
 
 THE NEAPOLITAN GOVERNMENT. 41 
 
 such I would say, that I have advisedly abstained from mixing up 
 my statements with any British agencies or influences which are 
 official, diplomatic, or political. I might indeed, by thus asso- 
 ciating them with the interests of parties or individuals, have ob- 
 tained for them an increased amount of favourable attention ; but 
 I might on the other hand have arrayed against my representa- 
 tions, and against what I believe to be the sacred purposes of 
 humanity, the jealousies of those connected with other European 
 States; and, in the kingdom of the two Sicilies itself, those laud- 
 able sentiments of national independence, which lie at the root of 
 patriotism. I should in effect have caused, if not made, a funda- 
 mental misrepresentation of the whole case. The claims, the 
 interests, which I have in view are not those of England. Either 
 they are wholly null and valueless, or they are broad as the 
 extension of the human race, and long-lived as its duration. It 
 might, indeed, be better to obtain some partial redress of these 
 grievances through the political influence and power of this country, 
 than to remain wholly without it : but I am so deeply sensible of 
 the evils attendant, under the circumstances of the case, upon that 
 mode of proceeding, and upon its tendency to multiply the number 
 and enhance the force of obstructive and even counteracting 
 causes, that I deliberately abstain from appealing to the generous 
 sympathies, with which I am certain the British Parliament would 
 meet the statement of such a case ; and if the case shall penetrate 
 within those precincts, it will be by no agency, encouragement, or 
 assent of mine. 
 
 Upon reviewing and reconsidering the terms of the letter 
 addressed by me to your Lordship on the 7th of April, I find in 
 them a warmth which may be open to criticism, but which then 
 appeared, and still appears, to me to be generally justified by the 
 circumstances of the case. I find a great variety of allegations 
 which will excite horror and indignation in some, incredulity in 
 others, surprise in most : but which few will pass by with indif- 
 ference. I find these strong statements made with the avowal on 
 my part, that there are many of them which it has been impossible 
 for me to verify with precision in their detail ; because the ordinary 
 sources of infoi'mation are closed ; because statements when received 
 cannot, at Naples, be subjected to the test of free discussion ;
 
 42 STATE PROSECUTIONS OF 
 
 and because the supposition once entertained against a Neapolitan 
 that he conveyed to any one, especially to an Englishman (perhaps 
 I might add especially, even as among Englishmen, to myself), 
 ideas or intelligence unfavourable to the Government, would have 
 marked him out as the object of the spy, and the victim of the 
 informer. I stand now, as I stood then, upon the conviction that 
 my general representation is not too highly charged ; upon the 
 consciousness that I have done all that could be done to attain to 
 accuracy in detail ; upon the fact that perhaps the most disgraceful 
 circumstances are those which rest upon public notoriety, or upon 
 my own personal knowledge ; and upon the assurance I have too 
 good reason to entertain, that any attempt on my part to confer 
 habitually with Neapolitan subjects, or to conduct any regular 
 search for information through their means, or any indication, 
 direct or indirect, of any individuals among them as the sources 
 from which I have derived my knowledge and impressions, would 
 be fatal to their personal liberty and happiness. 
 
 But I do not stand upon these grounds alone. My assurance 
 of the general truth of my representations has been heightened, 
 my fears of any material error in detail have been diminished, 
 since the date of my first letter, by the negative but powerful 
 evidence of the manner in which they have been met. Writing in 
 July, I have as yet no qualification worth naming to append to the 
 allegations which I first put into shape in April. I am indeed 
 aware, that my opinion with respect to the number of political 
 prisoners in the kingdom of the Two Sicilies has been met by an 
 assertion, purporting to be founded on returns, that instead of 
 twenty thousand they are about two thousand. Even this number 
 has not always been admitted ; for I recollect that in November 
 last they were stated to me, by an Englishman of high honour and 
 in close communication with the Court, to be less than one thou- 
 sand. I have carefully pointed out, that my statement is one 
 founded on opinion : on reasonable opinion as I think, but upon 
 opinion still. Let the Neapolitan Government have the full 
 benefit of the contradiction I have mentioned. To me it would be 
 a gi'eat relief, if I could honestly say it at once commanded my 
 credence. The readers of my letters will not be surprised at my 
 hesitation to admit it. But this I would add : the mere number
 
 THE NEAPOLITAN GOVERNMENT. 43 
 
 of political prisoners is in my view, like the state of the prisons, in 
 itself, a secondary feature of the case. If they are fairly and 
 legally arrested, fairly and legally treated before trial, fairly and 
 legally tried, that is the main matter. Where fairness and legality 
 preside over the proceedings, wc need have no great fear about 
 an undue number of prisoners. But my main charges go to show 
 that there is gross illegality and gross unfairness in the proceed- 
 ings ; and it is only in connection with the proof of this, that the 
 number of prisoners and the state of the prisons come to be matters 
 of such importance. 
 
 It will have been remarked in my former letter that I have 
 spoken of what I myself saw in the Neapolitan prisons, and even 
 in a few cases of what I heard from prisoners. I think it neces- 
 sary to state the motive which led me to seek entrance there. It 
 was not an idle curiosity, but an impression of the duty incumbent 
 upon me to be an eye-witness, so far as was in ray power, to the 
 facts, before deciding upon any ulterior step. It is likewise a 
 sacred obligation that I should state that those luifortunate persons 
 are in no sense or degree responsible for my having visited their 
 melancholy abodes, nor were they in any manner privy or aux- 
 iliary to it, or to anything I have said or done, before or subse- 
 quently. If they have since been subjected, as has been reported 
 to me, to an increase of suffering and hardship, that increase can 
 derive no justification from any such act or knowledge of theirs. 
 It is right too for me to add that, when I refer to their views or 
 statements concerning the trials, I simply {juote from printed 
 records which I obtained without their aid or knowledge. If a 
 measure taken by me simply and solely to get at the truth, by the 
 only means which were open to me, should have resulted in the 
 aggravation of the condition of innocent men, it does but afford 
 another proof of the miserable tendency of tyranny, like every 
 other evil, to multiply and reproduce itself. AVe call necessity the 
 tyrant's plea, and such it is ; but it is not a plea only, it is a 
 reason : it is a hard and cruel task^mistress ; and the wilful abuse 
 of our high faculty of choice for the purposes of evil, soon brings 
 about a state of things in which common volition is well nigh 
 superseded, and a resolution almost heroic is required to arrest 
 the fatal course.
 
 44 STATE TROSECUTIONS OF 
 
 I do not intend to add to the statements of fact contained in 
 my last letter, though they are but a portion, and not always the 
 most striking portion, of those which I might have produced. One 
 reason of this is, that they are, as I think, sufficient for their 
 purpose ; and another, that by a different course I should probably 
 put in jeopardy, not indeed the persons who made them to me, 
 but those whom the agents of the police might suppose, or might 
 find it convenient to pretend that they supposed, to have so made 
 them. 
 
 My chief purpose at present is, to sustain the general probability 
 of my statements, by a reference to unquestionable facts, which 
 have occurred both in other parts of Italy and in Naples itself ; 
 facts such as exhibit a state of things to us most difficult to believe 
 or even to apprehend, but there, alas ! too familiar and too true. 
 
 That my statements sbould be received in the first instance with 
 incredulity, can cause me no dissatisfaction. Nay, more : I think 
 that, for the honour of human nature, statements of such a kind 
 ought to be so received. Men ought to be slow to believe that 
 such things can happen, and happen in a Christian country, the 
 seat of almost the oldest European civilisation. They ought to 
 be disposed rather to set down my assertions to fanaticism or 
 folly on my part, than to believe them as an over true tale of the 
 actual proceedings of a settled government. But though they 
 ought to be thus disposed at the outset, they will not, I trust, bar 
 their minds to the entrance of the light, however painful be the 
 objects it may disclose. I have myself felt that incredulity, and 
 wish I could have felt it still ; but it has yielded to conviction 
 step by step, and with fresh pain at every fresh access of evidence. 
 I proceed accordingly to bring the reader's mind, so far as I am 
 able, under the process through which my own has passed^ and to 
 state some characteristic facts, which may convey more faithfully 
 than abstract description an idea of the political atmosphere of 
 Italy. 
 
 For example, I have within the last few lines spoken of the 
 Neapolitan police in such a manner as I should be sorry to apply 
 in most countries to those classes which a police, according to our 
 notions, is appointed specially to coerce- Among ourselves the 
 police constable is, as such, the object of general respect ; tradi-
 
 THE XEAPOLITAX GOVERNMENT. 45 
 
 tion suggests, and the conduct of the body confirms, this feeling; 
 nor have we at present a word in use to describe the character, 
 which conveys any unfavourable idea. But in the Italian tongue 
 he is a shirro or a sgherro, words which carry the united idea of 
 degradation in the person described, and loathing in those who 
 utter them : words, too, which it is impossible to render perfectly 
 into English. And now, having spoken of the way in which others 
 think of them, let us give a specimen of the manner in which the 
 Italian pohce officer estimates himself. I take my example from 
 Lombardy ; yet I am very far fi'om implying that the police of 
 that country has sunk to the level of the corresponding class in 
 Naples. 
 
 There was lately a well-known officer of police in Milan, 
 named Bolza. In the time of the Revolution of 1848 the private 
 notes of the Government on the character of its agents were dis- 
 covered. Bolza is there described as a person harsh, insincere, 
 anything but respectable, venal, a fanatical Napoleonist until 
 1815, then an Austrian partizan of equal heat, " and to-morrow a 
 Turk, were Soliman to enter upon these States ;" capable of 
 anything for money's sake against either friend or foe. Still, as 
 the memorandum continues, " he understands his business, and is 
 right good at it. Nothing is known of his morals, or of his re- 
 ligion." But a work published at Lugano contains his last will, 
 and this curious document testifies to the acute sense which even 
 such a man retained of his own degradation. " I absolutely 
 forbid ray heirs," he says, " to allow any mark, of whatever kind, 
 to be placed over the spot where I shall be interred : much more 
 any inscription or epitaph. I recommend my dearly beloved wife 
 to impress upon my children the maxim that, when they shall be 
 in a condition to solicit an employment from the generosity of the 
 Government, they are to ask for it elsewhere than in the depart- 
 ment of the executive police : and not, unless under extraordinary 
 circumstances, to give her consent to the marriage of any of my 
 daughters with a member of that service." * 
 
 I shall next name two facts which are related by Farini, the 
 recent and esteemed writer of a History of the States of the 
 
 * GuaKerio, Gli ultimi Rivrtlj<lnionti Ttaliani, vol. i. p. 431, note.
 
 46 STATE I'KUSECUTIONS OF 
 
 Church since 1815: — "There exists a confidential circuUir of 
 C'ardinal Bernetti, in which he orders the Judges, in the case of 
 Liberals charged with ordinary offences or crimes, invariably to 
 inflict the highest degree of punishment." * 
 
 Bernetti was not an Austrian partizan : it is alleged that he 
 was supplanted (early in the reign of Gregory XVI.) through 
 Austrian influence. His favourite idea was the entire independ- 
 ence of the Pontifical State ; and therefore the circular to which 
 I have referred is purely Italian. 
 
 This was under Gregory XVI. Under Leo XII., Cardinal 
 Rivarola went as legate a latere into Romagna. On the 31st of 
 August 1825, he pronounced sentence on five hundred and eight 
 persons. Seven of these were to suffer death. Forty-nine were 
 to undergo hard labour for terms varying between ten years and 
 life. Fifty-two were to be imprisoned for similar terms. These 
 sentences were pronounced privately, at the simple will of the 
 Cardinal, upon mere presumptions that the parties belonged to 
 the liberal sects ; and, what is to the ear of an Englishman the 
 most astounding fact of all, after a process simply analogous to 
 that of a Grand Jury (I compare the process, not the persons), 
 and without any opportunity given to the accused for defence If 
 
 I may add a reference to an edict published by the Duke of 
 Modena on the 18th of April 1832. This edict ordains that poli- 
 tical prisoners may be sentenced to any punishment materially less 
 than that provided by law upon proof of the offence, without any 
 trial or form of proceeding whatever, in cases where it has been 
 agi'eed not to disclose the names of the witnesses, or not to make 
 known the purport of their evidence. With these reduced 
 punishments exile was to be ordinarily combined : and fines, as 
 well as other appendages, might be added at discretion ! The 
 edict may be seen in the notorious newspaper called La Voce della 
 Verita, No. 110. 
 
 Having now recited a few circumstances illustrative of the 
 machinery by which, and of the principles on which, an Italian 
 Government has sometimes been conducted, I proceed to set forth 
 
 * Fariiii, Lo Stato Romano, vol. i. p. 77, book i. chap, v., note. 
 t Ibid., chap, ii.
 
 THE NEAPOLITAN GOVERNMENT. 47 
 
 some material points connected with the political position of the 
 present Government of Naples. In my first letter, while express- 
 ing an anxiety to avoid the discussion of the subject, I likewise 
 intimated that some reference to it was necessary, in order to make 
 the present policy comprehensible. Nemo repente fuit turpissi- 
 mus ; and no such extremities of fear, cruelty, and baseness, as it 
 has been my irksome duty to describe, could be reached by any 
 Government but one already unmanned by a bad conscience, and 
 driven on by necessity to cover old misdeeds by heaping new ones 
 on them. 
 
 In the month of January 1848, a Constitution was granted to 
 the kingdom of Naples. It was proclaimed and sworn to by the 
 monarch amidst every circumstance of solemnity, an^lthe universal 
 joy of the people. Liberatore, one of the Jesuits of Naples, in a 
 sermon delivered on the 15th of April 1848, says : — " The sove- 
 reign has shown himself neither obstinately tenacious, nor precipi- 
 tately pliable. He procrastinated, nay repelled, until it was de- 
 monstrated, that the demand proceeded from the universal desire 
 of a people, and not from the isolated assumptions of a party : he 
 deigned to accede with joy, when it was still in his power to resist : 
 thus it plainly appeared, that he took the step not through violence 
 or from apprehension, but of his own iree and sagacious will."* 
 
 On the 1 5th of May came the struggle, of which the origin is de- 
 scribed in the most opposite colours by persons of opposite sentiments. 
 It ended, however, in the unquestionable and complete victory of 
 the King and the troops : and I will now quote the words in which 
 the triumphant monarch reiterates his assurances in regard to the 
 Constitution : — 
 
 " Neapolitans ! 
 
 " Profoundly afflicted by the horrible calamity of the 
 15th of May, Our most lively desire is to mitigate, as far as pos 
 sible, its consequences. It is Our most fixed and irrevocable will 
 to maintain the Constitution of the 10th of February, pure and 
 free from the stain of all excess. As it is the only one compatible 
 
 * Napoli c la Costituzionc, Stampovia del Fibreno, Stiada Trinita Maggiore, 
 No. 26, 1848.
 
 48 STATE THOSECUTIONS OF 
 
 with the true and immediate wants of this portion of Italy, so it will 
 he the sacrosanct altar, upon which must rest the destinies of Our 
 most beloved people and of our crown. .... 
 " Resume, then, all your customary occupations : confide with 
 the utmost fulness of your hearts in Our good faith, in Our sense 
 of religion, and in Our sacred and spontaneous oath." * 
 
 I now proceed to give extracts from this Constitution. It opens 
 thus : and I request particular attention to its very solemn 
 preamble : — 
 
 " With reference to Our Sovereign Act of the 29th of January 
 1848, by which, concurring with the unanimous desire of Our 
 most beloved subjects, We have promised, of Our own full, free, 
 and spontaneous will, to establish in this kingdom a Constitution, 
 conformable to the civilisation of the times, whereof we then indi- 
 cated, by a few rapid strokes, the fundamental bases, and reserved 
 Our ratification of it till it should be set out and arranged in its 
 principles, according to the draft which Our present Ministry of 
 State was to submit to Us within ten days' time ; 
 
 " Determined to give immediate effect to this fixed resolution of 
 Our mind ; 
 
 " In the awful Name of the Most Holy and Almighty God, the 
 Trinity in Unity, to whom alone it appertains to read the depths 
 of the heart, and whom We loudly invoke as the judge of the sim- 
 plicity of our intentions, and of the unreserved sincerity with which 
 We have determined to enter upon the paths of the new political 
 order ; 
 
 " Having heard, with mature deliberation, our Council of State ; 
 
 " We have decided upon proclaiming, and We do proclaim, as 
 irrevocably ratified by Us, the following Constitution." 
 
 Then follow the particular provisions, of which I need only cite 
 four for the present purpose : — 
 
 " Art. I. The kingdom of the Two Sicilies shall be from hence- 
 forward subject to a limited, hereditary, constitutional monarchy, 
 under representative forms. 
 
 * Farini, book iii. chap. viii.
 
 THE NEAPOLITAN GOVERNMENT. 49 
 
 " Art. IV. The legislative power resides jointly in the King, 
 and in a National Parliament, consisting of two Chambers, the one 
 of Peers, the other of Deputies. 
 
 " Art. XIV. No description of impost can be decreed, except 
 in virtue of a law : communal imposts included. 
 
 " Art. XXIV. Personal liberty is guaranteed. No one can be 
 arrested, except in virtue of an instrument proceeding in due form 
 of law from the proper authority ; the case of flagrancy, or quasi- 
 flagrancy, excepted. In the case of arrest by way of prevention, 
 the accused must be handed over to the proper authority within 
 the term at farthest of twenty-four hours, within which also the 
 grounds of his arrest must be declared to him."* 
 
 Those who wish for detail may consult the histories of these 
 events :f I shall only sketch the actual state of things. 
 
 In regard to Article I. ; the monarchy of Naples is perfectly 
 absolute and unlimited. 
 
 In regard to Article IV. ; there exists no Chamber of Peers or 
 Chamber of Deputies. 
 
 In regard to Article XIV. ; all the taxes are imposed and 
 levied under royal authority alone. 
 
 In regard to Article XXIV. ; persons were arrested by the 
 hundred, while I was in Naples, a little before last Christmas, 
 without any legal warrant whatever, and without the slightest 
 pretext of flagrancy or quasi flagrancy : they were not handed 
 over to the competent authority within twenty-four hours, or 
 even at all, and were detained in the most rigorous confinement 
 by the police, without any reference whatever to the Courts, and 
 without any communication to them whatever of the grounds of 
 their arrest. 
 
 Such is the state of facts in respect to the origin of the Neapo- 
 litan Constitution, to its terms, and to the present actual conduct 
 of the Government of the country, in contradiction and in defiance, 
 at every point, of its indisputable fundamental law. 
 
 It will be too clearly seen how .such a relation between the law 
 
 * La Costituzione politica del Regno di Napoli, presso Gaetano Nobilc, Strada 
 Toledo, No. 1G6, 1849. 
 
 t Sxicli aa Massari's Casi di Napoli, Torino, 1849. Masaari is an ex-deputy. 
 
 E
 
 50 STATE PROSECUTIONS OF 
 
 of a country and the acts — not the occasional, but the constant 
 and most essential acts of its Government — throw light upon the 
 distressing, and at first sight scarcely credible, allegations of my 
 first letter. 
 
 But I have yet another source of evidence which I am bound to 
 open : one which illustrates in a form the most painful and re- 
 volting, the completeness, the continuity, the perfect organization 
 of the system which I have thought it my duty to endeavour, 
 according to my limited ability, to expose and to denounce. 
 
 I need hardly observe, that in the kingdom of Naples both the 
 press, and the education of the people, are under the control of the 
 Government : and that, setting aside the question how far points 
 of conflicting interest with the Church may be an exception, no- 
 thing is taught or printed there, unless with its sanction, and 
 according to its mind. 
 
 I am going to refer to, and quote fi'om a work, one of the most 
 singular and detestable that I have ever seen. It is called the 
 Catechismo Filosqfico, per uso delle Scuole Inferiori : and the 
 motto is, ' Videte ne quis vos decipiat per philosophiam.^ I have 
 two editions of it ; one bearing as follows : Napoli, presso Raffaele 
 Miranda, Largo delle Pigne, No. 60. 1850. The other is part of 
 a series called ' Collezione di huoni Lihri a favor e della Verita 
 e della Virtu. Napoli, Stabilimento Tipograjico di A. Festa, 
 Strada Carhonara, No. 104. 1850. I am thus particular, be- 
 cause I feel that if I were not so, I might now once more raise 
 the smile of a not irrational incredulity. 
 
 The doctrine of the first chapter is, that a true philosophy must 
 nowadays be taught to the young, in order to counteract the false 
 philosophy of the liberals, which is taught by certain vicious and 
 bad men, desirous to make others vicious and bad like themselves. 
 The notes of these liberal philosophers are then enumerated : and 
 one of them is " disapproval of the vigorous acts of the legitimate 
 authorities." They produce, it is taught, all manner of evils, 
 especially the eternal damnation of souls. The pupil then asks 
 with great simplicity of his teacher, not whether all liberals are 
 wicked, but " whether they are all wicked in one and the same 
 fashion ? " And the answer is — 
 
 " Not all, my child, because some are thorough-paced and
 
 THE NEAPOLITAN GOVERNMENT. 51 
 
 wilful deceivers, while others are piteously deceived : but notwith- 
 standing, they are all travelling the same road ; and, if they do 
 not alter their course, they will all arrive at the same goal." 
 
 The plain meaning, as 1 read it, is, that those who hold what 
 in Naples are called liberal opinions (and many who are included 
 in the name there, would not be so designated here), even in the 
 more innocent form of the mere victims of deceit, will, unless they 
 abandon them, be lost eternally on account of those opinions. 
 
 The next question of the scholar is, whether all, who wear 
 moustaches or a beard, are liberal philosophers ! 
 
 In subsequent chapters the scholar is instructed in the true 
 nature of Sovereign power. The author plainly denies all obliga- 
 tion to obey the laws in a democracy : for he says it would be 
 essentially absurd, that the governing power should reside in the 
 governed ; and therefore God would never give it them. In the 
 United States, accordingly, there would be no Sovereign power. 
 Thus is the most revolutionary and anarchical doctrine propa- 
 gated under the pretexts of loyalty and religion. 
 
 The Sovereign power, we are here taught, is not only Divine 
 (which I shall never quarrel with an author for asserting), but 
 unlimited : and not only unlimited in fact, but unlimited from its 
 its own nature and by reason of its Divine origin. And now we 
 come near the gist of the whole book, for the sake of which it is 
 that Philosophy has been brought down by the Neapolitan sages 
 from high heaven to the level of " inferior schools." This power, 
 of course, cannot be limited by the people, for their duty is simply 
 to obey it : — 
 
 " Scholar. — Can the people of itself establish fundamental laws 
 in a State ? 
 
 " blaster. — No : because a Constitution, or fundamental laws, 
 are of necessity a limitation of the Sovereignty : and this can 
 never receive any measure or boundary except by its own act: 
 otherwise it would no longer constitute that highest and para- 
 mount power, ordained of God for the well-being of society."* 
 
 And now I shall continue to translate : the whole matter will 
 repay perusal, and it will be seen that the express and not mis- 
 
 * Chap. vii. 
 
 E 2
 
 52 STATE PROSECUTIONS OF 
 
 takcable features of the Neapolitan ease are carefully described 
 and fully met in the abominable doctrines here inculcated : — 
 
 " S. — If the people, in the very act of electing a Sovereign, shall 
 have imposed upon him certain conditions and certain reservations, 
 will not these reservations and these conditions form the Consti- 
 tution and the fundamental law of the State ? 
 
 " 31. — They will, provided the Sovereign shall have granted and 
 ratified them freely. Otherwise they will not ; because the 
 people, which is made for submission and not for command, cannot 
 impose a law upon the Sovereignty, which derives its power not 
 from them, but from God. 
 
 " S' — Suppose that a Prince, in assuming the Sovereignty of a 
 State, has accepted and ratified the Constitution, or fundamental 
 law, of that State ; and that he has promised or sworn to 
 observe it ; is he bound to keep that promise, and to maintain 
 that Constitution and that law ? 
 
 " M. — He is bound to keep it, provided it does not overthrow the 
 foundations of Sovereignty : and provided it is not opposed to the 
 general interests of the State. 
 
 " S. — Why do you consider, that a Prince is not bound to observe 
 the Constitution, whenever this impugns the rights of Sovereignty ? 
 
 "3/. — AVe have already found, that the Sovereignty is the highest 
 and supreme power, ordained and constituted by God in society, 
 for the good of society ; and this power, conceded and made need- 
 ful by God, must be preserved inviolate and entire ; and cannot be 
 restrained or abated by man, without coming into conflict with the 
 ordinances of nature, and with the Divine Will. Whenever, 
 therefore, the people may have proposed a condition which im- 
 pairs the Sovereignty, and whenever the Prince may have pro- 
 mised to observe it, that proposal is an absurdity, that promise is 
 null ; and the Prince is not bound to maintain a Constitution 
 which is in opposition to the Divine command, but is bound to 
 maintain entire and intact the supreme power established by God, 
 and by God conferred on him. 
 
 " S. — And why do you consider that the Prince is not bound to 
 maintain the Constitution, when he finds it to be contrary to the 
 interests of the State ? 
 
 " M, — God has appointed the supreme power for the good of
 
 THE NEAPOLITAN GOVERNMENT. 53 
 
 society. Tho first duty, then, of tlie person who may have been 
 invested with it, is the duty of promoting the good of society. If 
 the fundamental law of the State be found adverse to the good of 
 the State, and/ if the promise given by the Sovereign to observe 
 that fundamental law would oblige him to promote what is detri- 
 mental to the State, that law becomes null, that promise void : 
 because the general good is the object of all laws, and to })romote 
 that good is the main obligation of Sovereignty. Suppose a phy- 
 sician to have promised, and sworn, to his patient, that he would 
 bleed him ; should he become aware that such letting blood would 
 be fatal, he is bound to abstain from doing it : because, paramount 
 to all promises and oaths, there is the obligation of the physician 
 to labour for the cure of his patient. In like manner, should the 
 Sovereign find that the fundamental law is seriously hurtful to his 
 people, he is bound to cancel it ; because in spite of all promises 
 and all constitutions, the duty of the Sovereign is his people's 
 weal. In a word, an oath never can become an obligation to 
 commit evil ; and therefore cannot bind a Sovereign to do what is 
 injurious to his subjects. Besides, the Head of the Church has 
 authority from God to release consciences from oaths, when he 
 judges that there is suitable cause for it." 
 
 And now comes the keystone of the arch, which makes the whole 
 fabric consistent and complete, with all the consistency and the 
 completeness that can belong to fraud, falsehood, injustice, and 
 impiety ; — 
 
 " Scholar. — Whose business is it to decide when the Constitution 
 impairs the rights of Sovereignty, and is adverse to the welfare of 
 the people ? 
 
 '* Master. — It it the business of the Sovereign ; because in him 
 resides the high and paramount power, established by God in the 
 State, with a view to its good order and felicity. 
 
 " S. — May there not be some danger, that the Sovereign may 
 violate the Constitution without just cause, under the illusion of 
 error, or the impulse of passion ? 
 
 " M. — Errors and passions are the maladies of the human race : 
 but the blessings of health ought not to be refused through the 
 fear of sickness !" 
 
 E 3
 
 54 STATE PROSECUTIONS OF 
 
 And so forth, I will not go through all the false, base, and 
 demoralizmg doctrines, sometimes ludicrous, but oftener horrible, 
 that I find studiously veiled under the phrases of religion in this 
 abominable book ; because I do not desire to produce merely a 
 general stir and indignation in the mind, but with the indignation 
 a clear and distinct, and so far as may be, a dispassionate view, of 
 that object which is its moving cause. I say, then, that here we 
 have a complete systematized philosophy of perjury for monarchs^ 
 exactly adapted to the actual facts of Neapolitan history during 
 the last three and a half years, published under the sanction, and 
 inculcated by the authority, of a Government, w^hich has indeed 
 the best possible title to proclaim the precept, since it has shown 
 itself a master in the practice. 
 
 This Catechism bears no name : but it is described to me as the 
 work of an ecclesiastic whom I forbear to designate, since pointing 
 him out is not necessary for my purpose : suffice it to say, he is, 
 or was, at the head of the Commission of Public Instruction. He 
 dedicates his production " to the Sovereigns, the Bishops, the 
 Magistracy, the teachers of youth, and all the well-disposed." In 
 this dedicatory Address, he announces that the Sovereign authority 
 will enjoin, that the elements of civil and political philosophy be 
 taught in all the schools : and be taught, too, from this one single 
 book, lest the purity of the doctrine should otherwise be corrupted : 
 that the teachers are to be closely watched, lest they should neglect 
 this duty, and that none of them are to have the amiual renewal of 
 their office, except upon proof of having observed it, that so " this 
 book may be multiplied in a thousand shapes, and may circulate 
 in the hands of all, and the Catechism of the philosopher may be- 
 come the personal accomplishment of all the young, and may in- 
 variably follow close upon the Catechism of the Christian." 
 
 Of course, peculiar care is to be taken that no one shall make 
 his way into holy orders without having imbibed this necessary 
 knowledge. 
 
 " The Bishops will find means to circulate it in their seminaries, 
 to prescribe it to their clerks, to recommend it to the parish priests, 
 to cause it to become the food of the people, and to fix that in all 
 examinations men shall be questioned upon the doctrines of poli-
 
 THE NEAP0L1T.\]S: GOVERNMENT. 55 
 
 tical philosophy, just as they are questioned upon those of Chris- 
 tian belief and conduct, inasmuch as no one without being a good 
 citizen and a good subject can be a good Christian !" 
 
 There is daring, if not grandeur, in this conception. A broken 
 oath ; an argument spun from laborious brains to show that the 
 oath ought to be broken ; a resolution to pre-occupy all minds, in 
 the time of their tender and, waxen youth, and before the capacity 
 of thought, with this argument : no more cunning plot ever was 
 devised, at least by man, against the freedom, the happiness, the 
 virtue, of mankind. 
 
 . Here the author modestly ends with the declaration, " I have 
 planted, Apollos watered, but God hath given the increase." 
 And it is time for us to end also. We have thus seen Perjury, 
 the daughter of Fraud, the mother of Cruelty and Violence, stalk 
 abroad in a Christian kingdom under the sanction of its Govern- 
 ment; and have heard her modestly make for herself a claim 
 (which, as I am informed, has been fully allowed) that her laws 
 shall be expounded in every school throughout the country, coin- 
 cident in extension, and second only, if second, in dignity, to the 
 Catechism of the Christian Faith. 
 
 I have now done my best to supply the reader with the illus- 
 tration and collateral evidence which seemed necessary in order to 
 his forming a correct judgment upon the charges, so harsh and 
 strange in sound, which I have been compelled to make against 
 the present policy of the Government of Naples in regard to State 
 prosecutions. 
 
 For contradictions, again I say, I have to look : but to such 
 contradictions as are not subject to be verified, cross examined, or 
 exposed, I must decline to attend. Confutation, I am now con- 
 vinced, except in small details, is impossible, with respect to my 
 statements of fact. Would to God that that unhappy Govern- 
 ment — and any other, if indeed there be any other, like it may 
 
 be wise in time, before outraged humanity shall turn on the op- 
 pressor, and the cup of Divine retribution overflow. If we are to 
 quote Scripture, here is my text — " Now for the comfortless 
 troubles' sake of the needy, and because of the deep sighing of the 
 poor ; I will up, saith the Lord, and will help every one from him 
 that swelleth against him, and will set him at rest" (Ps. xii. 5, 6).
 
 56 STATE PROSECUTIONS OF 
 
 And would to God, on the other hand, that, it" there shall be 
 shown a disposition to purge out abomination and temper excess, 
 and steadily and honestly, though gradually, to bring about a 
 better state of things, then, such a disposition may be met with 
 forbearance and goodwill, with the chastening of too eager ex- 
 pectations, with full recollection of difficulties and allowance for 
 them, and with an earnest readiness to forgive and to forget. 
 
 There are two possible inferences from what I have written, 
 against which 1 must endeavour to guard. The first is this : some 
 will say, all these abuses and disgraces are owing to the degradation 
 of the people. I do not deny that there is some share of what we 
 think degradation there ; nor can it be wondered at, when we consi- 
 der, from w^hat source the polluted w^aters of fraud and falsehood 
 flow; but this I say, that the Neapolitans are over harshly judged 
 in England. Even the populace of the capital is too severely esti- 
 mated ; the prevailing vices lie on the surface, and meet the eye 
 of every one ; but we scarcely give them the credit they deserve 
 for their mildness, their simplicity, their trustfulness, their warm 
 affection, their ready anxiety to oblige, their freedom from the 
 grosser forms of crime. What will be said in England, when I men- 
 tion, upon authority which ought to be decisive, that during four 
 months of the Constitution, when the action of the police too was 
 much paralysed, there was not a single case of any of the more 
 serious crimes in Naples among four hundred thousand people ? 
 
 We do a fresh injustice when w^e extend to the various classes 
 of the community, and to the inhabitants of all the provinces, the 
 estimate too hastily formed even of the populace of Naples. Per- 
 haps the point in which they are most defective is that of practical 
 enertry and steady perseverance in giving effect to the ideas, with 
 which their high natural intelligence abundantly supplies them. 
 But, while they seem to me most amiable for their gentleness of 
 tone, and for their freedom fi'om sullenness and pride, they are, I 
 must say, admirable in their powers of patient endurance, and for 
 the elasticity and buoyancy, with which in them the spirit lives 
 under a weight that would crush minds of more masculine and 
 tougher texture, but gifted with less power of reactive play. 
 
 One other word. I write at a moment when public feeling in 
 this country is highly excited on the ^ubject of the Roman Catholic
 
 THE NEAPOLITAN GOVERNMENT. 57 
 
 Church, and I must not wilfully leave room for extreme inferences 
 to the ])rejudice of her clergy in the kingdom of Naples, whic-h I 
 know or think to be unwarranted by the facts. That clergy, no 
 doubt, regular and secular, is a body of mixed charactej', which I 
 am not about to attempt describing ; but it would, in my opinion, 
 be unjust to hold them, as a body, to be implicated in the pro- 
 ceedings of the Government. A portion of them, beyond all 
 question, are so. I am convinced from what has reached me, that 
 a portion of the priests make disclosures from the confessional for 
 the purposes of the Government ; and I have known of cases of 
 arrest immediately following interviews for confession, in such a 
 manner that it is impossible not to connect them together. But, 
 on the other hand, there are many of the clergy, and even of the 
 monks, who are among the objects of the persecution I have endea- 
 voured to describe. The most distinguished members of the 
 celebrated Benedictine convent of Monte Cassino have for some 
 time past been driven from the retreat, to which they had anew 
 given the character of combined peace, piety, and learning. 
 Several of them were in prison when I was at Naples ; others not 
 in actual confinement, but trembling, as a hare trembles, at every 
 whisper of the wind. One was in prison for liberal opinions ; 
 another for being the brother of a man of liberal opinions. There 
 was no charge against these men, but the two brothers were con- 
 fined because it was thought that through the first of them might 
 possibly be learned something against some other suspected per- 
 son or persons. Among the arrests in December last, there were, 
 I believe, between twenty and thirty of the clerical order. It 
 may indeed be, and perhaps is, true that the greater part of the 
 whole body stand by and look on, without any sympathy, or at 
 least any effective sympathy, for those on whom the edge of this 
 sharp affliction fulls ; but this is perhaps not less true of the 
 nobles, whose general tone I believe to be that of disapproval 
 towards the proceedings of the Government, while they have a 
 kind of armistice with it, and it is the class beneath them that 
 bears the brunt of the struggle. The Chm*ch at Naples is pre- 
 sided over by a Cardinal Archbishop of high birth, simple man- 
 ners, and entire devotion to the duties of his calling, who, I am 
 certain, is entirely incapable of either participating in or conniving
 
 58 STATE PROSECUTIONS, &i . 
 
 at any proceedings unworthy in tlicit- character The Jesuits are 
 the hody who perhaps stand nearest to the Government; hut they 
 were ejected from their college during the time of the Constitution 
 with flagrant illegality and some considerable harshness : and 
 even their doctrines do not seem to satisfy those in power, for a 
 periodical which they, conduct, under the name of La Civilta 
 Cattolica, and which they used to print on their premises, has now 
 been removed to Rome. That the clergy have a strong faction 
 with the Government I do not doubt : so have the lazzaroni : 
 but there is no proof of the complicity of the body, and clear proof 
 of the opposition of a part of it, however their professional tone and 
 learning may, to a certain extent, innocently predispose them in 
 favour of the authorities, especially under a monarch reputed to 
 l)e most regular and strict in the offices of religion. 
 
 I remain, my dear Lord Aberdeen, 
 
 With much regard, sincerely yours, 
 
 W. E. GLADSTONE. 
 
 G, Carlton Gardetis, Jnly 14, 1851. 
 
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