Two letters to the Earl of Aberdeen, on the state prosecutions of the Neapolitan government
.^^j^/' ' 4^' S' -•■««:, • ef^ v,-^ > <:- -Pf <v ^ ,. ' ■^^ <r -<c c CO ^i^ ■» c ■ #? «- u, . c r c^ *< . <■ V < c- CC ci^ ■ ,r c ■' c <^ c^cr^<<: ' c <^ ■ c '" c' j28<< ■ f ■ < «c«:c r •'■■ "^^"^.L. ^'V -'< ■'Cittrin-- ' c* ^ •< ''C.c:*!''-." < 'CC '. :'C, ■^ccc. -. ' r t ■ '■:*^ '«:«t«.- ^ '.«<r «:crcL" c -^rij; •«:«'<" ■' ' r«L. ^.^C'c ■ f *" ■ < < ct c ,'■, ' ' v<x^. ■ c. ', ' ^ «•. ' ■; • ■ r:-. P . 4 ^T --•.< 5? ^-<:- f ~ c c tr rifr r. 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. 