ISifl ill ilii: diliS M^M' litiiiii ^ CUIIV&? fOa/c'^r^^^i^Oy' nM m c/u. .y^ur^^^^ C^^i'^^^^^^'^ ^^i^ TWO LETTERS THE EARL OF A B H-OJXN ,, STATE PROSECUTIONS B THE NEAPOLITAN GOYERMENT. BY THE RIGHT HON. W. E.JGUDSTONE, M. P. FOR THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD. El FIRST AMERICAN, FR03I THE FIFTH lOXDOX EDITIOX. NEW- YORK: PUBLISHED BY JOHN S. NICHOLS, NEWSBOY. ORDERS RP^CEIVED AT 207 TEARL-STREET. SOLD BY THE BOOKSELLERS GEXERALLY. 1851. .rimdTnll TWO LETTEES TO THE EARL OF AJERBEENj ON THE STATE PKOSECUTIONS THE NEAPOLITAN GOVERNMENT, BY THE EIGHT HON. ¥. E. GLADSTONE, M. P. FOB THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD. PIRST AMERICAN, FROM THE FIFTH LONPON EDITION. NEW-YORK : PUBLISHED BY JOHN S. NICHOLS, NEWSBOY. ORDERS RECEIVED AT 207 PEARL-STREET. SOLD BY THE BOOKSELLERS GENERALLY. 1851. HEHRY MORSE STKFHCNS JOHN R. M'GOWN, PRINTER, 57, Ann-street. ADVERTISEMENT TO THE FIRST EDITION OF THE FIRST LETTER. I PROPOSE to publish forthwith a Second Letter, in further elu- cidation of the subject, and in explanation of the long delay which has occurred since the following pages were addressed to Lord Aberdeen. w. E. a. 6, Carlton Gardens, Wth July, 1851. 864829 LETTER I &c., &c. , „ 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 wor«i> amidst which the G^overnment 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 do- mestic 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 administration 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 Governments in general, whether they be absolute, constitutional, or republican, as the representatives of a public, nay, of a Divine authority, 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 anything 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 propagandism, that I have not gathered wholesale and 6 STATE PROSECUTIONS OF without 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 qualifi- cation, 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 t'hu^ CO trouble you, I shall state fhese three only : first, that the present practices of the Orovernment of Naples, in reference to real or supposed political offenders, are an outrage upon rehgion, 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 Grovernments •f Europe^as such; and that, according to the measure of its influence, they suffer more or less of moral detriment from its reverses, and derive strength and encouragement from its successes. This principle, which applies with very limited force to the powerful States, whose Grovernments 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 Govern- ment 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 THE NEAPOLITAN GOVERNMENT. 7 even ostensibly revoked, (although contravened in almost every act of the Government,) never existed, and is a pure fiction. I will not appeal to it, because such an appeal might give color to the idea that my desire was to meddle with the form of Government, and might thus interfere 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 Vvrisely, 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 intervention of ours ; unless indeed questions should incidentally arise affecting it under the treaty of 1844 between the Two Sicilies and England, upon some parts of which, as a colleague of your Lordship, I had the honor 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 Government of Naples, and to give full credibility to state- ments 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 what can b^ 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 re- ply to it is certainly essential to the entire development of my case. One other prefatory word 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 couduct 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- 8 STATE PROSECUTIONS OF vernments of Southern Italy is defective — that the administration 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 labor. The difference between the faintest outline that a moment's handling of the pencil sketches, and the deepest coloring 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 G-overnment is in bitter and cruel, as well as utterly illegal, hostili- ty 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 thread- bare and transparent, the degraded recipient of the vilest and clumsiest forgeries, got up wilfully and deliberately, by the im- mediate 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, distin- guished, 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 so- cial ideas. Law, instead of being respected, is odious. Force, THE NEAPOLITAN GOVERNMENT. 9 and not affection, is the foundation of Government. There is no association, but a violent antagonism, between the idea of freedom and that of order. The governing power, which teaches of itself that it is the image of Grod 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 Goverment well stocked even with worldly prudence, whom Machiavelli, had he been min- ister, 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, w^hich 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 * £J la negazione di Dio eretta a sistema digoverno. 10 STATE PROSECUTIONS OF for example at Reggio, and at Salerno ; and from an effort to estimate them in reference to population, I do believe that twenty thousand is no unreasonable estimate. In Naples alone, some hundreds are at this moment under indictment capitally'; 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 digression) at least one or more persons of high station whose opinions would in this country be considered more Conservative than your own. The Neapolitan Grovernment, indeed, appears to have some- thing of the art which 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 dominions, 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 charac- ter 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 G-overnment 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 Ca- techism 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 THE NEAPOLITAN GOVERNMENT. H taught, taught therefore by the Government of Naples, that happiness and virtue lie in a just mean between them. But again. Shortly 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 favor 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 w^as there, never questioned for the act, and said to receive a pension from the Grovernment.) So that I put down this 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 re- gular formation of a popular representative Chamber, and its sup- pression 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 majority 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 i^ STATE PROSECUTIONS OF personal liberty shall be inviolable, except under a warrant from a Court of Justice authorised for the purpose. I do not mean the Constitution, but the law anterior to and independent of the Con- stitution. 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 deparement, 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 searching for arms, and imprisons men by the score, by the hun- dred, 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 imprison 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 found convenient, and he is himself examined upon it : in secret, with- out any intimation of the charges, which as yet in fact do not ex- ist ; or of the witnesses, who do not exist either. In this exami- nation 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 know, insulted at will and in the grossest manner, under pretence of examination, by the officers of the police. And do not suppose this is the fault of individuals. It is essential to the system, oi which the essential aim is, to create a charge. What more likely than that, smarting under in- sult, and knowing with what encouragement and for whose benefit it is offered, the prisoner should for a moment lose his temper, and utter some expression disparaging to the sacred majesty of the THE NEAPOLITAN GOVERNMENT. -IS Government ? If he does, it goes down in the minutes against him : if he does not, but 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 letters, 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 connection one with the other. But not so : any expres- sion which implies disapproval (since nothing is easier than to construe disapproval into disaffection, disaffection into an inten- tention of revolution or of regicide) is entered on the minutes. Suppose there happens to be some other, which ^tirely destroys the force of the former, and demonstrates the loyalty of the victim : it is put by as of no consequence ; and if he remon- strate, it is in vain. In countries where justice is regarded acts are punished, and it is deemed unjust 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 nothing. 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 con- fined 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 effort 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 14- STA.TE PROSECUTIONS OF 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 according 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, accumulated 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 Neapoli- tan Courts ; 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 prosecution 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 07?.6-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 credi- ble, but it is true. The very men tried while I was at Naples, named and appealed to the counter-evidence of scores and hlindreds of men of all classes and professions — military, clergy, Grovernment 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, how- THE NEAPOLITAN GOVERNMENT. 10 ever supported by tlie 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 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 condem- nation, 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 legalise 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 Yicaria, 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 politicaly accused indiscriminately : not a chain upon a man of them, not an officer nearer than at the end of many apartments, le STATE PROSECUTIONS OF 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, the main authority being that of the gajnorristi^ 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. This 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 8d 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 univ;ersal 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 THE NEAPOLITAN GOVERNMENT. JJ| 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 report with accuracy, though my knowledge of it is not quite the 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 ptebably said enough of the proceedings previous to trial ; but there is one small gap to fill up. If the arrest is contra- ry to law, why not, it may be asked, bring an action for false im- prisonment ? I have made some inquiry upon that head. I under- stand that as in other points, so neither in this, is the law defective ; that such an action might probably be brought, and might in argument 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 now, perhaps, I cannot do better than to furnish a thread to my statement by dealing particularly 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 having 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 2 18 STATE PROSECUTIONS OV most highminded and loyal, the most intelligent and constitutional^ of our own statesmen. I must say, after a pretty full examina- tion of his case, that the condemnation of such a man for treason is a proceeding just as much conformable to the laws of truths 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 Lans- downe, or Sir James Graham, or yourself. I will not say it is pre- cisely 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 — per- haps 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 a humane provision of the law the sentence was not ex- ecuted ; but he has, I fear, been reserved for a fate much harder i 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 respec- table though not certain authority, was the thrusting of sharp in- struments 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 thero really was a foundation for the charge. The charge was an in- tention to destroy, by means of some terrible explosive agents^ several of the Ministers and other persons. The foundation was, that he had in his breast-pocket, on a great public occasion, a single bottle, which exploded there without injuring him in life 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 tim& appointed, it was believed he would be executed. The Bianchi were in the streets, collecting alms to purchase masses for his soul. He was in the chapel of the condemned, with the priesta THE NEAPOLITAN GOVERliaiENT. 19 about Mm, when during the night, his case having been discussed at a council in the daytime, there came down from Caserta a mes- senger with orders for his reprieve. I have learned the agency through which that reprieve was procured, 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 ap- peared to enjoy the King's full confidence ; his resignation, when offerred, 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 even- ing 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 posses- sion 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 such corres- pondence existed. On the 19th, about four in the afternoon, two persons, presenting themselves at his door under a false title, ob- tained entry, and announced to him that he was arrested in virtue of a verbal order of Peccheneda, the Prefect of Police. He pro- tested 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 hours, according to law^ but in vain. So early, hov/ever, as on the sixth day, he was brought before the 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 opened in mis- take by an officer of the police, who happened to have the ibamo 20 STATE PROSECUTIONS OF name, though a different surname, and who, on perceiving what was within, handed both to the authorities. Poerio was desired to open it, and did open it, in the presence of the Commissary. Thus far, nothing could be more elaborate and careful than the arrangement of the proceeding. But mark the sequel. The mat- ter of the letter of course was highly treasonable ; it announced an invasion by Garibaldi, fixed a conference with Mazzini, and re- ferred 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 Dra- gonetti was vilely imitated, and I said so, remarking that the in- ternal evidence of sheer forgery was higher than any amount of material proof w^hatever." Dragonetti was one of the most accom- plished 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 let- ters of Dragonetti's ; they were produced and compared with this ; and the forgery stood confessed. Upon the detection of this mon- strous iniquity, what steps were taken by the Government to avenge not Poerio, but public justice ? None whatever : the pa- pers 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 THE NEAPOLITAN GOVERN^IENT. 4JS| one prison to another; he was confined, as he alleges, in places fit for filthy brutes rather than men ; he was cut off from the sight of 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 Signer Antonio de' Duchi di Santo Vito came to him, and told him the G-overnment knew all ; but that if he would confess, his life would be spared. He demanded of his judges on his trial that Santo Vito should, be examined as to this statement : of course it was not done. But jjiore than this. Signer 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 with 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 testify 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 indubitable authority of other proceedings of that minister of the King of Naples, which fully support the credibility of the charge. Besides the dcnunzia^ 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 fact that it included along with Poerio two of the persons ^/iew ministers, the Cav. Bozzelli 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 22 STATE PROSECUTIONS OF the principle that the duty of G-overnment was to prove guilt, by 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. He 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 maintaininsf the monarchical constitution ; and that he was accordingly expelled ! 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 co-accused at inculpating 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 here- after 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 have had by Poerio' s means, a gentleman of the highest character, recently a confidential and favored 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 Unitd 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 admitted. 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 Grovernment * Poerio was named in the evidence of GarafiEi ; but in a manner tending positively to prove his innocence. THE NEAPOLITAN GOVERNMENT. 23 professed to have found them) proved to be indispensable for all its members, he knew nothing whatever ! 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 an- swer. 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 Grovernment ? No answer. Could I be a secta- rian 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 confidences 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 21, 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 condition. 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 al- leged, that a certain archpriest declared Jervolino had told him h'e received 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 appealed 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. ^ STATE PROSEGUTIOlfS OF I must, however, return to the point, and say, even had hm evidence been self-consistent and free from the grosser presump- tions of untruth, >the very fact of his character, as compared with 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 the counsel for Poerio, that the Grrand 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 prisoners that their supposed sect had conspired against the life of some of the Ministers, and of the judge Dome- nic-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 of 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 rest of the Court. The 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 de- cision, 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 prison- THE NEAPOLITAN GOVERNMENT. 2$ ers. 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 se- cret of his opinion, that all persons charged by the King's Gov- ernment 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 intim- idation, that is of threats of dismissal, to a judge whose name has been told me, procured the number necessary for a sentence. =*" But I need not go into these foul recesses. I stand upi>n 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 perpe- trated 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 Of view to dispatch. On these occasions the process is fihortened 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 be.en 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 person among the whole number of those charged, who were all sitting together. Tne Court refused permission. In the *He appears to have been finally found guilty (of belonging to the sect) by six of his ^u