lence and struggle need not preclude the attainment, on the one hand of wealth and splendor, on the other of superlative preeminence in literature and art. But these little States by degrees gave way to encroaching dominations. And for many centuries that had been a fact, which in the mouth of Metternich became a sarcasm; Italy was simply a geographical expression, and no more. Dependence, division, despotism, seemed to have become, with the rarest and most partial exceptions, a second nature to her, which overlay, absorbed, and exhausted the first. For the historic student, and for the imaginative visitor, a halo of the known past, with a hope perhaps of a possible future, still lay about her, and she did not seem to them Less than archangel ruined, and th' excess Of glory obscured. Nay, the French war, as a whole, had ap. parently brought her not good but evil; for example in the ruin of a remnant of local liberties, and in the pestilent institution of such a police as stifled liberty without repressing crime. * All this has been changed as in a transformation scene. As against the stranger, by fair fighting, with timely and decisive help given by those who found their interest in giving it. As against the tyrant, by long, patient, indomitable endurance, and by a course of action hardly more than on one single and sad occasion (in the case of Rossi) stained with crime. On the surface, the French war had injured her, for it stimulated by its after action and improved the craft of despotism; but there was this compensation, that it for once had suggested the idea, and had even lighted the lamp of liberty, a vital flame which through a sad and wearisome half-century never was put out. Siam servi, sì, ma servi ognor frementi.† And now, seven absolute governments have been expelled, supplanted, or transformed; the dissevered fragments of the country have united themselves by a process, not of art or violence, but of nature; • Farini gives interesting particulars on this subject, in his History of the Roman State. ↑ Alfieri. and a nation of near thirty millions has taken its place, by an unquestioned title, among the great and ruling powers of European Christendom. Surely this is one of the gigantic achievements which of itself suffices to make an epoch in the history of the world. Nor was the process less rightful than large. Under the old system, the lawless element, according to the highest sense of law, had its seat in the governments; and the work of the Revolution was truly a work of order. But it remains to ask, has the process been as thorough as it was legitimate; is the surface at all points a just indication of the interior; is the fabric as durable as it is fair and brilliant? Is there any new danger, now in the course of being conjured up from the unfathomable depths of vicissitude, which may come to threaten, in whole or in part, the costly acquisitions of the last thirty years? Not only have we to take into view that waywardness of our nature which so often neutralizes our best blessings, or converts them into mischiefs; we have also to bear in mind that the gigantic nature of the work achieved leaves room, even amidst general success, for much local failure and miscarriage. The Italian case cannot be fairly judged without taking into our account the special features of the problem. The unification of Germany was a vast operation, but it differed from that of Italy at least in three vital particulars. The central force of what is now united Germany, in Prussia, was more than equal to the whole of the auxiliary and subordinate forces; whereas Sardinia could only be reckoned third among the powers planted in Italy, and contained less than a fifth of the population. Secondly, the principal units, now happily formed into a German Empire, passed into it as they were, without the severance of government from subject, or radical change in the methods of rule; whereas the Italian change began by convulsing what it sought to unite, through six local revolutions. Armies had to be taken over, to serve not only under new ads of civilians had likewise to be dealt masters but for new purposes; and myri with, whom it would not have been safe by a rude and general dismissal to convert | avowedly adopted by the Italian governinto conspirators. Last, and not least, ment, has left the clerical body largely Italy had to face and solve the deplorable | dependent upon the pope for countenance question of the temporal power attached to and promotion. But they spring from the the popedom; and the political contro- people; and the national sentiment apversy was in her case envenomed by the pears to be by no means extinct among introduction into it, though happily under them. Doctor Antenori, a well-known and milder conditions, of the very same spirit respected Neapolitan physician, who which in other days afflicted Europe with unites the characters of Liberal and bethe wars of religion. Under such circum-liever, and whom I shall have occasion stances, I conceive that those who love Italy may well be amazed at what she has done, and need not be disheartened if there be anything which as yet she has been unable to do. again to mention, assured me that the Italian clergy was frankly liberal (francamente liberale): probably an over-sanguine but yet not an unimportant testimony. I have before me an excellent tract* by a south-Italian priest, which, while perfectly dutiful in a religious sense to the pope, entreats him once for all to abandon and denounce "the unnatural marriage of the crosier and the sword" (p. 64), and has some lines (p. 65) on the concord generally prevailing between the civil and the ecclesiastical authorities, which are not unworthy of attention :— prefects and the archbishops, the sub-prefects Everywhere we have living in harmony the and the bishops: and in the small country towns, as a general rule, there is no sort of estrangement between the syndics and the parish priests, among whom the Don Pacificos are innumerable, while the Don Belligeros may be counted on the fingers. The Revolution, which made Italy a nation, has been hailed by the mass of the community, and accepted in the main by every class. Disaffection might perhaps have been anticipated from the aristocracy and the clergy. As to the aristocracy, I found no sign of it either in Florence or in Naples. It is singular, if in Rome the adhesion of the nobility to the Italian throne has been slower than elsewhere; because it was here that under the old system the nobles were the most completely excluded from all but an honorary share in the government. But the explanation would probably be that as, in the individual man, organs unemployed tend to atrophy, so in this class the privation traditionally accepted starved out the apIt should also be borne in mind that, petite for public duty; until at length before the new state of things had arrived, Edmond About was led to write of the a body of ten thousand Italian clergy, unRoman nobility (among whom, however, der the auspices of Passaglia, had dethere were splendid exceptions), Hélas les clared against the temporal power. And, pauvres gens! ils n'ont pas même des upon the whole, the most rational concluvices. As regards the clergy, it is more sion seems to be that the Italian spirit has difficult to judge. Their numbers, in the still a widely spread representation among secular branch of the order, do not seem them. In the community at large, the to have undergone inconvenient diminu- national sentiment appeared to be univertion. Two priests of Ischia, which has a sal. Indeed I must own my astonishment population of only thirty thousand, assured as well as pleasure at the wonderful manme that, independently of the teachers in ner in which it seems to have taken hold an ecclesiastical seminary, the island had of the masses even in rural and secluded two hundred of their brethren. In Naples districts, though they have never had the the Church is ruled by a cardinal arch-advantage of any sort of political educabishop (San Felice), whose praise is in every mouth for his holy living and devotion to his work. He "does not meddle in politics;" which I take to be an accepted phrase for signifying that he has a strong Italian feeling. In the streets of the city I saw at least ten priests for every soldier; and, notwithstanding the abolition of the monastic corporations, there was a fair sprinkling of monks, who are retained, apparently in not illiberal numbers, for the service of the conventual churches. In these apparently flourishing circumstances, the policy of non-interference, tion; nor have I been without some special means of forming a judgment on this subject from popular manifestations, of which I have been a witness. Upon the whole I take it to be a solid and established fact that the unity, nationality, and independence of Italy are not the mere upthrow of a political movement, which some following convulsion *Il Santuario e la Conciliazione: pel Sacerdote Arcangelo Ratunna. Padula: December, 1887. A case has recently been stated in a London journal where a bishop has been called to account for publishing similar opinions. may displace, but are the long-prepared Of all the evils marking the domination and definitive results of causes permanent of the Bourbons in the south of Italy, the in their nature; and are, notwithstanding most aggravated was the Camorra. The dangers, some of them most subtle and word, happily incapable of translation into others visibly alarming, to be reckoned English, may be paraphrased as meaning with on the same footing as the unity, in- a sub-government, lodged in the hands dependence, and nationality of other great of criminals, and administered by them European countries. throughout the country. It was, I appre hend, far worse than the Nihilism of Russia. Farther north in Italy, the secret societies were limited to political objects. In Ireland they had their origin in the tyranny of the landlord class. In both these cases, they had in view remedies, of whatever kind, for definite evils which had brought them into existence. The Camorra was so secret, that to this hour its character is not perfectly known. But it was worse than the others in this, that it had no more of a remedial character than the rule which Milton describes as established in Pandemonium. It was simply a wanton excrescence of evil; the lawlessness of power towards the subjects, reflected and repeated in another lawlessness, organized by one portion of the sufferers against the rest, and highly effi them. Evidently the Camorra, such as I have described it, indicated that the social disease, due to misgovernment, had reached its extremest phase. As far as I have been able to learn, it has so far felt the influence of recent changes that it has passed into a milder phase, and is now chiefly to be traced in combinations more or less violently repressive of individual freedom, but less venomous than the old gangrene in this, that they may aim at remedies for mischiefs, and do not simply confront government with anti-government. No writer dealing, as I am now dealing, with the favorable side of the Italian account, can omit to acknowledge the large and invaluable contribution which has been made by the personal conduct of the king and queen to the great national cause. On this subject, there is not a voice, nor so much as a whisper of dissent. The queen had, long before her accession to the throne, taken a high place in the public estimation. The king is prized for his absolute good faith and loyalty to the constitution. He has the reputation of being at once generous with his own means, and sparing of the public treasure. The outbreak of the cholera in Naples afforded to the king an opportunity of which he made noble use, and the courage and humanity, with which on that occasion he confronted infection and the risk of death, have left a | cient at least in the business of taxing deep impression on the grateful memory of the people, and have shown the world that the courage of the house of Savoy is not confined to the battle-field, but finds congenial exercise where danger is encountered not to destroy life but to save it. But there is one sign which, in my mind, surpasses all others in establishing the genuineness of the Italian reconstruction, and as a promise of its permanence. It is the absolute freedom of speech and writing. I do not mean merely the freedom of journalism, although that is a note of constitutional liberty alike indispensable and invaluable. But every journal is a power, and moreover belongs to a fraternity of associated powers, certain or likely to resent an assault upon one member of the family as a menace to the liberties of all the rest. Now in Italy it is not the periodical press only with its network of defences, it is also the solitary and undefended writer who appears to possess an immunity as large, and as secure, as he could enjoy in lands where freedom is traditional and hereditary, and where its prerogatives or privileges have been imbibed, so to speak, with the mother's milk of every one of us. I must own I expected to find that in a country where popular right has hardly yet emerged from infancy, it would have been not indeed withheld, but yet granted only after a fashion, and beset with cautions and reserves. Perhaps I attach to this subject I am now touching, what may be thought an exaggerated importance. But I am one of those who believe that true civilization largely consists in, and may be absolutely tested and measured by, the substitution of moral for physical forces. Of these moral forces, there is one which specially falls within the domain of statesmen, and of general opinion. That force is public ity. It is the establishment of a state of things, wherein the word spoken, written, printed, is not punishable except by the known conditions of the laws; and where, in the interpretation of those laws, the doubtful case is habitually ruled in the sense and interest of freedom. It is per haps the only force, of which it can be said that, although of course it is in human hands liable to abuse, its abuse has never in history been recorded as intoler- of September, which was understood to able. It is the force which, beyond all others, keeps the atmosphere of a country sweet and pure. It is like some favored medicines, which are gentle, no less than they are effective. For its power is a vast and effectual power, a power which no scheme of tyranny, in these islands or elsewhere, can permanently withstand. I rely upon its existence in Italy, more than upon any other single incident of the great transformation, to assure the permanence, and complete the range, of the new order of things. Pervading as it does British thought and life, as it is among the greatest, so is it, I conceive, among the latest of our acquisitions; and it is a cause of marvel not less than of delight that in Italy it should write itself a contemporary with the birth of freedom, and among the guardians of its cradle. If it be permitted me to suggest a special cause which has helped the new-born kingdom to maintain a right policy in this delicate matter with so much firmness and consistency on behalf of all its subjects, I think it may have been at least partially due to a very peculiar and prime necessity of the case. Before the popedom had lost its European status as a sovereignty of no mean antiquity, Italy had claimed and exercised freedom of speech in the very highest matter by proclaiming, as the priest Ratunna now proclaims (ibid., p. 62), that she could not remain a headless Italy, an Italy bereft of her natural as well as historical capital. The government of Pius the Ninth yielded in 1870, but yielded only to sheer force. The permission to abide in Rome, and to possess the Vatican in an isolated and silent, but, as far as I can understand, complete independence, was a permission to which no parallel can be found in the annals of conquered States. The Italian government would have been judicially justified in expelling the rival sovereign. But then Italy would also have been forced into contradiction with her own rules of religious liberty, in expelling the bishop of the Roman diocese. Not on this ground only, but on other grounds too obvious to require mention, a high expediency bound that government to endure, to respect, to invite the presence of a great personage within its borders, and at the very centre of its public life, from whom it knew that it was not to expect a reciprocity of toleration. The temporal popedom had had many chances: the chance of presiding over an Italian confederation; the chance of ruling in the Leonine City; the chance of the Treaty contemplate the civil sovereignty of the king in Rome, but to couple it with a condition, expressed or implied, that the second sun should never set or rise except in Florence, and that the pope should remain the only and august object offered to the eyes of the Roman people. All these chances had escaped. The Piedmontese, as the whole force of the Italian nation was then, but is no longer, called, corporally and materially held the city. But Pius the Ninth remained fast in his determination to carry on the war of words, and denounced the occupation of Rome, not only as a civil usurpation, but as an impious offence to be punished by excommunication. It was obviously either impossible, or in the highest degree impolitic, to check by civil means the denunciations which ostensibly proceeded out of the spiritual sphere, however much they may have invited and implied a readiness, even an eagerness, to receive the assistance of the secular arm. May it not possibly have been found that the necessity thus established of the extremest tolerance in the very highest circle entailed, if not in logic at least in policy, either a like necessity or a sufficient inducement for giving sanction to the like freedom on all the lower social levels? This is offered as a conjecture only. It is offered to explain a remarkable phenomenon. If it be a sound conjecture, then that chain of cause and effect is indeed one of curious interest, which has made the pope the efficient cause of an untrammelled freedom in speaking, writing, printing, which cannot be without its analogue in the faculty of thought that has these outward operations for its vent. It is right, however, that I should supply an example of such freedom as is now actually at work, and enable the reader to judge for himself whether I have been picturing fairly this feature of the case. For this purpose I revert to the work of Dr. Antenori. Its contents are various, and include a chapter which copiously and stoutly defends indissoluble marriage, still the uninvaded law of Italy. But the portions of the work with which I have here properly to do, are of a more daring kind. They describe abuses of judicial administration especially in Sicily, and also the lives and manners prevalent in a high circle at Rome, with a strength of language not to be exceeded in the freest country of the globe. I do not at this moment either question the sincerity or assert the truth of the charges. But I think that the reference which I have now | evidently, and I assume consciously, to to make to them, will render it easy to run all the risks of being called to account. form a judgment as to the convincing tes- I must observe in passing that he calls timony they bear to the existence of a Sicily "the Ireland of Italy" (questa freedom in speech and in printing, which nuova Irlanda d'Italia),* and regards the undoubtedly satisfies in full the extremest case of our sister island as the common demand of liberty, and which, on the other property of all who desire to illustrate by hand, could not be exceeded without the a familiar instance the evils of old and establishment of something like a public continuing misgovernment. In two denuisance. tailed narratives of processes against indi torture is not wholly absent, not without support from verifying evidences, and prolonging his details through twenty or twenty-five pages with abundance of names, times, and places, Antenori draws a picture which, so far as it goes, might be thought to be a description of the Bourbon times, in the excesses of the execu tive, and the degradation of the judicial organs, against which, as he properly observes, the simple existence of good laws, a fact he never dreams of questioning, does not of itself afford a sufficiently operative guarantee. Dr. Antenori, in the work to which Ividuals, from which even the element of have already made a brief reference, brings a broad accusation of social immorality against the governing and administrative class. He charges a reintroduction of torture into judicial processes upon the authorities entrusted with the administration of the law of public security; a law due without doubt to the perilous condition of the country, from middle Italy southwards, when it was taken over from the former government, overrun with brigandage. Indeed it came into the hands of the newly constituted power not without risk of aggravation to the mischief from the discharge of the incurable por- My first purpose in referring to this tion of the old servants of the State, mili- impeachment, as free and as daring as if tary or civil. Further under this head, he it proceeded from Burke in his assault on alleges widespread pecuniary corruption. Warren Hastings, is to note its importance Most of these charges are general, and as a conclusive proof of the liberty now inaccessible to legal challenge, yet not on accorded to speech and printing in Italy. that account, in some points at law, to The work of Antenori was published in public discussion and confutation. In 1885; and it has remained as free from the case, however, of processes tried at censure by authority or law as if it had Naples in 1867, and another at Turin in been protected by the privilege of Parlia 1880, he comes nearer to the mark, in ment. But more than this. I can refer associating local and subordinate agents to some personal details, which appear to of government with a work of pure plun-show that the freedom of comment on the der. Finally, he shifts the scene to Sicily, and widens the ground of the impeachment. Here, according to him, the courts of justice are absolutely subservient to the functionaries of the executive, nor does he exempt the Court of Appeal in Rome from his imputations as to a portion of its officers or members not very distinctly defined, while high honor is paid to the rest. The juries, as he declares, are sometimes chosen from the most worth- On quitting Naples in the beginning of less persons, or those most dependent February, it was my agreeable duty to on the governing authorities; sometimes return thanks to the syndic of Naples, as made the subject of persistent inquisition | head of the municipality, and to the preand of persecuting pressure. Growing fect as the representative of the central more and more particular as he proceeds with the case of his native island, he indicates places and persons § either without any disguise or with one so slight as Studii Sociali. (By) Giuseppe Antenori. Napoli: 1885. Chap. vii., p. 315. t Ibid., pp. 317-22. Ib., pp. 326, 328-9, 331, 344. § Ib., 346-70. acts of authority, of which Antenori's book exhibits the ne plus ultra, is not a thing grudgingly tolerated by the authorities of the country, but is on the contrary either regarded by them as a normal and inseparable feature of a constitutional system, or is even welcomed as a valuable aid in pursuing to their hiding-places, and tearing out of the soil, the last relics of old and ingrained corruptions. government, for the unwearied and profuse courtesies with which, on account of incidents long gone by, both the one and the other had been pleased to greet me. I felt myself unable to acquit myself of this duty, so far as the prefect was concerned, without saying a few words as to * Ib., p. 349. |