The Express.
London, England, 1864-09-26 00:00:00

LONDON, MONDAY EVENING, SEPTEMBER 26, 1884.

AMERICA.

(scoria's =swum.)

The royal mail steamship Europa, from Boston
on the 14th, and Halifax on the 16th inst., arrived
at Queenstown at 4 p.m., yesterday, with 79 pas-
sengers, and 19,847 dolts. in specie. She landed 78
sacks of mails and eight passengers, and pro-
ceeded for Liverpool immediately. All well.

ITALY.

THE DISTURBANCES AT TURIN.
(nom ova owl( ooasmosniorr.)
TURIN, Sin. 22, 3 otiocz A.x.

Yesterday I had scarcely time ere posting my
letter to add the postscript, in which I told you
that the polies had charged a dense crowd in the
Piazza San Carlo, when on coming back
to the Hotel Troubette I found an exasper-
ated population streaming down towards Piazza
Castello, where the offices of the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs and of the Questura are situated. The crowd
was shouting " Revenge, revenge I" " Down with
Minghetti !" " Death to Peruzzi!" and other
alarming cries. I tried to ascertain the real
cause of the excitement, and was told that
the Gazzteta di Torino, a ministerial paper, the
organ of the Tuscan party, having published an
article in which the Convention signed at Paris bad
been eulogiaed,the people had broken into its offices
and smashed all they found in their way. This office
being situated in the Piazza San Carlo, the police,
who were there in large foree, drew their abort
swords, and, charging right and left, tried to clear
their way to the office of that paper. As always
occurs in frets of this sort, the people who were
there as mere spectators suffered the most ; old
men, women, and children were wounded. The
exasperated multitude then turned against their as-
sailants; the Questura, or police office, was besieged,
the panes of its windows smashed, and two of the
policemen killed. At the first tidings of the un-
happy affair, Marquis Rom, the mayor of Turin,
who, as I told you, was presiding at
the municipal council, at the Town Hall,
sent some of his councillors, who by
fair words and persuasion succeeded in ap-
peasing the exasperated population. A precis verbal
was drawn up, in which it was stated that the
police had first attacked the citizens, and •
protest was tendered to minister Peruzzi.
It was, however, evident that without the
greatest focbearanos on the part of the armed
force, we should have more serious facts
to deplore. The police had been withdrawn
from the Piazza San Carlo, and carabinieri
sent in their place. This measure seemed to
calm for awhile the populatioa, so that
we bad a faint hope of seeing order restored during
the coming night. But in the meanwhile the
news spread amidst the crowd that General Mena-
beta, the Minister of Public Works, and one of the
negotiators of the Paris Convention, having as-
sisted at the meeting of the town council, of
which lie is • member, bad made a speech in
which, defending the Convention, he stated that
when the negotiations for the evacuation of Rome
by the French troops had been resumed the
Emperor bad asked from the Italian government a
moral guarantee that Italy would respect, and
make others respect, the principle of non-inter-
vention at Rome. This moral guarantee, said
the general, was found by Marquis Pepoli„ who
proposed to transfer the Italian capital to Flo-
rence. The idea, therefore, which was accepted
by the French monarch, was an essentially
Italian idea, and not a French one. General
Menabrea had scarcely ended his speech when be
saw the imprudence he had committed, and begged
his colleagues not to register it as the written re-
port of the municipal council. Three councillors,
Revel, Selepbs, and Pours di San Martino opposed,
maintaining that Menabrea bad spoken in his
capacity of • municipal councillor, not as •
minister. The sitting of the municipal coun-
cil became very excited, and on a divi-
sion Menabrea's proposition was negatived, and
was naturally spread out of doors. You may
easily imagine the effect it produced, for in Mena-
brea's speech everyone fancied he saw that
the Italian government had given up Rome for
ever. The different political parties—clerical, radi-
cal, and, perhaps, the agents of Austria—made some
capital of it ; the news was discussed by the
crowds in the streets and in the piazzas, everybody
exclaimed that Italy bad been betrayed, and that
to remove the capital to Florence was tantamount
to renouncing altogether the idea of going to Rome.
The agitation, therefore, was increasing every
moment, and the attitude of the population was any-
thing but reassuring. The shops were closed, and
the drums were beating the rappel, to call the na-
tional guard under arms. But this body of citizens,
composed of shopkeepers and householders, bad al-
ready shown, at the first rumours of the transfer
of theeapital, that they would not obey the summons
of their chiefs, wronged as they thought themselves
to be by thodecision of the ministry. It was therefore
evident that the exasperated population would come
during the evening into collision with the cars-
biniers, who were drawn up in the square of Saint
Charles and before the Ministry of the Interior, in
the Piazza Castello. And such was unhappily be
ChM

At 8 o'clock I went with a few friends
to see what was going on in the streets of
the city. The crowd had greatly increased, and a
squadron of lancers had been sent to the Piazza
San Carlo, to clear the square. It was a quarter
past lOo'clock, when, suddenly, the mass of the crowd
collected iu Saint Charles-square, pushed by the ca-
valry towards the Piazza Castello, debouched in a
large and thick mass from the Via Nuova into the last
mentioned square, on its march having met another
dense column, which had gone to make a hostile de-
monstration against Signor Peruzzi at his private resi-
dence, and which by the Via Po was equally de-
bouching into the Piazza Castello. The agglomera-
tion of such a multitude of persons made the column
absolutely beud towards the building of the Minis-
try of the Interior, having all the appearance of a
crowd of exasperated men intent upon assaulting the
battalion of gendarmes who had the guard of that
building. The vociferations, the shouts of " Down
with the ministry !" "Down with Peruzzi and
Spaventa!" were deafening. It is not yet ascer-
tained where the first shot came from, but the
report of a gun was heard, and after a few minutes
a discharge wade by the carabiniers battalion was
heard, with an inexpressible sense of horror,
by those who, like myself, were walking tranquilly
under the porticos which line the piazza. At filet
I and my frieuds thought the ►rms were only loaded
with powder. But, alas ! such was not the case.
We hastened into the open space of the square, and
a horrible scene was witnessed. There were lying
on the ground eighteen dead bodies and about thirty
wounded. The worst of the case was that the
dead and wounded were those who were more dis-
tant from the tarabiniers, and who thought them-
selves quite safe at the corner of Po-street, where they
had stopped for mere curiosity. The pen fails to de-
scribe the scene of horror which I witnessed at the
moment when the dead andthe wounded werepicked
up by an exasperated crowd crying for revenge.
The Cafes Di Lei and Fiorio and the Hotel de Londres
were soon turned into hospitals. Some of the
dead bodies were placed upon the shoulders of citi-
zens, who, with torches in their bands, took them
to the Town-hall, shouting out, "To arms! to
arms ! let us avenge our slain brethren. It is
Perusal (they said) who wants to assassinate us.
Revenge ! revenge !" The scene was such that it
brought to my mind the worst of the French revo-
letioa of 179; as described by Tiers or Louis