The Sun.
London, England, 1863-11-19 00:00:00

TORTURE IN SICILY.

The Precursore of Palermo publishes the follow-
ing extraordinary and very painful communication
the statements put forth in which ar© all the more
remarkable, as coming from one who is manifestly
numbered among the bitterest opponents of the
Parti Pretre and the old Bourbon dynasty.
It is with extreme regret (says the Precursore,
in publishing the communication), that we give pub-
licity to the following atrocious facts, of which we
have been apprised by a letter from Signor Anto-
nin° Morvillo :
Sir,—Every one who knows anything of the condition
into which our country has fallen, whether by inheritance
from the deposed Government, or through the errors of the
actual Administration, in which ignorance and stupidity
have been substituted for reason and good sense, is aware
that unfortunately enthusiasm for the destinies of nations
has been replaced by that universal discontent which the
enemies of liberty distort into distrust in the future of our
Italy. This position of affairs, which is unhappily growing
worse, is a source of great grief to those who love their coun-
try, and who strive on the one hand to warn the Govern-
ment of its fatal errors, and on the other, to modify public
resentment by offering suggestions which may guide the
opinion of the vulgar, and prevent their proceeding to ex-
tremes. Day by day the difficulties of such a mediation
grow in number and weight, and your readers will learn
something of them from the following facts.
About a month ago an acquaintance told mo how a lad
named Antonio Cappello, the son of a poor widow in the Via
Macqueda, had been tortured at the Military Hospital at Pa-
lermo. They had tortured him because, having been born
dumb, they asserted that he pretended to be unable to speak
in order to avoid the conscription. I laughed at this story
as a fabrication only worthy of laughter ; and then, thinking
I ought to prevent the danger of such a story gaining credit,
I went in search of the widow Cappello, and found her in a
little house in the Via Banchera. Her name was Rachel
Fuggita Trischitta ; she had been born at Naples, and settled
at Palermo since 1820. Her age, 63 years, made her vene-
rable in my eyes. I asked her for her dumb son, and she
replied, showing me a blood-stained blouse, " He is at the
Military Hospital; they took him from me as a recusant
conscript, and tried to force him to speak by starvation,
blows, and fire." I was horrified at her words, and felt I
must be satisfied of their truth, so I asked her to repeat
them, and to inform me to the full extent of her knowledge.
The poor mother then said, "I asked for news of my An-
tonio, and could not get any; I sought it with the anxiety
of a mother for her son, and heard that from a lane behind
the Lampeausa Palace ho was heard crying, as if under.
going martyrdom. And then I went to find my Antonio,
and saw him. He showed me his wounds, he made signs,
that ho had been fasting, and told me by gesticulations that
he had been beaten and burned. 1 gave him some bread in
a handkerchief which he gave back to me bathed in his
blood." At these words I felt a thrill which I cannot de-
scribe; these words spoken by a mother, by a woman of the
people, and 63 years old, could not fail to leave a deep
im-
pression on my mind. I took leave of her, and under the
strong impulse of my feelings, returned home to write a
statement of all I had heard. If I sent it to the journals of
the country, hardly restored toorder—l reasoned with myself
—I should give pleasure to the Armenia, to the Stendardo,
Cattalico, and other retrograde journals, and thus furnish
fresh arguments to the propaganda of our enemies, adding to
the discontent of the masses. No, I said to myself, I must
control my own feelings, and think of Italy, °which must
suffer from public scandals, and so I decided on destroying
that which I had written. Still the unhappy man, groaning
under the torture, the bloody garment shown to mo by the
mother, were like spectres following me about, and I felt it
an imperative duty to interfere in the interests of Antonio
Cappello, so I went immediately to the Quiestor, accom-
panied by my friend Signor Antonio Castelliai, to secure his
aid for this unhappy man. He perfectly understood our
motive in refraining from publishing the matter, and full
of horror at the occurrence, promised to interfere at once.
On the following day he came to tell me that he had inte-
rested the delegate Ferro in the facts, and that he would
call on me for detailed information. I waited for him in
vairl, and began to fear that the Signor Serafini had no
power in the matter. But the case was urgent, and ad-
mitted of no delay, so I bethought myself of turning to the
Procuratore Regio, Signor Sismondi, in order to have the
facts investigated, and steps taken for the punishment of
the guilty. I spoke boldly to the honourable magistrate, and
told him the story of Cappello, as I had heard it from his
mother and from her employers, and I added that I would
have made it known through the public press, but it con-
tained too powerful an argument for public anger, and I did
not wish to excite that, I might also have taken up the
mother's cause, and appealed formally in her name, but I
preferred leaving the honour of the initiative to the indepen-
dent magistrate, in a case of crime committed by agents of
the Government. It is necessary that the people should
learn that if there are men in the employment of the Go-
vernment capable of such deeds, there are also magistrates
who know how to punish them. Sismondi appeared to
appreciate the gravity of my request, and promised to attend
to it immediately and solicitously ; he asked me to leave the
blood stained garment with him, which I did, and when I
requested him to appoint a time at which I might learn the
result of the instruction, ho asked for my address, and
promised to apprise me. He did not write to me, but I
still hoped that he would hold to his promise to act with
energy in the verification of the crime, and the punishment
of the guilty : this was the real matter of importance. I
hoped that the process could speedily commence,
but no
notice reached me, and I have learned only one additional
fact, of which I have been informed this day. Some days
ago, after the visit of the expert surgeons after the exami-
nation of Cappello's mother, after, by means of an inter-
preter they had taken the depositions of the wounded man,
and the dumb creature had been taken away and thrown
into prison, the old mother asked at the military hospital
if she might see her son. She was received with angry
rudeness, and told, first by an official and then by a military
surgeon, that she need not hope to see her son, who must pay
the penalty of having complained against them. Vain were
the tears of the desolate mother, she could neither see her
son, nor obtain any intelligence of him. Yesterday
evening the poor old woman came to me, and when
she told me these communications, I recognised
that the time had come to throw aside my reserve,
and that it would henceforth be a crime on my part to main-
tain silence respecting a deed, which has been not only loft
without reparation, but has been rendered still more hide-
ous. As I before believed that I was consulting the welfare
of Italy by remaining silent—now when I see the peace
and the life of a poor working man ruthlessly menaced, I
trust that I am doing right in bringing the facts which I
have narrated to the knowledge of the public, and thus
I denounce them to public opinion, to the Deputies and
Senators who are at Palermo, that they may rise up and
cry against the authors of such iniquity. It is time to wrest
from the hands which have tortured them a young man
whose crime is that he was born dumb. Torture in 1863,
under a liberty which has been bought by blood and sacri-
fice, is a disgrace to a Government born of the suffrages of
the people. The gag, the stripes, the burning seal, aro not
written in the plebiscite which we voted, and which wo will
sustain.

The honour of the militia, to whom these deeds are
imputed, must be repaired. The offence to the rights of
society, injured by this crime, Which is a disgrace to the
age and to civilisation, must be repaired. In holding up
this black deed to public retribution, I hope that the know-
ledge of it will reach Turin, and find an echo in Parliament
—there where little is known of our misfortunes, and there
is less intention of remedying them.
ANTONINE AlouvaLo.
Palermo, Nov. 5, 1863.

AA IMPERIAL STAG HUNT.—The Progres de
l'Oise publishes the subj3ined intelligence from
Compiegne :—" The stag hunt, which had been fixed for
"Wednesday, took place, although the weather was un-
favourable, rain having fallen heavily during all the morn-
ing. The place of meeting was the Carrefour du Puits-du-
Roi, and a considerable crowd assembled to witness the
sport. The Emperor was not present at the hunt, but his
Majesty accompanied the Empress and the guests part of
inee
Murat, arrived, Napoleon, the
the way. At one o'clock the Empress, in a walking dress,
panrdintcheoss
guess,
and th
slda, among
gwe rinhromweeerse Prince
Princess Anna
and were greeted with the acclamations of the crowd.
Shortly after the hounds got on the scent
near the Carrefour de l'Embuscade, of a superb stag,
where
The cure could not take place the same it was killed.
of the weather, but was effected evening on account
on t
On Thursday the Court and the guests took an excursion to
, the
been carried on this year with works of which have
there was a battue hi the reserved park, where 900 head of
The courts which 175 fell to the Emperor's gun.
and passages of the
lighted by oil, but orders Palace have hitherto been
have been justgiven f
for gas to
be cYCrYWhere laid on.'',