The Sun.
London, England, 1862-10-16 00:00:00

But it may be argued by the sticklers for the in-
tegrity of the policy of Signor RATTAZZI, backed
up by the military rigour insisted upon by General
CIALDINI, that the punishment now inflicted upon
these "deserters" from the Royal Army of King VIC-
TOR EMMANUEL to the insurgent bands of General
GARIBALDI, is a punishment inflicted in the name
of the maintenance of military discipline. Let
Europe answer whether it really is so. Let any
dispassionate observer of recent events—those
events beginning at Corleone and ending at Aspro-
monte, starting from Eastern Sicily and ending in
Southern Calabria—let any dispassionate observer,
we say, cast a momentary glance of retrospect upon
these recent and sufficiently well-known occurrences,
and say whether the fault, the crime if you will, for
which these unfortunate soldiers are doomed to
undergo the awful punishment of perpetual impri-
sonment was not flagrantly and essentially more of
a political than of a military offence. Why the
banner borne aloft by GARIBALDI and his followers
was the banner not of a revolutionary mob, but of
the foremost soldiers of tho SOVEREIGN ! And of
that SOVEREIGN—in what capacity ? Not as King
of SARDINIA, not as King of the PIEDMONTESE, but as
—King of ITALY. The cry raised in Sicily and carried
across the Straits of Messina, and echoed among the
hill tops of Calabria—was, it is true, that of" Rome
or Death." But those words were mingled with
Evvivas for " VICTOR EMMANUEL," for the " King
of ITALY," for the Re Galantuomo! Let any one call
them treasonous—but the KING himself! Let any
one pronounce GARIBALDI and his men to be
traitors, insurgents, revolutionists—any one, saving
and excepting only the very Sovereign who is now
meting out upon their military companions in the
enterprise this cruel and appalling punishment.
Why, the fact is that the so-called deserters from
the Royal army, so far from being traitors to the
KlNG—loved him and his interests (in the name
and in the cause certainly of Italian Unity) " not
wisely," as events have proved, but—" too well!"
The KING and his Ministers—for what reasons the
French EMPEROR can best tell—were in reality the
traitors : traitors, that is, to the cause that GARI-
BALDI and his men consistently maintained to the
last at the point of their swords—maintained until
the Hero was infamously shot down by Italian
bullets at Aspromonte ! And when encountered—
what was the one reiterated command of the General
in the midst of the deadly fusillade of the Bersag-
lieri P " Don't fire !" It was his one entreaty
from the first moment of the approach towards
him of the Bersaglieri under PALLATICINO ! It
was sounded upon every trumpet of the Garibaldian
Band while the firing of the Royal troops con-
tinued. The offence we maintain, so far as it could
be regarded as an offence to the KING and his
Majesty's Government, was essentially a political
offence, and as such ought assuredly not to be
punished many weeks afterwards in cold blood by
so horrible a penalty as perpetual imprisonment
The soldiers who are pronounced deserters were
never arrayed in arms against the KlNG—who has,
nevertheless, now doomed them to life-long incar-
ceration. So far from that they were ready, in
order to complete the KING'S title to the Sovereignty
of Italy, one and indivisible, they were perfectly
prepared to this end to rush upon what everybody,
but themselves and their impassioned associates in
the enterprise, looked upon as certain, as absolutely
inevitable destruction. Tremendous as the odds
were that (in their own view) were arrayed against
them, they were yet prepared " to do or die" upon
the bare chance of achieving, under the leadership
of GARIBALDI, the Unification of Italy in name of
King VICTOR EMMANUEL. Call them madmen, if
you will—but not traitors to VICTOR EM-
MANUEL or to his Government ! To do
so would be nothing less than an absurdity—an
outrageous and flagrant contradiction of terms. And
yet these are actually the men who —having been
inhumanely sentenced to death by the military tri-
bunals before whom they were arraLned—we now
learn have had that sentence mercifully commuted(!)
to perpetual imprisonment, The decree thus com-
muting the sentence, we learn, has been signed by
the KlNG—evidently quite as an act of grace ! W hen
on the contrary it is an outrage to public feeling
throughout all Christendom. Why, in the presence
of the diplomatic circular addressed by the Italian
Minister for Foreign Affairs, General DURAND°,
(since Aspromonte !) to the KING'S representatives
at all the Courts of Europe—it is a monstrous ini-
quity to subject these men to any punishment what-
ever. For the programme sketched out
with diplomatic circumlocution by General Du-
RANDO is identically the same (in design)
as the programme blurted out with soldierly blunt-
ness, and without any circumlocution, by Gene-
ral GARIBALDI. Besides—punish the soi-disant
deserters in any way whatever, and how are the
officers, who threw down their swords rather than
carry them bared against the Hero of their Country
in Sicily—how are those officers of the Royal army
to be dealt with ? It is a notorious fact that
thirty or forty officers did positively act in that
way before Catania. And to allow them to pass
scatheless (beyond the fact of their having been
cashiered)—to raise not one finger against them—
while dealing so harshlywith the daring fellows who
marched in the train of GARIBALDI, and clustered
around him when he fell in the mountain pass at
Aspromonte, will be (if persisted in) to act most
cruelly, most inhumanly, and with the most glaring
and insolent injustice. Signor RATTAZZI would
almost seem to be bent upon doing everything he
possibly can contrive to do of late to drag the name,
the fame, the prestige of his SOVEREIGN through
the mire. He did so in the instance of the no-
torious Proclamation blackening the great name of
GARIBALDI with a charge of Treason. He has
snure most utn ojn bes
t i-
done so now in this instance, if that can be, still
more gratuitously, and, therefore,lsignature
still
by
cruel a singtheroya
commutation.
The am-
nesty is as nothing, so long as these unfortunate
affixed fi ab l y,
toso u
soldiers
GARIBALDI
w h toar d
iy perpetualdo
imprisonment. recent
otherwise
than in-
sist that the prison doors of these poor fellows
should be flung open at once and unconditionally.

Another Minister has given us his opinion—not
any mom than Mr. GLADSTONE'S, that of the
Cabinet,—but, simply the opinion of Sir G. C.
law's, on facts which lie as much before the whole
world as they do before Cabinet Ministers. So