The Sun.
London, England, 1851-08-09 00:00:00

LONDON, SATURDAY EVENING, AUGUST 9, 1851.

In the month of July, 1849, a debate took place in
the House of Peers on the subject of the affairs of
Italy, and in the course of the debate the Earl of
ABERDEEN took occasion to insinuate (his Lordship
would not have been cet excellent ABERDEEN of Louis
PHILIPPE, had he ever ventured beyond insinuations),
that,it was unjustifiable on the part of Lord PALMERS-
TON to state in a dispatch to her MAJESTY'S Ambas-
sador at Vienna, that the system of government in
the kingdom of Naples " was teeming with abuses of
all kinds," and he made it a subject of reproach to the
English Government in general, and to Lord PAL-
MERSTON in particular, " that we had made ourselves
an,object of aversion to the Bourbon King of NAPLES.
We will not go at length into the subject-matter of
the debate; the double-dealing of Lord HEYTESBURY,
with regard to the Sicilians and their constitution,
has already been sufficiently exposed; but we must be
permitted to observe, en passant, that whilst my Lord
STANLEY states that he has no doubt but that
the King of NAPLES will exercise the rights of a
conqueror with generosity, my Lord BROUGHAM
designates as " foul slander" any attempt to bring any-
thing like a charge of cruelty against the King of
NAPLES or his satraps, and all the partisans of
reaction in the House of Peers unite ink lauding the
Government of the King of NAPLES as one of the
most enlightened and merciful in Christendom, and in
stigmatising those who ventured to maintain the con-
trary as foul slanderers. Now, it was perfectly evi-
dent, that of the supporters of the King of NAPLES
none, with the exception of Lord HEYTESBURY, who
first studied the principles of humanity and civil
liberty in the congenial atmosphere of Tunis, and
the Earl of ABERDEEN, l'excellent ABERDEEN, of the
foreign absolutists, had any personal knowledge on
the subject. But it so happens, that we are now in a
position to prove the truth of all that my Lord
BuouGuam then designated as " foul slanders," and
the absolute falsehood of the assertion of the Neapo-
litan Minister, FORTUNATO (in bis reply to the note of
Mr. TEMPLE, of the 16th September, 1849), "that
the Government of his Sicilian MAJESTY it
actuated by no desire of vengeance." The testimony
which we have to offer is that of a witness who is no
unknown or obscure individual—of one who has ever
been an upholder of the " right divine of Kings"—
of one who is not unacquainted with affairs—of one
in whom the Earl of ABERDEEN and my Lord STAN-
LEY each reposed such confidence that during the
late Ministerial crisis they would neither of them
give their final answer to her MAJESTY until they
should have consulted him. Our witness is Mr.
GLADSTONE, who was Colonial Secretary during the
time that, under the Premiership of Sir ROBERT
PEEL, the Earl of ABERDEEN was dozing in the Fo-
reign Office, and who was sought for by Lord STANLEY
SS a colleague no longer ago than the month of Fe-
bruary last. Mr. GLADSTONE returned to this
country at the latter end of February, after a resi-
dence of between three and four months at Naples,
and as he informs us in his first letter to the Earl of
ABERDEEN,* " he came home with a deep sense of
the duty incumbent upon him to make some attempts
towards mitigating the horrors (' I can use no weaker
word,' says Mr. GLADSTONE). amidst which the govern-
ment of that country is now carried on." Mr. GLAD-
STONE then enters into details regarding the atrocities
committed by the " generous Monarch" of Lord
STANLEY, the " victim of foul slanders," according
to Lord BROUGHAM, the " faithful Sovereign" of
the Earl of ABERDEEN, which more than prove the
truth of every word of accusation that has ever bee❑
uttered against the King of NAPLES and his Govern-
ment. In proof of this assertion we will give an ex-
tract or two from his pamphlet. First, as to the
number of the prisoners of this " generous" blonarch—
" 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 accord-
ingly there can be no certainty on the point. I have
however, found that this belie( 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 local'
ties, as to the numbers of individuals missing from
among the community. I have hoard these numbers for
example at Reggio, and at Salerno; tied from an effort
to estimate them in reference to population, I du 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.
15th of May), in which the number charged was between
tour and five hundred; including (though this is a di-
gression) at least one or more persons of high station,
whose opinions would in this country be considered
more Conservative than your own. The Neapolitan
Government, indeed, appears to have something of the
art, which Mr. Burke declared to be beyond him; he
' did not know how to frame an indictment against a
people.' "