The Sun.
London, England, 1860-05-30 00:00:00

roubled for the character of Mr. ELLIOTT, and of

British diplomacy at Naples; if that gentleman

stated the plain truth to his principals, it was be-

cause he was reluctantly compelled to bow to facts.
A letter from Naples, received to-day, says,—" No
British Minister can live long in Naples with-

out, if he does his duty, reporting to his

Government acts of injustice and cruelty, of every
description of illegality and bodily and mental
tortu , inflicted by the police Government of the
Two cilies. When Mr. ELLIOT first went to
Naples, I am told by a diplomatist who was then
himself representing his Sovereign there, he found
the British Minister most favourably disposed
towards the King and Court, and believed the bad
Government of Naples by no means so odious as
was stated. ' Before I left Naples,' observed the
diplomatist whose observations I am quoting,' your
Minister condemned the governing system as much
as any other foreign Minister.' Mr. BOWYER
should, if he does not like Mr. ELLIOT'S despatches,
persuade the Neapolitan Government not to afford
the raw material for such reports." Mr. GLAD-
STONE told Mr. HENNESSY that he himself saw the
chains on Baron POERIO ; lest he should be still
incredulous we will quote again the letter. " I
beg to say that I am, with others I could name a
living witness of Baron POERIO having worn the
chains of a galley slave. Mr. HENNESSY observed
—" They had the deposition of the Surgeons, to
the effect that the baron's malady was hereditary,
and had nothing to do with his irons, and that he
was imprisoned in a cheerful room with plenty of
light, and with his books and papers." I had the
honour of knowing Baron POERIO when he was a
Constitutional Minister of King FERDINAND IL
He was then in excellent heath. So far as the
deposition of a Neapolitan Government official is
concerned, I remember when I daily attended the
famous trials which Mr. GLADTSONE made pub-
lic, it was proved in open court that the Govern-
ment employed perjury as a system. It was only
towards the end of POERIO'S imprisonment, and
when he was in the sick ward, that he lived in a
cheerful room,' with lights, books, &c. I wish
Mr. BOWYER and Mr. HENNESSY could have seen
poor POERIO chained in the damp and gloomy-
stone cells of his early imprisonment. They would,
I presume, scarcely defend the King who placed
him there for no crime—no proven offence of the
law—that King who lived to see his own body rot
to death from one of the most painful diseases with
which humanity is afflicted."
But what shall we say for Sicily—there the
brutality of the police beggars all attempts at
description ; unhappy Sicily, to which, under
British auspices, a Constitution was given in 1812,
to be cancelled by the perfidious FERDINAND as
soon as he saw the backs of the French—which
rose successfully in 1848—which was overpowered
by the reactionary Monarch, and with horrid atro-
cities again subjugated—and for which even the
Lieutenant-Governorship of FILANGIERI, who had
subdued the island, was too good ! He was re-
called, and ever since the police have gone on from
bad to worse. All cannot be told, but here are
some extracts from a pamphlet published at Paris
and of undoubted authority—" MANISCALO,
the Director of Police, an old gendarme, and
the son of a waiter in a Naples hotel,
has now for some time practically been
the ruler of Sicily, and it is under his auspices
that the system of torture has been perfected. The
famous Pontillo owes his reputation to the species
of torture which he applies in his own commissariat,
making the victim sit down in a railed arm-chair
set with razor-blades, under which is placed a pan
of burning coals. The inspector, Louis Maniscalo,
the namesake of the General Director, applies to tne
accused little iron hands provided with a closing
screw. This is called, in the language of the police,
the angelic instrument.' The gaoler, Bruno, be-
longing to the Police Commissariat of the odious
Carrega (there is a prison in each Commissariat),
tortures by stripping the victim of his clothes
and binding his head between his legs. Others
e-mploy the torture of the' tourniquet, drawing a
cord with a stick inserted in it tight round the head
of the accused till the eyes start out of the head and
the skin cracks. Others have recourse to starva-
tion, to blows, to the privation of light and of
breathable air. But the one satellite of the Direc-
tor-Gereral who outstrips all the others is the
notorious Captain CHINNICI, born a peasant in the
village of Belmonte, a robber by profession, and
now an officer of police and rich proprietor. Sent
by Maniscalo into the town of Nicosia,
in order to discover the assassin of a
certain Gorgone (a captain of this district,
killed in consequence of incredible excesses
of ferocity), from among thirty individuals
thrown into prison on the vaguest suspicion
of complicity in the crime, Chinnici chose two, at
hazard, to make an example of them, and to slake
his thirst for torment. These two unfortunates
were Rosario Chimera, of the Valle d'Olmo, and
Pizzolo. They underwent the most atrocious tor-
tures, such as the 'silencehood,' the angelic in-
strument,' hunger, the bastinado in excess, without
Ohoosing to confess an action which they had never
committed. The police agent then got hold of the
wife of Chimera, a young and beautiful woman,
twenty-two years old. After heaping on her the
most horrible violence, he caused her to be tied
naked on a bench, and gave her up to the bru-
tality of his men. She remained— there three
days in this state, without food, till, half dead,
the unhappy woman deposed that her husband
had formerly said that he would ' kill the captain
Gorgonc.' This.evidencc, extorted in this manner,
is immediately received by a judge sent for the
purpose, and CIIINNICI, delighted at having got his
first piece of evidence, returns to the dungeon of
the two wretches to tell them the confession of
CHIMERA'S wife; and as they persist in their de-
nials, he has recourse this time to a torture of
such monstrous obscenity that it is impossible to
describe it. The victims at last give in and confess
all he wishes !"
The Sicilian police are the immediate authors of
the Sicilian rebellion, and GARIBALDI'S most effi-
cient recruiting sergeants.

The Royal Geographical Society has nobly done
its part, in offering the appropriate meed of its
approbation to the heroic Commander of the little
Arctic yacht the Fox (of 170 tons burthen), the
daring course pursued by which led at last, as the
world 14y this time knows full well, to the disclo-
sure of the fate of Sir JOHN FRANKLIN—the pis-
coverer of the North-West Passage ! Thanks to
the chivalrous expedition undertaken by Captain
Sir LEOPOLD M'CLINTOCK and his companions, and
by them successfully carried out, in defiance of
obstacles of a truly appalling character, we have
arrived at length at the knowledge that the Erebus
and the Terror, with all their valiant navigators,
perished from the face of the earth in solving
the hitherto inscrutable problem, so long a source
of bewilderment to our geographers. The Society's
"Gold Medal" has, on former occasions, been
bestowed right worthily upon resolute voyagers
like Ross, BACK, SIMPSON, RAE, INGLEFIELD,
WCLURE, KANE, and COLLINSON. It was but
just and reasonable, therefore, that a like " Gold
Medal" *11°414 be awarded to the brave Commander