The Sun.
London, England, 1867-11-23 00:00:00

LAW OF LIBEL

Sir C. O'LOGHLEN brought in a bill to amend the law
of libel, wbicb, bo said, was similar to the one ho intro-
duced List year.

The bill was read a first time.
The house then adjourned.

THE ROMAN QUESTION.

A letter from Rome, dated Nov. 16, says :
On Sunday morning the Pope assisted at the
solemn obsequies of Cardinal di Roberti at the
Chiesa Nuova. He was looking remarkably well,
and his voice sounded loud and sweet as usual in
that large church as he pronounced the absolution.
The Mass was sung by Cardinal Reisach. The
Chiesa Nuova, the large Oratorian church, was
well filled, and the crowds in the piazza and ad-
jacent streets greeted the Papal cortege warmly.
After the ceremony the Holy Father drove to the
Hospital of San Spirito to visit the wounded sol-
diers there, though he had visited many of them
before he went round to all the beds again. These
visits arc always conducted in the simplest and
most unostentatious • manner, no previous notice
being given, and no preparations or disturbance
occasioned ; and it has been always observed that,
so far from any fevered patient becoming excited
by the event, all are found afterwards soothed
and calmed. Nothing could be more touching than
to hear the voices of the poor fellows, broken by
suffering, and steadied again by great resolution,
crying their vivas as he took his departure.
The Queen of Naples returned to Rome on
Monday, having travelled in an Austrian steamer
from Nice to Civita Vecchia. She had a private
audience of the Holy Father next day.
The return of the mixed Papal and French gar-
risons into the various towns whence the Garibal-
diens fled on the disappearance of their corypheus,
has been continuing. At Viterbo, where one party
of them had got up a plebiscite, which another
section, headed by Acerbi, disavowed, and where,
for ten days, the various leaders had been trying to
force themselves on the people as a "Provisional
Government "—whose chief measure has been to
extort a contribution of 40,000 scudi—the Papal
troops entered on the 9th. All the people of im-
portance in the place came out in procession to
meet the troops, while the inhabitants hailed them
with acclamations of joy, and draped the fronts of
their houses with the Papal colours.
The Osservatore Romano publishes the following
from Montefiascone :—" On the 7th our city was
freed from the Garibaldian incursion. The legiti-
mate municipality immediately resumed its func-
tions, and the Pontifical arms were set up again in
all public places amid general and spontaneous de-
monstrations of rejoicing. The iniquitous invasion,
which has done great damage to the population
by impositions extorted from the commune, from
the clergy, and from individuals, has only served
to confirm us in our proverbial devotion to the
Holy See. The Pontifical troops reentered the city
on the 10th, and were received by a vast con-
course of people, while all the houses were deco-
rated with the colours of the Holy See and of
France ; the streets through which the troops were
to pass were strewn with flowers, and the ladies
presented Colonel Azzanesi with a silk banner."
It has been the same thing in all the other towns.
Everywhere the troops have been received with
cries of " Viva Pio Nono !" " Viva la Francia !"
Everywhere the Te Deum is sung, and deputa-
tions sent up to Rome to protest against the in-
vasion. At Tivoli, Bracciano, and other places
there have been general illuminations and fire-
works in token of rejoicing, and the discharge of
martaletti, that unfailing accompaniment of all Ita-
lian festivals.

Everything goes on here on its old footing again,
almost as if nothing had happened. Almost the
only remaining token of the crisis we have passed
through is the continued strengthening of the
walls and gates, at which the troops are still work-
ing ; and the peaceful Pincio bristles with cannon
as you take your afternoon ride. Occasionally,
too, events occur to recall the realities of war ; as
on Wednesday evening, when the prisoners of the
26th October were marched into Rome. There
were two companies of the Antibes Legion, a corn -
pony of Cacciatori esteri, and a few Dragoons and
Gensdarmes. The surgeon is a British subject, Dr.
O'Flyn, of Cork, who studied at Louvain. After
the capitulation, Garibaldi had the prisoners
brought before him, and said he could not forbear
congratulating them on their noble defence, but
his victory had been a sad (luttuosissima) one for
him, as it had cost him 200 or 300 men. The pri-
soners were then marched to the frontier at Cor-
resse, where they were delivered over to the regular
Italian troops, who escorted them through Terni
and Perugia to Florence, thence to Pisa, and finally
to Varignano, in the Gulf of La Spezzia. Here
they were treated to the same lodgings and rations
as if they had been Italian troops, and they were
left free to walk about within the limits of the fort.
While here, an Italian officer, who execrates Gari-
baldi, informed them of his final defeat at Men-
tana, and a few days later they saw himself brought
in a prisoner with Canzive and Basso. A French
steamer brought them to Civita Vecchia, and on
their arrival at the Roman railway station, they
were met by Colonel d'Argy and a detachment of
the Legion d'Antibes, of Carabinieri, Artillery,
Gensdarmes, and Dragoons. It was a fine sight to
see them come in by torchlight thus escorted, and
still more, by a number of the population, who
turned out to welcome them notwithstanding the
lateness of the hour.

It seems very strange to a humdrum islander to
be living in the midst of these stirring scents—to
watch the very beatings of the heart, and the
welling of the life-blood of that vast body which
lives in every clime and age, for it is not always
that the secret operations of her being are thus
open to view. We are not surprised to see crowds
from other nations peering over us, and those,
even, who profess generally to care for none of
these things casting a glance at us askance, but
we are astonished at the affectation of indifference
with which one paper which generally boasts of
the fullness of its foreign information, seems to
treat us. I have not seen the Times very regularly,
certainly, since I have been back in Rome, but
when I have seen it, I have seen no letter from
any regular correspondent in Rome. If they can-
not command a writer who can keep sufficiently
within the line of truth, to avoid the risk of being
marched out of the States, they had better copy
from some respectable French or English Catholic
journal—which, by the nature of the case, must
have the best information—rather than give such
miserable displays of impotence as they content
themselves with reproducing all the way round
from Naples, where they seem to have established
a kind of provincial head-quarters of their own,
the arbitrary heading, " Southern Italy," including,
as an insignificant item, all they are able or. willing
to let their readers know about Rome.

The Times of the 4th is before me,• and I ex-
tract the following :—" At the date of my last
from Rome " (such is the thirdhaml information
with which the readers of the Times suffer them-
selves to be put off), " a new incident was observed
—the patrolling of the city by dragoons. Cannon
were placed also on Monte Mario and the Piucio.
It is resolved, therefore, to give a warm reception
to the Garibaldians, who are said to be approach-
ing nearer and nearer, notwithstanding the official
reports that in the provinces loyalty and trant
quillity reigned." Now, why the "notwithstand-
ing ?" as if a mare's nest had been discovered.
Who would not imagine, from reading the above,
that these precautions against the Garibaldians,
and even the advance of the Garibaldians, had
been kept out of sight by the " official reports ?" and
yet the very same papers which recorded the loyal
bearing of the Roman populations were filled with
accounts, of the
,Garibaldian movements and the

THE SUN, LON Doi"

measures of defence ! It goes on : "No sure in-
formation of movements could be obtained in the
city—no one knew anything." It would not be
easy to assign the precise meaning of the first part
of this very vague sentence. What are " move-
ments "in the abstract? Perhaps the corres-
pondent's sapient correspondent had arrived at the
conclusion of a wiser than he,

that nothing can be known ;"

and in that philosophical frame of mind rejected
every impression which struck his sight ; for never
has there been a time when there has been more
to know, or when it has been more easy to know
what was going on. The " movements " of both
Garibaldian and Roman troops have been chronicled
most minutely, day by day, in the Roman papers.
There is "no one " but 'has many friends in the
army from whom he might hear them again de-
tailed and discussed. Every " movement" has
been followed by an eager and enthusiastic crowd,
and it has been impossible to take a walk or
drive abroad without seeing which way the tide
of popular interest set ; the whole Papal territory
is so small, that it is easily traversed, and every
point of operations has been the object of a ride
on horseback for all who care about contemporary
history.

" Even this intelligence," the letter proceeds,
" only describes what was the state of the interior
of the city several days since ; for, as to what is
going on without, the Romans know nothing more
than is communicated through the Diario." Poor
fellow ! I wonder where he picked this up, and
what the Diario is? As most of your readers are
aware, it is a very useful little calendar published
once a year, intended to inform pious people of
the times and seasons of various special services,
&c. ; but giving foreign intelligence never entered
into its composition any more than into that of
"Poor Richard's Almanac." What a pity when
charming correspondents write about what they
don't understand !

When, however, he confines himself "to his
last," and tells us of what falls under his own ken,
he becomes instructive. " Here " (Naples), "as
elsewhere, soldiers and sailors absent on leave are
being called into service, and I need not say how
fruitful a source of discontent it is, and how in-
jurious to the trade and agriculture of the country.
Were the masses animated by an enlightened
patriotism, there would be no occasion for fear;
but when a people seek, above all things, their
own individual and immediate good, I see breakers
ahead." Why this waste of fine words ? why
not confess that the Neapolitans have ever hated
the new Government imposed on them, have
always resisted it in every way in their power,
and have resented none of its measures more
violently than those for forced service in its de-
fence ? " Trade and commerce are depressed ;
provisions are nearly double the price they were ;
paper money is all that can be obtained, and
even in the payment of that, for the smallest pur-
chases, an agio of five per cent is demanded." No
wonder the Pope's subjects are not ambitious
to be reduced to this condition, and so stead-
fastly refuse all inducements to fraternize with
those who would bring them to it.

While " our own correspondent " puts down
these two facts, however, one after the other, he
forgets to add them up and tell us how, with all
these men called back into the service, the ex-
penses involved by the measure are to be met.
It has been calculated that this so-called Gari-
baldian expedition has cost the Italian Govern-
ment 100 millions of francs, and that the present
call of all classes back to arms cannot cost less
than 150 millions more. Where is all this to come
from ? Not from the spoliated ecclesiastical pro-
perty, for that has never produced but 24 millions
and in most parts of the country no one will come
forward to bid for it at all.

One result of keeping the readers of the Times
so much in the dark as to what is going on has
been that " F. E. Tripp," grandiloquently styling
herself " Secretary of the Ladies' Committee in aid
of General Garibaldi," only trips on to the scene
on this same 4th of November, with her appeal in
favour of the Garibaldian wounded, when " the
movements" are all over, and the so-called volun-
teers are mostly safe back under their own rooftree.
Here, where forgiveness of injuries is practised as
well as preached, the wounded prisoners have re-
ceived the same care as the wounded troops—
tended by Sisters of Charity in other wards of the
same hospitals, visited by the same surgeons, and
assisted, besides, by the most charitable of the
Papalini themselves. I was speaking to-day on
the subject with a noble lady belonging to the
highest and most " retrograde" family in the State,
and she expressed herself with the greatest kind-
ness in regard to those she had visited ; while, of
course, some continue hardened and obstinate, she
assured me the penitence of the greater part was
most touching ; that numbers of mere boys, with
no opinions of their own, lamented that they had
been led away by the misrepresentations of bad
companions, and bitterly regretted that by such
means they had been induced to shed their blood,
and endure so much in a bad cause.

"F. E. Tripp " may rest quite easy that they
will want for nothing, and Catholic charity will
probably provide them better than Protestant
sympathizers. Among those who have been fore-
most to see into their needs has been the Queen of
Naples, who, I am told, went to visit them imme-
diately on her return to Rome.
Perhaps, however, the withholding of true news
is a less evil than the fabrication of false, for
sensation purposes, in which the Pall Mall Gazette
and the Telegraph have been indulging.
The moderation and courtesy of the Gensdarmes
have been acknowledged by all who have had to
come across them in the exercise of their most
difficult and arduous duties, and none who have
had the opportunity of watching their manners will
believe, in the ipse dixit of the Pall Mall Gazette, of
the 7th inst., that any one of them would present
his piece at "the Telegraph correspondent and a
couple of friends as they leant smoking out of
the window overlooking the Corso," without some
justifiable provocation or previous ground of sus-
picion. What on earth is meant, too, by " the
window overlooking the Corso ?"—some thousand
windows, probably, overlook the Corso. "The
Marchese Spina, a faithful Papist," continues the
Pall Mall Gazette, " was looking out of his window
before retiring to rest ; forthwith four Gens-
darmes, stationed in the shadow of a house oppo-
site, fired a volley at him ; happily they missed their
aim." Why not invent something probable at
least? Who but the most acharne compiler of sensa-
tional fiction could have conceived the folly of a
party of Gensdarmes being stationed in ambush
to fire on one of their own supporters. It is
strange how anything so preposterous could be put
in print ; unfortunately, however, it would appear
that no such person as Marchese Spina exists in
Rome. But those who can persist in calling the
finest, freest, and most disinterested body of troops
in the world " mercenaries," can say anything that
is untrue and unfair, and they are not worth setting
right.
General Kanzler's official report of the action at
Mentana, as presented to the Pope, has been pub-
lished. It is so similar with the accounts I have
already sent, that I do not think it worth while
to translate it entire. The following passages,
however, will be read with interest, being from so
authentic a source :

" We passed through the Porta Pia at 4 a.m.,
directing our march over the Ponte Momentana,
along the road leading to Mentana.
" As soon as we had crossed the bridge, I gave
orders to Major de Troussures, of the Zouaves, to
take three companies of his regiment along the
Anio, on the Via Salara, and, advancing with cau-
tion, to effect a useful diversion, while I led the
attack on the opposite side.
"The enemy had taken the field strategically
awaiting the attack, and rather than thinking of
retiring, the forces were so disposed as to admit
of concentration at Tivoli. Informed by their
scouts of the movement of our column, they pre-
pared to show fight. The barricades subsequently
found at Mentana, and at Monte Rotondo, and the
position of their outposts showed that they were
entrenched to await us in a strongly fortified posi-
tion.

" About three-quarters of an hour after midday,