The Sun.
London, England, 1859-03-19 00:00:00

refugees, or of persons variously concealed, was
greater than the number actually imprisoned. A
very large proportion of those prisoners belong to
the middle classes ; very few of them have inde-
pendent means of support for their families ; not to
mention that, as Mr. Gladstone was informed,
confiscation or sequestration upon arrest was fre-
quent, so that generally each case of a prisoner or
refugee becomes the centre of a separate circle of
humam misery, and the system bears on whole
classes—on those classes upon which the healthy
solidity and progress of a nation mainly depend.
He then makes the following precise statement :
" Nearly all those who formed the opposition in
the Chamber of Deputies under the constitution are
in prison or in exile. The Chamber had been •
elected twice over, and with very little change, but
that little in favour of the opposition. Not one of
the body had been brought to trial, although one
of them had been assassinated by a priest named
Peluso, well known in the streets of Naples when
I was there, but who was never questioned for
the act, and said to receive a pension from
the Government. The full complement of the
Chamber of Deputies was 164, elected by a con-
stituency which brought to the poll about 117,000
voters. Of these about 140 was the greatest num-
ber that came to Naples to exercise the functions
of the Chamber. An absolute majority of this
number, or 76, besides some others who had been
deprived of office, had been arrested or had gone
into exile ; so that after the regular formation of a
representative Chamber, and its suppression in the
teeth of the law, the Government of Naples has
consummated its audacity by putting into prison,
or driving into banishment for the sake of escaping
prison, an actual majority of the representatives o
the people."
So the constitutional parliament has been dis-
posed of en masse. Now let us see how, according
to Mr. Gladstone's report, , the individual citizen
fares under this paternal despotism. The law of
Naples—he means the old law, anterior to and inde-
pendent of the constitution—requires that personal
liberty shall be inviolable, except under a warrant
from a court of justice; the warrant must proceed
upon actual depositions, and the nature of the
charge be stated. "In utter defiance of this law,
the Government, of which the prefect of police is
an important member, through the agents of that
department, watches and dogs the people, pays
domiciliary visits, very commonly at night, ransacks "
the houses, seizing papers and effects, and tearing
up floors at pleasure, under pretence of searching
for arms ; it imprisons men by the score, by the
hundred, by the thousand, without any warrant
whatever, sometimes without even any written
authority at all, or anything beyond the word of a
policeman, constantly without any statement what-
ever of the nature of the offence. Nor is this last
fact wonderful ; men are arrested, not because they
have committed or are believed to have committed
any offence, but because they are persons whom it
is thought convenient to confine or to get rid of,
and against whom, therefore, some charge must be
found or fabricated."
Mr. Gladstone then describes particularly the
mode in which the secret examinations of the pri-
soner are conducted, in order "to create a charge,
which as yet does not in fact exist." He tells us
how the man is insulted and annoyed on pur-
pose to make him lose his temper and utter some
expression which may be construed into disaffec-
tion or disapproval of the Government—which may
even be taken as expressing some intentions of re-
volution or regicide. " Thoughts are forged," says
Mr. Gladstone, " in order that they may be punished.
I here speak of what I know to have happened, and
I have imagined or heightened nothing."
The next portion of his subject is the long deten-
tion usually inflicted before trial. "I do not happen
to have heard," he significantly observes, " of any
one tried at Naples on a political charge in these
last times with less than sixteen or eighteen months
of previous imprisonment. I have seen men still
waiting who had been confined for twenty-six
months—and this confinement begun by an act not
of law, but of force, in defiance of law. There may
be cases of arrest under warrant, after depositions,
but they are entirely exceptional. So much for
the principle which we prize in England under the
title of our Habeas Corpus!
With regard now to the conduct of prosecutions,
let us see what Mr. Gladstone says :—" I do not
scruple to assert that when every effort has been
used to concoct a charge, if possible, out of the per-
' version and partial production of real evidence, this
often fails, and then the resort is to perjury and to
forgery. The miserable creatures to be found in
most communities, but especially in this, where the
Government is the great agent of corruption upon
the people—the wretches who are ready to sell the
liberty and life of fellow-subjects for gold, and to
throw their own souls into the bargain—are delibe-
rately employed by the executive power to depose,
according to their inventions, against the men whom
it is thought desirable to ruin. These depositions
are generally made in the coarsest and clumsiest
manner, and they bear upon the evidence of false-
hood, in absurdities and self-contradictions, accu-
mulated- even to nausea. But what then ? Mark
the calculation. If there be plenty of it, some
of it, according to the vulgar phrase, will stick."
Mr. Gladstone dwells somewhat upon this infernal
principle of obtaining a conviction by the sheer
quantity of charges brought against an innocent
prisoner, who may after nine-tenths of those charges
have fallen to the ground, be destroyed by the
remnant of accusation which he cannot formally
refute. To quote our author, " the whole proceed-
' ing is linked together, from first to last. The pri-
soner may have counter-evidence mountains high,
but he is not allowed to bring it ; I know this is
hardly credible, but it is true. The very men tried
while I wps at Naples named and appealed to the
counter-evidence of scores and hundreds of men of
all classes and professions, military, clergy, govern-
ment functionaries, and the rest; but in every
instance with, I believe, one single exception, the
court—the grand criminal court of justice—refused
to hear it ; and in that one case the person, when
called, fully bore out the statement of the prisoner.
Of course the assertion of the accused, however
supported by the evidence of station and character,
goes for nothing against the small remaining frag-
ment, not self-destroyed of the fictions of the vilest
wretches, however such a fragment be brought
beneath presumption of falsehood ; and this frag-
ment, being thus secured from confutation, forms
the pillow on which the consciences of the judges,
after their work of condemnation, calmly and
quietly repose." In another place he says, Ido
not allege that the judges of Naples are all mon.
sters, but they are slaves. They are very numerous,
very ill-paid, and they hold their offices during
pleasure. Perhaps the eight judges who are now
trying political prisoners by the hundred at Naples
may have amongst them about one-half the salary
of an English puisne judge." He refers also to the
tyrannical severity with which they are treated in
case of their deciding against the accusations
brought by Government—" not that it actually
signifies much, as the Government arrest and
imprison without any warrant, and think nothing
of keeping men in prison, after they have been first
punished by two or three years of imprisonment
and terror, and then solemnly declared guiltless."
He then specifies six cases of men who, after being
acquitted, still remained in prison.
Reverting, however, to the earlier stages of pro-
secution, we are told how, after a person has been
arrested without any warrant, without any wit-
nesses against him, " when the forged testimony.
has been procured, the Government are in a posi-
tion to present it to the court, obtain a warrant, and
so far to legalise the imprisonment." Mr. Glad-
stone then proCeeds to inquire " how are these
detenuti treated during the long and awful period
of apprehension and dismay between their illegal
seizure and their illegal trial ?" This investigation
leads him into details which are physically revolt-
ing, almost beyond imagination to conceive. " The
prisons of Naples are another term for the extreme
of filth and horror. I have really seen something
of them, but not the worst. This I have seen, my
lord—the official doctors not going to the sick pri-
soners,
but the sick prisoners, men almost with
death on their faces, toiling upstairs to themn,nalt tahnadt
charnel-house of the Vicaria, because the lower re-
gions of such a place of darkness are top f
loathsome to allow it to be expected that profes-
sional men should consent to earn bread by enter-
ing them. -As to diet, I must speak a word for the
bread I have seen. Though black and coarse to the
last degree, it was sound. The soup, which forms
the only other element of subsistence, is so nauseous,
as I was assured, that nothing but the extreme of
hunger could overcome the repugnance of nature to
it ; I had not the means of tasting it. The filth of
the prisons is beastly ; the officers, except at night,
hardly ever enter them."
We cannot find space on this occasion for any
further extracts, and must leave this general de-
scription to speak for itself. The details which Mr.
Gladstone subsequently gives us of the dreadful
state of the several prisons, and especially the
Bagnio of Nisida, in which Poerio wore his chains
so long, completely bear out, and even go beyond,
the foregoing account. We must defer these quo-
tations, however, and the narrative of the case o
Poerio and his companions in misfortune, to
another occasion.

THE CONDEMNED CONVICT BIRKETT.—The sen-
tence of death passed at the late assizes at Nottingham,
upon Thomas Brown Birkett, farmer, for the murder of the
gamekeeper Watmough, at Barnley-in-the-Willows, near
Newark, will in all probability be commuted to transporta-
tion for life, the Home Secretary having advised her Ma
jesty to that effect. In the meantime the convict has been
respited until her Majesty's pleasure shall be known. A
letter to the Sheriff of Nottingham, conveying this informa-
tion, was received from the Home-office oh Wednesday.