The Sun.
London, England, 1861-08-31 00:00:00

BARON RIGASOLI'S CIRCULAR

Baron Ricasoli has addressed the following cir-
cular to the diplomatic agents of Italy at foreign
Courts:—

" Turin, 24th Aug.

" In the circular despatches which I have had the
honour of addressing to the representatives of H.M.
abroad, I alluded to the troubles and difficulties
which exist in the Southern provinces of the king-
dom ; and whilst de,claring that I would neither
dissimulate nor attenuate them, I expressed the
hope that those provinces, warmed by the sun of
liberty, would soon be cured of their evils, and
would add force and honour to the Italy to which
they belong. _ _ _

"No new circumstances have arisen calculated
to diminish the hopes which the King's Govern-
ment placed in the vigour of the measures it was
adopting and in the patriotism of the populations.
But as the brigandage by which those provinces are
desolated, feeling itself more closely pressed, has
redoubled its efforts--as the cooperation of its
auxiliaries has become more powerful (no one is now
ignorant who they are), and as in these efforts, which
we are inclined to believe will be the last, acts of
cruelty which ought to be unknown to our times
and our civilisation have been committed, and to
which consequently by a deplorable necessity we
have had to order a corresponding repression—as
all this is so, our enemies have regarded it as a
new reason for protesting more strongly against the
oppression, as they say, which Piedmont imposes
on that unfortunate country, forced by trick and
v:olenee from its legitimate masters, to whom it
desires to return even at the cost of martydom and
blood.

" To these malevolent allegations of our enemies
have been added, it is painful to say, imprudent
language of men who are honourable and strongly
Italian by old affection and profound conviction ;
which men, seeing the fatal conflict prolonged in
the Neapolitan provinces, incline to the belief that
the union of those districts to Italy was made incon-
siderately, and that consequently it is necesstiry to
look on it as of no effect until after a new and more
certain experience."
" For our part, we can never accept the point of
view of these persons, though we do not question
either their patriotism or the uprightness of their
intentions, since we cannot doubt either the legiti-
macy or the efficacy of the plebiscite, by means of
which those provinces declared that they would
form part of the Italian kingdom ; and since the
nation cannot in any way admit that it possesses
the right of declaring itself separated from the other
provinces and a stranger to their fate. The Italian
nation is constituted, and all that is Italy belongs
to it.

" In this state of things, and in this situation of
public opinion, the King's Government thinks right
that its representatives abroad shall be informed of
the real condition of the Neapolitan provinces, and
of the considerations by which they will be able to
correct the inexact judgments which may exist on
the subject in foreign countries.
" Wherever the form of government and the
reigning dynasty have had to be changed by a re-
volution, there always remains, to trouble the new
order of things for a period more or less long, a
leaven of the past which cannot be removed from
the body of the nation without fratricidal conflicts
and :bloodshed. ' Spain, after the lapse of thirty
years, has not yet seen the wounds of civil wars
healed up which, at every moment, threaten to
break out afresh. England, after having recovered
her liberties with the House of Orange, had to
struggle during nearly fifty years against the
Stuarts, whose partisans were able to march from
Scotland to the gates of London.

" France also sacrificed the Girondists to the cause
of the federation, devastated Lyons, was rendered
desolate by invaders, and was afterwards distracted
by the troubles at La Vendee ; which province,
scarcely vanquished in the terrible and sanguinary
war under the Republic, took np arms in the
Hundred Days, and did the same against the
monarchy of July; and yet no one in the midst of
those difficulties of Spain, England, and France,
dared deny the right of repression possessed by the
Governments fully constituted and approved of by
the great majority of the nation ; and no one con-
sidered the armed resistance to the national will as
anything else than rebellion against the national
sovereignty, although that rebellion had regular
armies, brave and experienced generals, possessed
towns and territories in which it exercised autho-
rity, and to put it down a regular war and pitched
battles were necessary.
" You cannot have failed to remark the im-
mense difference which exists between the Neapo-
litan acts of brigandage and the facts which I
have just mentioned. On no account can we do
the former the honour of comparing them to the
latter. The partisans of Don Carlos, and of the
Stuarts, and also the Vendeans, who combated for
a principle, would have considered themselves in-
sulted if they had been placed in comparison with
the vulgar assassins who invade different parts of
certain Neapolitan provinces, solely for the sake of
pillage and rapine. It is in vain that you would
demand from them a political programme ; in vain
that you would seek among the persons who guide
then—if indeed there are any who do so—one man
who:caa be even distantly compared to Cabrera or
La Rochejaquelein, or even to the priest Merino, to
Stolfiat, or Charette. Among the generals and
superior officers who have remained faithful to the
Bourbons, there is not one who has ventured to take
the command of the Neapolitan brigands and the
responsibility of their acts. The absolute want of
political principle which is proved by the events
which have occurred, and the acts of the Neapolitan

brigands is also clearly evidenced by the testimony
of the English consuls and vice-consuls in the
southern provinces, and by the official correspond-
ence recently presented to Parliament by the Go-
vernment of her Britannic Majesty. To this cor-
respondence I venture to direct your attention, and
particularly to the despatch written from the Capi-
tinate by Mr. Bonham, on the Bth June, and to that
of Mr. Sauvin, dated the 12th June ; which latter
says textually The bands of malefactors are not
so numerous as they seem, but they go about every-
where, and everywhere their ferocious acts are
-complained of. They rob travellers and pillage
hamlets ; they cut electric wires, and sometimes set
firo to crops. The old Bourbonian flag has been
raised in some places, but it is certain that the move-
ment has no political character, and that it is a sys-
tem of agrarian vandalism embraced as a profession
by a great part of the disbanded troops who prefer
pillage to labour.
" Still, Neapolitan brigandage may certainly be
an instrument in the hands of the reaction which
excites and pays it, in order to keep up agitation in
the country, encourage foolish hopes, and mislead
public opinion in Europe. But as it would be an
error to regard it as an armed protest of the coun
try against a new order of things, so it would be con-
trary to truth to represent it, on the faith of news-
paper accounts, as possessing the importance and
extent ascribed to it.

" Of the fifteen provinces which composed the
kingdom of Naples, five only are infested by bri-
gands. That does not mean that they occupy
these provinces, or that they are established iu any
town or village, but they live in small bands in the
mountains, and from them rush on defenceless
places to seek their prey. Never do they dare to
attack eves a third-rate town, or a position guarded
by any soldiers, however few the latter may be ;
and if they arrive without resistance in any place,
they deliver malefactors from the prisons, and rein-
forced by them and peasants accustomed to such
sort of enterprises, rob and pillage, and then take to
flight.

" Brigandage, as it is practised in the province
of Naples, is neither a political reaction nor a new
thing; it is the fruit of the wars which have con-
tinually taken place in that province, of very fre-
quent political commotions, of rapid changes of rule,
and of Governments which have always been bad.
Brigandage desolated those provinces during the
Spanish and Austrian viceroyalties up to 1733, and
did not cease during the reign of the Bourbons, of
Joseph Napoleon and Murat.
" Brigandage in the Neapolitan provinces, there-
fore, is accounted for by historical precedents and
the habits of the country, to say nothing of the
excitement of political revolutions, to which in the
present case other causes are added. I will not
dwell upon the bad Government of the Bourbons
in the Southern provinces. I will not be more se-
vere than the representatives of the European
Powers at the Congress of Paris in 1856, who de
nounced it to the judgment of civilised Europe as
barbarous and savage, nor more stringent than the
Hon. Mr. Gladstone, who, in his place in the British
Parliament, called it the negation of God—l will
only say that the Bourbon Government had for
principle the corruption of everything and every-
body—a corruption so universally carried out, and
with such persistence, that it appears to us almost
miraculous that those noble populations should ever
have been able to extricate themselves from it ;
everything which in tolerably organised Govern-
ments serves to strengthen, to discipline, and to
moralise, there only served to weaken and deprave.
The police was a privileg;) accorded to an associa-
tion of malefactors to harass and plunder the peo-
ple as they pleased, and to exercise the espionage
for the Government. Such was the Camoris.

"The army, with certain exceptions, was com-
posed of elements carefully selected, scrupulously
trained by the Jesuits and chaplains in the most
abject and servile idolatry of the King, and in the
blindest superstition. No idea of duty towards the
country ; their only duty was to defend the King
against the citizens,considered essentially as enemies,
and in a continuous state of rebellion, at least in
intention. And if this rebellion became real, the
army knew that the life and resources of the citizens
belonged to it, and that it would have every facility
for gratifying its ferocious and brutal instincts, and