The Sun.
London, England, 1859-03-31 00:00:00

hardly bigger than a Martello tower) these double
irons were totally unknown ; and there were many
political offenders then there ; but they were men
of the lower class, to whom this kind of punish-
ment would have been but a slight addition. But
just about the time when Poerio and his compa-
nions were sent to Nisida an order came from Prince
Luigi, the brother of the King, who, as admiral,
has charge of the island, ordering that double irons
should be used for those who had been brought
into the prison since a certain rather recent
date—l think the 22d of July, 1850. Thus it was
contrived to have them put on Poerio* and his
friends, and yet to have a plea, such as it is, for
saying that the measure was not adopted with a
view to their case, and to the extreme moral (as
well as the not slight physical) suffering which it
would secure for them. Among these, as I have
already said, had been chained together, the in-
former Margherita and one of his victims. Among
these, I myself saw a political prisoner, Romeo,
chained in the manner I have ae,cribed to an ordi-
nary offender—a young man with one of the most
ferocious and sullen countenances I have seen among
many hundreds of the Neapolitan criminals.
" The inspector of this prison, General Palomba,
had, I was informed, never, or not for a very long
time, visited it. But he had come just before I was
there, and it is impossible to avoid the inference
that he came in order to make sertain that the orders
for increased severity were not evaded or relaxed.
" I had heard that the political offenders were
obliged to have their heads shaved; but this had
not been done, though they had been obliged to
shave away any beard they might have had.
" I must say I, was astonished at the mildness
with which they spoke of those at whose hands
they were enduring these abominable persecutions,
and at their Christian resignation as well as their
forgiving temper, for they seemed ready to undergo
with cheerfulness whatever might yet be in store
for them. Their health is evidently suffering. I
saw the aunt of one of these prisoners a man of
about 28, weep when she spoke of his altered
looks, and of the youthful colour but a few weeks
before in his cheeks. I should have taken him
for 40. I had seen Poerio in December, during his
trial, but I should not have known him at Nisida.
He did not expect his own health to stand, although
God, he said, had given him strength to endure. It
was suggested to him from an authoritative quar-
ter, that his mother, of whom he was the only prop,
might be sent to the King to implore his pardon,
or he might himself apply for it. He steadily
refused. That mother, when I was at Myles, was
losing her mental power under the pressure of her
afflictions. It seemed as if God, more compassionate
than her fellow creatures, was taking them away
in mercy ; for she had, amidst her sorrow, trances
and visions of repose. She told a young physician
known to me, that she had been seeing her son,
and with him another person. The two were in
different gaols, and she had seen neither. • •

" Sincel left Naples, Poerio has sunk to a lower
depth of calamity. He has been taken, I under-
stand, from Nisida to Ischia, farther from public
interest and, perhaps, to some abode like the dun-
geon where Baron Porcari is confined. What I
saw was quite enough. Never before have I con-
versed, and never probably shall I converse again,
with a cultivated and accomplished gentleman, of
whose innocence, obedience to law, and love of his
country, I was as firmly and as rationally assured
as of your lordship's, or that of any other man of
the highest character, whilst he stood before me
amidst surrounding felons, and clad in the vile
uniform of guilt and shame. But he is now gone
where he will scarcely have the opportunity even
of such conversation. I cannot honestly suppress
my conviction, that the object in the case of Poerio,
as a man of mental power sufficient to be feared, is
to obtain the scaffold's aim by means more cruel
than the scaffold, and without the outcry which
the scaffold would create.

"I have endeavoured to avoid multiplicity of
detail, and have referred particularly to the case
of Poerio, not because I have the slightest reason
to believe it more cruel or wicked than others,
but because I was able to follow it some-
what better through its particulars, and
because it is one which will more readily
than most others attract interest out of his
own country. Crimine ab uno disce omnes. It is
better that the veil should be lifted from scenes
fitter for hell than for earth.

" I will, however, give your lordship another
specimen of the treatment administered at Naples
to men illegally arrested, and as yet uncondemned.
From the 7th of December last to the 3d of Feb-
ruary, Pironte, who was formerly a judge, and is
still a gentleman, and who was found guilty on or
about the last named day, spent his whole days and
nights, except when on his trial, with two other
men, in a cell at the Vicaria, about eight feet
I square, below the level of the ground, with no light
except a grating at the top of the wall, out of
which they could not see. Within the space of
these eight feet, with the single exception I have
named, Pironte t and his companions were confined
during those two months ; neither for mass were
they allowed to quit it, nor for any purpose what-
ever. This was in Naples, where by universal
consent matters are far better than in the provinces,
as the presence of strangers has some small influence
on the Government. This, I say, was in Naples;
it was the case of a gentleman, a lawyer, a judge,
accused, but uncondemned. Do not suppose it is
selected and exceptional. I had no power to select,
except from what happened to become known to
me, from among a sample quite insignificant in
comparison with what must have remained un-
known to me. There was another case I learned,
which I believe I can report with accuracy, though
my knowledge of it is not quite the same as of the
last. When I left Naples, in February, the Baron
Porcari was confined in the Castle of Ischia. He
was accused of a share in the Cal abrian insurrection,
and was awaiting his trial. His prison is a dun-
geon without light, and 24 feet or palms (I am not
sure which) below the level of the sea. He is never
allowed to quit it day or night, and no one is per-
mitted to visit him there, except his wife once a
fortnight."
In his subsequent and explanatory letter, pub-
lished the next year, Mr. Gladstone, whilst he finds
ample cause to adhere to the description he has
already given of the general state of things in the
kingdom of Naples, adds some other particulars re-
lative to the prison at Ischia, and the outrages there
inflicted upon the unfortunate gentlemen confined
there, such as would scarcely be suspected by the
butterfly visitors" to Naples, when they look at
" those lovely islands scattered along the coast,
whose picturesque and romantic forms delight the
eye of the passing voyager, ignorant what huge
and festering masses of human suffering they con-
ceal." He completely demolished, by facts and
statistics of the most authentic and precise kind,
the insincere and miserable attempts of Mr. Charles
Macfarlane, and M. Jules Gondon, editor of the
Univers, to protect their patron King Bomba from
the scorn and detestation which these horrible dis-
closures have brought upon him. But whilst these
are " the gigantic horrors" of the Two Sicilies, it
is well to recollect that throughout the other
Italian States where the Austrian ascendency pre-
vails, it makes itself felt in the same intolerable
oppression, and in the Roman states especially,
which are in the possession of an Austrian army,
the Pope's prisons of Paliano and Fort Urbano
have been shown to be only a few degrees better
than those in the kingdom of Naples. A minute
account of their condition, and of the treatment of
the political prisoners confined in them, appeared
in our journal two or three years ago. The ille-
gality of judicial governmental proceedings, which
makes the government of Naples, as Mr. Gladstone
says, " the great law-breaker and malefactor of the
country," exists all over Italy.

* About three years ago, it was mentioned in one of our
own letters from Naples, that during a very critical and pain-
ful medical operation which it had become necessary for
Poerio to undergo, his chains were not removed ; and if we
are not mistaken, the Hon. Mr. Petre, of the British Lega-
tion, mentioned this fact in a letter to Lord Palmerston.

t Pironte has been frequently mentioned in our own letters
from Naples, as suffering from prolonged and painful disease.
He is not one of those whom the King has recently let out of
prison, and we belive he still wears his chains, unless death
has taken them off.

THE SHIPPING INTEREST.—The committee ap-
pointed by the House of Commons to inquire into the ope-
ration of those burdens and restrictions which specially
affect merchant shipping have appointed Sir George Come-
wall Lewis chairman of the committee, and Wednesday
next has been fixed for the first sitting to receive evidence.
A special meeting of the London and South-
Western Railway Company is called for the 7th April, to
consider a. number of bills pending in Parliament, one of
which authorises the company to " make new works and to
raise further funds," whilst another authorises an amalga-
mation with or a lease of the Portsmouth Railway.
DEATH OF THE COUNTESS OF HARROWBY.—We
have to aunounce the demise of the Countess of Harrowby,
who expired yesterday at the family mansion in Grosvenor-
square, after a painful illness of several week's duration.
The deceased Countess was daughter of John, first Marquis
of Bute, by his second marriage with Frances, the second
daughter of Mr. Thomas Coutts, and was sister of the late
Lord Dudley Stuart. Her ladyship was married Sept. 15,
1823, to the Earl of Harrowby, then Viscount Sandon, by
whom she leaves surviving issue Viscount Sandon, M.P.
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