The Sun.
London, England, 1861-03-08 00:00:00

truth ? My hon. friend (Mr. Layard) said that Naples was
that country where perjury was the tradition of the King.
(Hear, hear.) We would not trust the son of Jam 11., and
we cannot wonder that the Neapolitans say tl ey Cannot
trust a King of Naples without seeing the source from which
he has sprung. It is needless to go back very far—to refer
to the days of Ferdinand IV.—to see the mix ure of violence
and fraud as the engines of the Governmen' of Naples. Let
us begin with the time of the late King. Is it not on record
that if ever a man was perjured on the face of the earth,
the late King of Naples was that man ? (Hear, hear.) Did
he not in February, 1848, confer a Constitution on his
people, and ratify it with a solemn oath ? (Hear, hear.) And
did he not, after the bloody struggle of the 10th of May,
again ratify that Constitution? I shall read his oath on
that occasion. He says :-
4, With reference to our sovereign Act of the 29th of
January, 1848, by which, concurring with the unanimous
desire of our most beloved subjects, we have promised, of
our own full, free, and spontaneous will, to establish in this
kingdom a Constitution, conformable to the civilisation of
the times, whereof we then indicated, by a few rapid strokes
the fundamental bases, and reserved onr ratification of it
till it should be set out and arranged in its principles, ac-
cording to the draught which our present Ministry of State
was to submit to us within ten days' time; determined to
Five immediate effect to this fixed resolution of our mind,
in the awful name of the Most Holy and Almighty God,
the Trinity in Unity, to whom alone it appertains
to read the depths of the heart, and whom we
loudly invoke as the judge of the simplicity of our inten-
tions, and of the unreserved sincerity with which we have
determined to enter upon the paths of the new political
order, having heard, with mature deliberation, our Council
of State, we have decided upon proclaiming, and we do
proclaim, as irrevocably ratified by us, the following Con-
stitution."

(Hear, hear.) And in most solemn terms that terrible oath
was repeated in the face of Europe. What has become of
that Constitution? Why, it was trampled under foot.
(Hear, hear.) And that which it is difficult to convey to
the mind of those who are assembled in this house, or in
any other place in this country, is that the case of the Go-
vernment at Naples was not the case of a Government guilty
of particular actions wrong in this or that respect, but that
of one built up and founded on the denial and destruction of
law. (Hear, hear.) In the first place, the Constitution so
solemenly sworn to was shamelessly set aside and violated;
but in the second, it is to be remembered that, even though
the Constitution had never existed, the whole course of the
Government at Naples, so far as regards the relations of the
people to the Crown, was lawless from first to last. (Hear.)
I heard a gentleman in this house speak the other night
with horror of the principles of 1789. I will not enter into
any discussion as to the comparative merits or demerits of
one period or another of the great French Revolution, but I
suppose the hon. gentleman meant to speak more particu •
larly of the agonising transactions that took place in 1793.
Amid the flood of evils which that period let loose on
Europe, the most pernicious is undoubtedly the system of
modern police. (Hear.) That was the fruit of the great
French Revolution, and it was embraced and hugged to the
heart by every Government in Italy—(hear)—and it was by
means of that police, substituted for good political govern-
ment, and intrusted with the maintenance of law and order,
that the subjects of the King of Naples were doomed and
compelled to live in an atmosphere of lawlessness. (Hear.)
Their rights had no existence, and the reign of wrong and
violence was universal. (Hear, hear.) That was the position
of the people of the Two Sicilies during the reign of the late
King and after the revolution of 1848, for from that period,
and after the solemn and awful oath to which I have refer-
red, their condition was altered greatly for the worse.
(Hear, hear.) We now come to the accession of Francis 11.
and it is painful to speak of one so young and so unhappy;
but certainly if ever there was a human being, young or
old, who marred and spoiled his own destiny, it was that
miserable monarch. (Hear, hear.) It is all very well to
claim consideration for him on account of courage, but I
confess I feel much more admiration for the courage of the
hon member for Dundalk (Sir G. Bowyer) and the hon.
member for King's County (Mr. Hennessy), for I think T
would rather live in a casemate listening to the whizzing
of bullets and the bursting of shells, than come before a
free assembly to vindicate—(Loud cheers, which prevented
the conclusion of the sentence -being heard.) I for one do
not hesitate to say that when Francis IL ascended the
throne he did so under circumstances unusually favourable.
(Hear, hear.) Let me do justice even to the previous King
or Naples. He proved himself a man of great practical abi-
lity, and he certainly exhibited political courage. His cause
was founded on wrong, but he made good his ground in the
face of Europe, and h left his son in a position to make
concessions without having them imputed to alarm. If it
had been the policy of that son to govern even with decent
moderation ; if he had had one single spark of human sym-
pathy in his composition; had he endeavoured to soothe even
one sorrow among the millions of his oppressed subjects, he
might have been King of Naples at this day, and Italian
unity would still have been a dream. (Hear, hear.) But
short as was his peaceful possession of the throne, short as
was his possession of it at all, even that short time did riot
pass by without giving rise to the most frightful revela-
tions. (Hear, hear.) I doubt not there are gentlemen in
this house into whose hands fell a publication that ap-
peared at Paris, and which shortly after, from some myste-
rious cause, was not to be found at any price—l mean a
pamphlet published in the French language, and entitled
"La Torture en Sicilc." (Hear.) This pamphlet bore the
name of its author, M. Charles La Varenne, and it contained
names, dates, places, and particulars relative to transactions
that every nelson interested in the character of the Kin of
Naples must have dearea to see ("twined or denied. 13tit no
portion of those statements has ever been denied; and having
myself heard and seen something of Naples in former times
I am bound to say that what I heard and saw fades and
faints by the side of the revelations which that pamphlet
disclosed. (Hear.) But it' this was the condition of the
kingdom of Naples, what shall we say with regard to the
States of the Church? (Hear.) Without desiring to draw
a broad and clear distinction between the personal character
of Pius IX. and the effect of the miserable and execrable
systenf' of which he has been the instrument and the vic-
tim, I am ready to admit that ha is simple, gentle, and re-
fined, and possessed of every personal quality and accom-
plishment that could tend to draw towards him feelings of
veneration—(hear, hear)—but when we speak of the system
with which he is identified, I must tell the hon. member for
Dungarvan, who will probably follow me in thii debate,
that it is impossible for him, by gathering carefully together
all that was so sedulously shown to him of the hospitals and
charities of Rome, to set aside the tread, the damning facts
that have been established against the Papal Government.
(Hear.) We had last year an official document presented to
us, emanating from Rome, which the great leading journal
in this country rather irreverently termed "a prolonged
shriek," and when we consider the epithets with which that
document was studded, the term "atheists," "anarchy,"
"revolution," a "combination of all the vices," &c., ap-
plied to those who opposed the Government of the Pope in
theßomaema, it is:difficult to describe it by any other term.
(Hear.) I hold in my hand authentic documents relating
to the Austrian occupation of the Romagna for 12 years.
The evils of all foreign occupations are bad enough, and
this Austrian occupation cannot be thought to have been
mitigated by any peculiar kindliness or refinement in the
character of Austrian soldiers. (Hear.) But what are we to
say of any Government—above all, of a paternal ecclesiastical
Government—which could hand over to the officers and the
Austrian soldiery the common administration of justice?
(Hear, hear.) Is it possible by any epithet that language
can supply to convey a picture more terrific than this—that
the Austrians, whose feelings towards Italy have always
been that of a dominant race, should come in as the defen-
ders of order and religion—(hear)---that not their great offi-
cers merely, but their colonels, their majors, and their cap-
tains, should have delivered into their hands, ignorant as
they are, the common administration of justice? (Hear.)
I have in my hands the proofs of what I state. Here are
16 men ordered to be shot, not for a political crime, but for
two rapes. Whether they were rightly or tirongly so con-.
demned I cannot say—though I may be somewhat doubt-
ful of the fact that 16 men should have committed two
rapes—(hear)--but the point to which I wish to call the
attention of the house is, that to theseAustrianisoldiers was
intrusted the ordinary administration of justice. /Hear.)
Here is an example in the case of the brothers Donati, shot
in 18,51. The man who ordered them to be shot, and who,
I presume, was responsible for their trial—that is, who
judicially ordered them to be shot—l do not mean the man
who obeyed the orders of justice, but the man who was
their judge and signed their sentence—was an Austrian
major. The crime of these two brothers was stated to be
that they had received assassins or criminals into their
house. (" Hear, hear," from Sir G. Bowyer.) Does any-
body, knowing the state of Italy and the condition of the
people, groaning under a military occupation—nay, more,
does anybody, knowing the state of Italy with respect to
the habits of the brigands and the ineffective means which
the people weald possess to defend themselves against
them, not see that it is an odious and a monstrous system
which enables a soldier, a major in the Austrian army, to
shoot the subjects of the Pope upon the plea that they have
received brigands, or, as they call them, assassins into their
house ? (Hear, hear.) A man named Gherrardi, having
been tried by a major, was sh .t for the same reason in
1856 ; another, Gian Castelli, after trial by a captain, was
shot in 1855. Four more, whose cases I have here, were
upon the same I must say, most vague and general plea of
reception of bad characters, shot by order of a captain. An-
other, Itandi, was, in the year 1851, shot by order of a cap-
tain; and another, named Borghi, was shot upon similar
grounds by order of an officer of similar rank. These things
did not occur in time of war, they did not occur during the
revolutions of 1848 ; they occurred through the long course
of years from 1848 to 1859, and never was there a period in
Italy when the disposition of the people to rebel—the dispo-
sition, I must say, to vindieate by resistance the claims of
outraged humanity (hear, hear), was, for the moment, at
least, more effectually subdued. As
likenddtoheiss mwyash
to
. bferien
friend
really think that a state of thing
en-
dured by a population such as that which inhabits the Ro-
magna ; and does he really think that any Government, even
if it were compelled to submit to the monstrous evil of oc •
cupation, when, surely, it should abandon the cant and hy-
pocrisy of declaring that its people are fondly attached to its
dominion (hear, hear), ought to deliver up into the hands of
a foreign soldiery the whole judicial machinery of the coun-
try, upon which the peace and private happiness of indivi-
duals and families depend. (Cheers.) I must confess, Sir,
that it appears to me that the whole doctrine upon which
the Papal sovereignty has of late years been supported is
so intolerable that the man who could acquiesce in it—l
mean the Roman or Italian who could acquiesce in it—
would be nothing but a worm, fit to be trampled underfoot,
sovereigntysays t hat
is
(Cheers.) What says the most eloquent champion of the
is
Papal sovereignty,
mis
a great Mppoonseta
that the ?PapHael
te oNs.O
e . Every
a sovereignty over 3,000,000 of Italians to bo disposed of
by the Pope. It is not to be disposed of by the Pope.
Papal sovelreign-
vested interest in the maintenance of the Pap
one of the 200,000,000 Roman Catholics has a right and_ a
th. that
the Church have not even so much hope left as is,
ty." And therefore the people who inhabit the States of
if the Pope and the Cardinals are favourable to them they
may have somechance of relief. 'No ! every Roman Ca-
tholic all over the world is to presume to deal with their
feelings and their destinies, and to assert a political
right to establish dominion over them, which I must say,
appears to me to be a doctrine, if possible, more monstrous
than that upon which the laws of Draco were founded.
(Cheers.) But my hon. friend the member for Dundalk fol-
lowed the hon. member for Southwark, and said that he had
dealt in a multitude of allegations which were all equally
worthless ; that he couli not possibly occupy the time of
the house by entering upon a discussion of them all, but
that he would select one for confutation, and he added ex
tow disee mimes By•that summary, convenient, and com-
fortable In ()less my hon. friend get rid of the indictment
made bytftcme m ber f r Scut we; k. The statement which
:La seLa ted fer eetirtatalifni was this, th tt at the capture of
l'e:ugia a nuelLer of Si )hips v.-crP Iti «ntonly killed by the