New-York daily tribune. [volume] (New-York [N.Y.]) 1842-1866, 1860-05-17
SICILY AND THE sICILIANs.


land and no people have suffered so terribly from
slavery, from foreign conquests and expressions,
and none have struggled so irrepressibly for email
cipation as Sicily and the Siciians. Almost from tho
time when Polyphemus promenaded around Etna,
or when Ceres taught tho Siculi tho culture OF
grain, to our day, Sicily has been the theater oil
uninterrupted invasions and wars, and of untinch'
ING resistance. The Sicilians are mixture OF
almost all southern and northern races; FIRST, OF the
aboriginal Sicanans, with PhGncians, Cartna'
pinians Greeks, and slaves from all regions I'M
der heaven, imported into the island by traffic or
war; and then of Arabs Normons and Italians.
The Sicans, in all these transformations and
notifications, have battlcd, and still battle, for
their freedom.
More than thirty centuries ago the abo-
rhymes of Sicily resisted as best they could
the superior weapons and military skill of Car
thaginian and Greek invaders. They were made
tributary, but never wholly subdued by the
one or the other. For long time Sicily was the
battlefield of Greeks and Carthaeinians; her
people were ruined and partly ensayed; her cities,
inhabited by Carthaginians and Greeks, were the
central points whence oppression and slavery adi-
ated through the interior of the island. These
early Sicilians however, never missed an Opportu-
nifty to strike for liberty, or at least to
take as much revenge as possible on their
Carthagnian masters and on Syracuse.
The Romans finally subdued Carthaginians and
Syracusans, selling into slavery as many of them
az possible. On one occasion 30, 900 inhabitants
of Prarorna, the modern Palermo, were thus sold.
The Romans worked Sicily with numberlcss gangs
OF slaves. in order to feed with Siciian wheat the
poor prOleterians of the Eternal City, For this
purpose, they not only ensaved the inhabitants of
the island but imported slaves from oil their other
doininions The terrible cruelties of Roman Pro-
consuls pratOrs, Projects, are known to every
one who is in any degree familiar with the history
of Rome, or with the oratory Of Cicero. Nowhere
else, perhaps, did Roman cruelty hold such satur-
MALTA. The poor freemen and yeomen, If unable
to pay the crushing tribute exacted Of them, were
ritilessly sold into bondage, themselves or their
children, by the tax gathcrers.
But both under the Syracusan DiOnysus and
under the Roman rule, the most terrible slave
instructions took place in Sicily, in which the
native people and the imported slaves often made
common cause. During the breaking up Of the
Roman Empire, Sicily was visited by various
invaders. Then the Moors got hold Of il for a
time; but the Scilians, and above all the genuine
people Of the interior, resisted always or less
successfully, and step by step maintained or con-
quered various small franchises. The dawn had
scarcely begun to spread over the medieval dark
ness, when the Sicilans stood forth, already
armed, not only with various municipal liberties,
but with rudments of constitutional government,
such as at that time existed nowhere elsc. Earlier
than any other European nation, the Sicians
regulated by vote the income of their Govern
mentS and Soveregns Thus the Scilian soil has
proved deadly to oppressors and invaders, and the
Sicilian Vespers stand immortal in history. When
the House of Arragon brought the Sicans into de-
pendence on Spain, they knew how to preseryetheir
political mmunities more or less intact; and this
they did alike under the Hspsb,rgs and
the BOurbons. When the French Revolution and
Napoleon expelled the tyrannical regning fam
lily from Naples, the Sicilians-incited and
seduced by English promises and guarantiss-
received the fugitiyes and in their struggles
against Napoleon sustained them both with their
blood and their money. Every one knows the
subsequent treachery of the Bourbons, and the
subterfuges or impudent denials by which England
has tried and still tries TO varnsh her own faithless
abandonment of the Scilians and of their liber.
ties TO the tender mercies of the Bourbons.
at the present day, political, administrative,
nd all of
people; and these grievances therefore stand in
the foreground. But nearly the whole soil is
still in the hands of comparatively few large
landowners or barons. The medieval tenures of
land are still preserved in Sicily, except that the
tiller is lot serf; he ceased to be such about
the eleventh century, when he became free
tenant. The conditions of his tenure are, how
ever, generally so oppressive, that the immense
majority of agriculturists work exclusively for
the advantage of the taxgatherer and of the baron
producing scarcely anything beyond the taxes and
rents, and themselves remaining either wretch.
edly, or, at least, comparatively poor Producing
the celebrated Siciian wheat and excellent fruits,
they themselves live poorly on beans the whole |
year through.
Sicily now bleeds again, and England looks calmly |
on at these new saturnalia Of the infamous Bour-
bon, and his not less infamous minions, lay or
clerical Jesuits or Guardsmen. The fussy de- |
Chalmers of the British Parliament rend the air |
with their empty talk about Savoy and the dangers
IF Switzerland, but have not word to say Of the |
in the Sicilian cities. No voice raises
he cry Of indignation throughout Europe. No
uler and no Parliament procai,ns outlawry against