The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-10-14

police, being in the proportion of one to
lG7,sA Of the population. The murderers
brought to punishment in England and Wales
were 20 IN 1865, 26 in 1866 and 27 in 1861,
while the whole OF the offenses against the
person amounted for those three years re
spectiyely to 1885, 1885, and l401-that is,
they fell considerably short of half the num-
Der of murders in italy,
1t would be vain to try TO escape the con-
viction which forces itself upon as 10y throw
ing doubt upon the accuracy of these COM
paratlve figures. The Carabinieri, or police
force OF the kingdom of Italy, draw up their
reports with praiseworthy diligence, and they
supply ample evidence that, melancholy as
the budget of crime was in 1867, it might be
taken as "a slight improvement on that Of
previous years. The Italian Government
deserve praise for their candor In thus laying
bare the worst evils in their body polite.
Confession may generally be taken as a symp-
tom Of a wish for amendment. The Pope
takes good care to keep all unpleasant know
ledge of that nature to himself. The Papal
Government never publish statistics of any
description; but the French, who have
police OF their own at Rome, tell MS that while
In their own country there is one murderer
over l24 900 inhabitants, in the Papal States
there is one over 1888 inhabitants.
Deplorable as the condition of emancipated
Italy may still be, we can look back to no
time IN which matters may be thought to
have been better. A certain looseness and
violence of temper and an incapacity for local
or moral restraint were characteristic of that
southern nation even in its palmiest days of
medieval greatness. By the side of the
lottiest deeds of their glorious republics there
always occur in their annals such startling
domestic and political tragedies as would cast
even the atrocities of Count Rossi at Rome,
or of the more recent assassination of the
Countess Cattaneo in a railway carriage near
lsoletta, completely into the shade. These
evil instincts-which have, however, common
sources with passions capable of better aims
were suffered for centuries to rankle amid
the debasement to which the Italians were
doomed, and the peoples crimes we're, not
without reason, imputed to the corrupting
influence of their religious and civil instruc-
tors.
The charge is so we'll grounded that, while
in Piedmont, in Lombardy, and throughout
the North, the yearly murders do not exceed
four for every 100000 inhabitants, the ratio
in the Marches in Umbria and in the whole
south is 80, and in Sicily and Sardinia 33-a
proportion almostly perfectly in keeping with
that presented by the statistics of education
for, while in the whole of Italy out Of 40, ,456
marriages it appears that there were 81 cases
per cent. in which the bride and bridegroom
could neither read nor write, the number of
illiterate couples in Piedmont was only % per
cent, while in some of the southern pro-
vinces, as in the Basilicata, the proportion
was no less than 81 per cent. 1t must be OBJ
served that the efforts made by the liberal
government towards the spread of public in
struction dates in those southern provinces
only from 1860, and cannot, therefore, have
affected the grown-np generation. The Nea-
politans more than ten years old are still
what they always were-what their priests
priests complaining of the States interfe-
renee with the training of youth, and con-
tending that education ought to be mono
poly of the Church.