The Sun. — 1859-06-03 (London, England)

THE MURDER AND SUICIDE IN  GALWAY.  It has been beautifully said by Chateaubriand, t, The earth drinks in silence the blood of battle fields', but peaceful blood spouts groaning towards heaven. God receives and avenges it." If so, a fearful reckoning is yet in store for the House of Hapsbur,l; General Pietro Coletta tells us that, irty years, "100,000 Neapolitans have perished u n 13y every kind of death in the cause of political freedom, and for the love of Italy ;" and in I Austrian Italy, where a kindred spirit animates the Government, matters have been but little better. Betweeci the 6th of August, 1848, the date of the triumphant return of the Austrians to Milan, and the 22d August of the following year, the official records show a total of 981 capital sentences, regularly pronounced and executed against Lombardo-Venetians. In the autumn of 1848 the steward of Councillor Rampini and his eldest son were shot at Milan, while the younger son, being under age, and not being convicted of any crime, was beaten to death with sticks. In October of the same year three Milanese were shot for having responded to the provocations of three Hungarian soldiers disguised as police. The Abbe Pulcina was shot at Brescia about the same time, and another priest at Mantua, merely for having expressed liberal opinions. To have a weapon of any kind in the house or on the person was certain death. At Brescia a butcher was sent for outside the town to kill an ox, and went, bearing along with him the implements of his trade—a mace, knife, &c. On his return he was arrested by the patrol, and, in spite of his protestations that he was a butcher, and that there was no order against butchers carrying their implements along with them, was fortwith tried, condemned, and shot. At Lodi, 28th February, 1849, a native of the place was beaten to death for having allowed some insulting expressions to escape him when maltreated by an Austrian officer. But the most disgraceful and L flagrant instance of tyranny remains to be recorded. On the 18th August, 1849, the anniversary of the t birth of the late Emperor, which was kept with great pomp by the Austrians in Milan, a courtesan named Olivari had attached to the balcony of her houso an Austrian flag. This house was in one of the most frequented streets of Milan, opposite the Cafe del Mazza, and the crowd hissed in passing it ; upon which several patrols and a number of officers, who had apparently been lurking in the neighbourhood, instantly rushed to the spot. seized indiscriminately on the passers by, and carried them off to the castle, where a military tribunal was quickly assembled, which first released the foreigners and public functionaries, and then proceeded to try the rest of the crowd of prisoners, all, be it observed, Italians. They were speedily condemned, seventeen to the bastinado, from twenty-five to fifty strokes each, and three to various periods of imprisonment in irons. Among the former class were an advocate, a painter, two landed proprietors, and two students, and Ernesta Galli of Cremona, and Maria Conti, of Florence, both opera singers, the first twenty and the second eighteen years old. They were sentenced, the former to forty strokes of the stick, and the latter to thirty. Al: the sentences were immediately executed in public, ;.;n the open air, in the court of the castle, the Austrian officers looking on and laughing the while. The pum:shments were carried out to the letter ; all the suii, erers wer severely injured, and the two poor girls especially were a long time before they recovered from the effects of Austrian brutality. The military commandant of Milan subsequently sent in an account of 191 francs to the municipality " for the expense of ice" (applied to the mangled flesh of the victim; in order to prevent gangrene) " and of rods used an:l broken in the punishment of the seditious of the 18th of August." Finally, the marshal ordered the town o 1 Milan to indemnify the courtesan Olivari by a gift oi 30,000 livres. The melancholy necrology of this gloomy chapter of judicial murders and use of powe is closed by our author with the case of the Coirdt Montanari, and five of his relations, accused, as usual, of conspiring with Mazzini, and summarily condemned to be shot. Moved apparently by the frantic entreaties of the wives of these unfortunates, Marshal Radetzky promised " that not a drop of blood should be shed." He kept his word by hanging the whole of them. The Austrians have sedulously endeavoured, especially since 1848, to set the rich and poor among the Lombards at enmity, and thus prevent that union which might render them dangerous. When, in March, 1849, the French minister at Turin went to the camp of the victorious Radetzky to solicit a change of system towards Lombardy, and the proclamation of a general amnesty, General Hess, the chief of the staff, thus answered him—" Never ! It would not be conformable to Austrian politics to pardon rebel subjects ; their punishment ought to be not death but misery. The people love us ; the nobles, the rich proprietors, detest us; they must then be annihilated." With regard to the paramount influence of Austria in the affairs of the whole Italian peninsula, there can be but little doubt, and as little of her disposition to interfere with an armed hand on the slightest and most trivial pretexts. At the smallest semblance of political liberation she at once steps in, superseding in the most nonchalant and insolent way the sovereigns of the country ; hangs, shoots, flogs, and exiles, at her pleasure, occupies places of strength, and levies forced contributions, until she has reduced everything to the state of passive and unreasoning obedience most approved of by her "paternal government." Her conduct in Tuscany on the restoration of the Grand Duke ; the sack of Leghorn, in the summer of 1849, by the troops of Gen. Astre ; the judicial tortures and murders at Ferrara and Bologna, in 1853.4, by the Austrian military tribunals, and many other cases which might easily be cited, furnish most convincing proofs both of the extent of her power, and of its withering influence upon political freedom and intellectual progress.  the lion. GOnville Ffreneh, A. C. Montgomery, R.M. ; the Rev. P. Hobart, C.C. ; P. Sweeney, S.I. ; Mr. P. H. Kelly, J.P. ; Mr. M. Cheevers, J.P., &c.