Part 10 (2/2)

Upon the death of Sir Robert Peel began the disintegration of the party distinguished by his name--Peelites. Some of its members united with the Conservatives, and others, such as Sir James Graham, Sidney Herbert, and Mr. Gladstone held themselves aloof from both Whigs and Tories.

Conservative traditions still exercised considerable influence over them, but they could not join them, because they were already surrendering to strong liberal tendencies. It is said that Mr. Gladstone at this time, and for a decade thereafter, until the death of Sir James Graham, was greatly indebted to this statesman, not only for the growth of his liberal principles, but for his development as a practical statesman. Sir James wielded great influence over his contemporaries generally, because of his great knowledge of Parliamentary tactics, and the fact that he was the best educated and most thoroughly accomplished statesman of his age. ”If he could be prevailed upon to speak in the course of a great debate, his speech was worth fifty votes,” so great was his influence and power. ”However great may have been the indebtedness of Mr. Gladstone to Sir James Graham, if the former had not been possessed of far wider sympathies--to say nothing of superior special intellectual qualities--than his political mentor, he never could have conceived and executed those important legislative acts for which his name will now chiefly be remembered.”

The other case occupying the attention of Parliament, to which we have alluded, we must now consider--Mr. Gladstone and the prisons of Naples.

Owing to the illness of one of his children, for whom a southern climate was recommended, Mr. Gladstone spent several months of the Winter of 1850-1 in Naples. His brief visit to this city on a purely domestic mission was destined to a.s.sume an international importance. It came to his knowledge that a large number of the citizens of Naples, who had been members of the Chamber of Deputies, an actual majority of the representatives of the people, had been exiled or imprisoned by King Ferdinand, because they formed the opposition party to the government, and that between twenty and thirty thousand of that monarch's subjects had been cast into prison on the charge of political disaffection. The sympathies of Mr. Gladstone were at once enlisted in behalf of the oppressed Neapolitans. At first Mr. Gladstone looked at the matter only from a humanitarian and not from a political aspect, and it was only upon the former ground that he felt called and impelled to attempt the redress of the wrongs which were a scandal to the name of civilisation in Europe. And it was not long before England and the Continent were aroused by his denunciations of the Neapolitan system of government. Mr.

Gladstone first carefully ascertained the truth of the statements made to him in order to attest their accuracy, and then published two letters on the subject addressed to the Earl of Aberdeen. These letters were soon followed by a third. In the first of these letters, dated April 7, 1851, he brings an elaborate, detailed and horrible indictment against the rulers of Naples, especially as regards their prisons and the treatment of persons confined in them for political offenses. He disclaimed any thought of having gone to Naples for the purpose of political criticism or censors.h.i.+p, to look for defects in the administration of the government, or to hear the grievances of the people, or to propagate ideas belonging to another country. But after a residence of three or four months in their city he had returned home with a deep feeling of the duty upon him to make some endeavor to mitigate the horrors in the midst of which the government of Naples was carried on.

There were chiefly three reasons that led him to adopt the present course: ”First, that the present practices of the Government of Naples, in reference to real or supposed political offenders, are an outrage upon religion, upon civilization, upon humanity and upon decency.

Secondly, that these practices are certainly, and even rapidly, doing the work of Republicanism in that country--a political creed which has little natural or habitual root in the character of the people. Thirdly, that as a member of the Conservative party in one of the great family of European nations, I am compelled to remember that party stands in virtual and real, though perhaps unconscious alliance with all the established Governments of Europe as such; and that, according to the measure of its influence, they suffer more or less of moral detriment from its reverses, and derive strength and encouragement from its successes.”

He pa.s.sed over the consideration of the all important question whether the actual Government of the Two Sicilies was one with or without a t.i.tle, one of law or one of force, and came to the real question at issue. His charge against the Neapolitan Government was not one of mere imperfection, not corruption in low quarters, not occasional severity, but that of incessant, systematic, deliberate violation of the law by the power appointed to watch over and maintain it.

Mr. Gladstone, with impa.s.sionate language, thus formulates his fearful indictment: ”It is such violation of human and written law as this, carried on for the purpose of violating every other law, unwritten and eternal, human and divine; it is the wholesale persecution of virtue, when united with intelligence, operating upon such a scale that entire cla.s.ses may with truth be said to be its object, so that the Government is in bitter and cruel, as well as utterly illegal hostility to whatever in the nation really lives and moves, and forms the mainspring of practical progress and improvement; it is the awful profanation of public religion, by its notorious alliance in the governing powers with the violation of every moral rule under the stimulants of fear and vengeance; it is the perfect prost.i.tution of the judicial office which has made it, under veils only too threadbare and transparent, the degraded recipient of the vilest and clumsiest forgeries, got up wilfully and deliberately, by the immediate advisers of the Crown, for the purpose of destroying the peace, the freedom, aye, and even, if not by capital sentences, the life of men among the most virtuous, upright, intelligent, distinguished and refined of the whole community; it is the savage and cowardly system of moral as well as in a lower degree of physical torture, through which the sentences obtained from the debased courts of justice are carried into effect.

”The effect of all this is a total inversion of all the moral and social ideas. Law, instead of being respected, is odious. Force and not affection is the foundation of government. There is no a.s.sociation, but a violent antagonism between the idea of freedom and that of order. The governing power, which teaches of itself that it is the image of G.o.d upon earth, is clothed in the view of the overwhelming majority of the thinking public with all the vices for its attributes. I have seen and heard the strong expression used, 'This is the negation of G.o.d erected into a system of Government.'”

It was not merely the large numbers imprisoned unjustly, to which public attention was directed, that called for righteous indignation and made Mr. Gladstone's words create such a sensation in Europe, but the mode of procedure was arbitrary in the extreme. The law of Naples required that personal liberty should be inviolable, except under warrant from a court of justice. Yet in utter disregard of this law the authorities watched the people, paid domiciliary visits, ransacked houses, seized papers and effects, and tore up floors at pleasure under pretense of searching for arms, imprisoned men by the score, by the hundred, by the thousand without any warrant whatever, sometimes without even any written authority whatever, or anything beyond the word of a policeman, constantly without any statement whatever of the nature of the offense.

Charges were fabricated to get rid of inconvenient persons. Perjury and forgery were resorted to in order to establish charges, and the whole mode of conducting trials was a burlesque of justice.

He thus describes the dungeons of Naples, in which some of the prisoners were confined for their political opinions: ”The prisons of Naples, as is well known, are another name for the extreme of filth and horror. I have really seen something of them, but not the worst. This I have seen, my Lord: the official doctors not going to the sick prisoners, but the sick prisoners, men almost with death on their faces, toiling up stairs to them at that charnel-house of the Vicaria, because the lower regions of such a palace of darkness are too foul and loathsome to allow it to be expected that professional men should consent to earn bread by entering them.” Of some of those sufferers Mr. Gladstone speaks particularly. He names Pironte, formerly a judge, Baron Porcari, and Carlo Poerio, a distinguished patriot. The latter he specially speaks of as a refined and accomplished gentleman, a copious and elegant speaker, a respected and blameless character, yet he had been arrested and condemned for treason. Mr. Gladstone says: ”The condemnation of such a man for treason is a proceeding just as conformable to the laws of truth, justice, decency, and fair play, and to the common sense of the community--in fact, just as great and gross an outrage on them all--as would be a like condemnation in this country of any of our best known public men--Lord John Russell, or Lord Lansdowne, or Sir James Graham, or yourself.”

There was no name dearer to Englishmen than that of Poerio to his Neapolitan fellow-countrymen. Poerio was tried and condemned on the sole accusation of a worthless character named Jerrolino. He would have been acquitted nevertheless, by a division of four to five of his judges, had not Navarro (who sat as a judge while directly concerned in the charge against the prisoner), by the distinct use of intimidation, procured the number necessary for a sentence. A statement is furnished on the authority of an eye-witness, as to the inhumanity with which invalid prisoners were treated by the Grand Criminal Court of Naples; and Mr.

Gladstone minutely describes the manner of the imprisonment of Poerio and six of his incarcerated a.s.sociates. Each prisoner bore a weight of chain amounting to thirty-two pounds and for no purpose whatever were these chains undone. All the prisoners were confined, night and day, in a small room, which may be described as amongst the closest of dungeons; but Poerio was after this condemned to a still lower depth of calamity and suffering. ”Never before have I conversed,” says Mr. Gladstone, speaking of Poerio, ”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 a.s.sured as your lords.h.i.+p's or that of any other man of the very 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.

Mr. Gladstone said that it was time for the veil to be lifted from scenes more fit for h.e.l.l than earth, or that some considerable mitigation should be voluntarily adopted. This letter was published in 1851--the year of the great Exposition in London--and a copy was sent to the representative of the Queen in every court of Europe. Its publication caused a wide-spread indignation in England, a great sensation abroad, and profoundly agitated the court of Naples.

In the English Parliament Sir De Lacy Evans put the following question to the Foreign Secretary: ”If the British Minister at the court of Naples had been instructed to employ his good offices in the cause of humanity, for the diminution of these lamentable severities, and with what result?” In reply to this question Lord Palmerston accepted and adopted Mr. Gladstone's statement, which had been confirmed from other quarters, expressing keen sympathy and humanitarian feeling with the cause which he had espoused, but Lord Palmerston pointed out that it was impossible to do anything in a matter which related entirely to the domestic affairs of the Government at Naples. He said: ”Instead of confining himself to those amus.e.m.e.nts that abound in Naples, instead of diving into volcanoes, and exploring excavated cities, we see him going into courts of justice, visiting prisons, descending into dungeons, and examining great numbers of the cases of unfortunate victims of illegality and injustice, with the view afterwards to enlist public opinion in the endeavor to remedy those abuses.” This announcement by the Foreign Secretary was warmly applauded by the House. ”A few days afterwards Lord Palmerston was requested by Prince Castelcicala to forward the reply of the Neapolitan Government to the different European courts to which Mr. Gladstone's pamphlet had been sent. His lords.h.i.+p, with his wonted courage and independent spirit, replied that he 'must decline being accessory to the circulation of a pamphlet which, in my opinion, does no credit to its writer, or the Government which he defends, or to the political party of which he professes to be the champion.' He also informed the Prince that information received from other sources led him to the conclusion that Mr. Gladstone had by no means overstated the various evils which he had described; and he [Lord Palmerston] regretted that the Neapolitan Government had not set to work earnestly and effectually to correct the manifold and grave abuses which clearly existed.”

The second paper of Mr. Gladstone upon the same subject was a sequel to the first. His wish was that everything possible should be done first in the way of private representation and remonstrance, and he did not regret the course he had taken, though it entailed devious delays. In answer to the natural inquiry why he should simply appear in his personal capacity through the press, instead of inviting to the grave and painful question the attention of the House of Commons, of which he was a member, he said, that he had advisedly abstained from mixing up his statements with any British agency or influences which were official, diplomatic, or political. The claims and interests which he had in view were either wholly null and valueless, or they were broad as the extension of the human race and long-lived as its duration.

As to his general charges he had nothing to retract. His representations had not been too strongly stated, for the most disgraceful circ.u.mstances were those which rested upon public notoriety, or upon his own personal knowledge. It had been stated that he had overestimated the number of prisoners, and he would give the Neapolitan Government the full benefit of any correction. But the number of political prisoners _in itself_, was a secondary feature of the case, for ”if they were fairly and legally arrested, fairly and legally treated before trial--fairly and legally tried, that was the main matter. For the honor of human nature men would at first receive some statements with incredulity. Men ought to be slow to believe that such things could happen, and happen in a Christian country, the seat of almost the oldest European civilization.”

But those thus disposed in the beginning he hoped would not close their minds to the reception of the truth, however painful to believe. The general probability of his statements could not, unfortunately be gainsaid.

Many replies were made to Mr. Gladstone's pamphlet that were violent and abusive. They appeared not only in Naples, Turin, and Paris, but even in London.

All these answers, were in truth no replies at all, for they did not disprove the facts. These professed corrections of Mr. Gladstone's statements did not touch the real basis of the question. It was necessary to say something if possible by way of defense, or justice, which had as yet not been done.

There was one reply that was put forth that Mr. Gladstone felt demanded some attention, namely, the official answer of the Neapolitan Government to his charges. To this he replied in a letter, in 1852. In his reply he placed, point by point, the answers in the scales along with his own accusations. There was in the Neapolitan answers to the letters really a tacit admission of the accuracy of nine-tenths of Mr. Gladstone's statements, Mr. Gladstone enumerated the few retractions which he had to make, which were five in number. That the prisoner, Settembrine, had not been tortured and confined to double chains for life, as was currently reported and believed; that six judges had been dismissed at Reggio upon presuming to acquit a batch of political prisoners, required modifying to three; that seventeen invalids had not been ma.s.sacred in the prison of Procida during a revolt, as stated; and that certain prisoners alleged to have been still incarcerated after acquittal had been released after the lapse of two days. These were all the modifications he had to make in his previous statements. And as to the long list of his grave accusations, not one of them rested upon hearsay.

He pointed out how small and insignificant a fraction of error had found its way into his papers. He fearlessly rea.s.serted that agonizing corporal punishment was inflicted by the officials in Neapolitan prisons, and that without judicial authority. As to Settembrine, the political prisoner named, he was incarcerated in a small room with eight other prisoners, one of whom boasted that he had murdered, at various times, thirty-five persons. Several of his victims had been his prison companions, and ”the murders of this Ergastolo” had exceeded fifty in a single year. It was true that at the ma.s.sacre at Procida the sick had not been slain in the prisons, yet prisoners who hid under beds were dragged forth and shot in cold blood by the soldiery after order had been restored. The work of slaughter had been twice renewed, and two officers received promotion or honors for that abominable enormity.

Mr. Gladstone found in the reply of the Government of Naples no reason to retract his damaging statements in reference to Neapolitan inhumanity, on the other hand he discovered grounds for emphasizing his accusations. And as to his statement regarding the number of the sufferers from Neapolitan injustice and cruelty, he defended at length his statement as to the enormous number of the prisoners.

It was clear to all candid minds that all the replies had failed to prove him wrong in any of his substantial changes, which retained their full force. ”The arrow has shot deep into the mark,” observed Mr.

Gladstone, ”and cannot be dislodged. But I have sought, in once more entering the field, not only to sum up the state of the facts in the manner nearest to exact.i.tude, but likewise to close the case as I began it, presenting it from first to last in the light of a matter which is not primarily or mainly political, which is better kept apart from Parliamentary discussion, which has no connection whatever with any peculiar idea or separate object or interest of England, but which appertains to the sphere of humanity at large, and well deserves the consideration of every man who feels a concern for the well-being of his race, in its bearings on that well-being; on the elementary demands of individual domestic happiness; on the permanent maintenance of public order; on the stability of thrones; on the solution of that great problem, which, day and night, in its innumerable forms must haunt the reflections of every statesman, both here and elsewhere, how to harmonize the old with the new conditions of society, and to mitigate the increasing stress of time and change upon what remains of this ancient and venerable fabric of the traditional civilization of Europe.”

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