his shambles. From 1833 to 1847, there were several attempts at revolution within the Neapolitan dominions—all put down in sanguinary fashion enough. This, however, does not appear very strongly to confirm the view that the humbler classes of Neapolitans were attached to the King’s government. With 1848, the revolutionary spirit again broke out yonder in Paris, at the end of the Rue des Capucines. The Tiberius again became the Policinello of Naples. For a short time he was hail-fellow-well-met with all classes of his subjects; but if there was one amongst them dearer than another to the Royal heart, it was the one who had given some evidence of liberal opinion. Wonderful to relate, he won back the confidence of his subjects; but the delusion was a short one. On the 15th of May, 1848, he got up a sham émeute in the streets of Naples, and turned his great guns upon his people—sent in his drunken soldiers as husbandmen, and the lazzaroni as gleaners. The pavements of Naples were red with human blood on that day—and then, for a while, there was terror and silence.
If any one wonders why the Neapolitans are not so quick as the friends of order and compromise might wish to believe in the promises of the son, let him consider how the father kept his word. On the 10th of February, 1848, this worthy sovereign, being in much the same kind of position as his son at the present moment, took a right Royal oath. Ferdinand II., being by the grace of God King of the Two Sicilies, of Jerusalem, and many other places, in the first place swore very heavily to defend the Catholic, Apostolic, Roman Religion—and, so far, no doubt he was sincere. He then went on with the swearing, as thus:—“I promise and swear to observe, and cause to be inviolably observed, the constitution of this Monarchy, promulgated and irrevocably sanctioned by me on the 10th day of February, 1848, for the same kingdom. I promise and swear to observe, and cause to be observed, all the laws actually in force, and the others which shall be successively sanctioned within the limits of the said constitution of the kingdom. I promise and swear never to do, nor to attempt, anything against the Constitution, and the laws which have been sanctioned, as well for the property as the persons of our most loving subjects. So may God help me, and preserve me in His holy keeping!” This is pretty hard swearing;—the gunners of the 15th of May were the commentators upon the Royal oath.
We are speaking of only twelve years ago. These matters are fresh in the recollection of the Neapolitan people. Trust to the word of a Neapolitan king! Why, upon the 24th of May, when he had blown a good number of his subjects off the face of the earth, and further hypocrisy was quite needless, Ferdinand II., of blessed memory, published another proclamation in which he declared it to be his fixed resolution “to maintain the constitution of the 10th of May pure and unstained by any kind of excess, which, being the only one compatible with the real and present wants of this part of Italy, will be the Holy Ark upon which the destinies of our most beloved people and our crown must repose.” After this preliminary falsehood, Ferdinand II., in an unctuous paternal kind of fashion, tells his subjects to resume their usual occupations, “to trust with effusion of mind to our loyalty, our religion, and our holy and spontaneous oath, and live in the fullest assurance, &c., &c.” The good King wanted to catch his loving subjects, and he caught them. In 1851, when Mr. Gladstone visited Naples, there were still between 15,000 and 20,000 state prisoners in the two Sicilies, although a good number had been worked off in the interval. Settembrini and the other leading prisoners of the time have left an account of what these prisons were; and how they were dragged through the streets by the hair of their heads, beaten, spat upon, pinioned for days together, and made to sit in chairs in the presence of soldiers, who told them they had orders to shoot them. Settembrini, after being sentenced to death, was confined in a room fifteen feet square with eight other persons—one of them a notorious assassin. Poerio, with fifteen others, was shut up in a small room, where they were chained two and two together. It is well to remember these things at the present time, when there seems a probability that the Neapolitans may be able to rid themselves of a family, where the son is like the father—and this is what the father did.
Ferdinand II. for a quarter of a century and more murdered and tortured his loving subjects, and Francis II. has only held the reins of empire for a short time, yet in this short time he has contrived to bombard Palermo, and do a few other acts which would lead one to dread the contingency of another 15th of May in Naples itself should he ever gain the upper hand again. Before concluding it is proper to recur to the fact that the government of the Two Sicilies has been—with short intervals—a government by the secret police. A rumour of disaffection is held to be a sufficient title for a man’s arrest. Special commissioners are appointed for political trials—one of whom is a lawyer, but without deliberative voice. The decisions of the commissioners are without appeal. The impeachment, the defence, and the trial of the accused are secret. The statements of the police prove the crime. The police may liberate or detain any individual in prison without sanction, and even though he has been acquitted of the charge on which he was originally arrested. The police may flog prisoners at their pleasure. Espionage is enforced so strictly, that not to be a spy is a crime. The police may penetrate into prisons, and extract confessions from prisoners. Such has been the Magna Charta of Naples in use for well-nigh half a century. Does not all this explain Garibaldi’s Sicilian successes?—and if the Royal authority at Naples should melt away upon his approach as wax before fire, who would wonder at it?
This miracle of the liberation of Italy from foreign and domestic tyranny has been so much a miracle, that one sometimes doubts if it had not been better if the march of events had not been quite so sudden. Last week there was talk of a simultaneous attack from two quarters upon the Papal forces, to be accompanied by a general rising of the Pope’s