In this letter Mr. Gladstone said, in summing up: "I find it no part of my duty, my lord, to idolize the Bishops of England and Wales, or to place my conscience in their keeping. I do not presume or dare to speculate upon their particular decisions; but I say that, acting jointly, publicly, solemnly, responsibly, they are the best and most natural organs of the judicial office of the Church in matters of heresy, and, according to reason, history and the const.i.tution, in that subject-matter the fittest and safest counsellors of the Crown."
But this view regarding the Church of England did not suit some minds, and among them the two friends with whom Mr. Gladstone had, up to this time, acted in religious matters. These troubles in the Church so powerfully affected them that they withdrew.
The following quotation shows Mr. Gladstone"s firmness in regard to his own choice of the Protestant Christianity over and above Catholicism, In a letter, written in 1873, to Mrs. Maxwell-Scott, of Abbotsford, the daughter of his friend Hope, he thus writes of an interview had with her father: "It must have been about this time that I had another conversation with him about religion, of which, again, I exactly recollect the spot. Regarding (forgive me) the adoption of the Roman religion by members of the Church of England as nearly the greatest calamity that could befall Christian faith in this country, I rapidly became alarmed when these changes began; and very long before the great luminary, Dr. Newman, drew after him, it may well be said, "the third part of the stars of Heaven." This alarm I naturally and freely expressed to the man upon whom I most relied, your father."
[Ill.u.s.tration: Gladstone in Wales; addressing a meeting at the foot of Snowden]
CHAPTER VIII
THE NEAPOLITAN PRISONS
In considering Mr. Gladstone"s exposure of the cruelties practiced in the prisons of Naples, we are confronted with his att.i.tude in the House of Commons just before, in a case where the same principles seemed to be involved, and in which Mr. Gladstone took the directly opposite course.
We refer to the Don Pacifico case. Both were at first merely personal questions, but finally became international. Mr. Gladstone to many appeared to take an inconsistent course in these seemingly similar cases, in that while opposing national intervention in the affairs of Don Pacifico, he tried to stir up all Europe for the relief of the sufferers in the Neapolitan prisons. "It is not a little remarkable that the statesman who had so lately and so vigorously denounced the "vain conception that we, forsooth, have a mission to be the censors of vice and folly, of abuse and imperfection, among the other countries of the world," should now have found himself irresistibly impelled by conscience and humanity to undertake a signal and effective crusade against the domestic administration of a friendly power."
The most memorable debate in the new chamber of the House of Commons, which was first occupied in 1850, was that a.s.sociated with the name of Don Pacifico. It is however conceded that the circ.u.mstances from which it all proceeded were comparatively trivial in the extreme. Don Pacifico was a Maltese Jew and a British subject, dwelling at Athens. He had made himself distasteful to the people of Athens, and consequently his house was destroyed and robbed by a mob, April 4, 1847. He appealed to the government at Athens for redress, demanding over $150,000 indemnity for the loss of his property, among which "a peculiarly sumptuous bedstead figured largely." Don Pacifico"s claim was unheeded, probably because it was exorbitant and the Greek government was poor. Lord Palmerston was then the Foreign Secretary of the English Government. He was rash and independent in his Foreign policy, and often acted, as the Queen complained, without consultation and without the authority of the Sovereign.
The Foreign Secretary had had other quarrels with the Government at Athens. Land belonging to an English resident in Athens had been seized without sufficient compensation; Ionian subjects of the English Crown had suffered hardships at the hands of the Greek authorities, and an English Midshipman had been arrested by mistake. Lord Palmerston looked upon these incidents, slight as they were in themselves, as indicative of a plot on the part of the French Minister against the English, and especially as the Greek Government was so dilatory in satisfying the English claims. "This was enough. The outrage on Don Pacifico"s bedstead remained the head and front of Greek offending, but Lord Palmerston included all the other slight blunders and delays of justice in one sweeping indictment; made the private claims into a national demand, and peremptorily informed the Greek Government that they must pay what was demanded of them within a given time. The Government hesitated, and the British fleet was ordered to the Piraeus, and seized all the Greek vessels which were found in the waters. Russia and France took umbrage at this high-handed proceeding and championed Greece. Lord Palmerston informed them it was none of their business and stood firm. The French Amba.s.sador was withdrawn from London, and for awhile the peace of Europe was menaced." The execution of the orders of Lord Palmerston was left with Admiral Sir William Parker, who was first to proceed to Athens with the English fleet, and failing to obtain satisfaction was to blockade the Piraeus, which instructions he faithfully obeyed.
The debate began in Parliament June 24, 1850. The stability of the Whig administration, then in power, depended upon the results. In the House of Lords, Lord Stanley moved a resolution, which was carried, expressing regret that "various claims against the Greek Government, doubtful in point of justice and exaggerated in amount, have been enforced by coercive measures, directed against the commerce and people of Greece, and calculated to endanger the continuance of our friendly relations with foreign powers." A counter-resolution was necessary in the House of Commons to offset the action of the Lords, so a Radical, Mr. Roebuck, much to the surprise of many, came to the defense of the Government and offered the following motion, which was carried: "That the principles which have hitherto regulated the foreign policy of Her Majesty"s Government are such as were required to preserve untarnished the honor and dignity of this country, and, in times of unexampled difficulty, the best calculated to maintain peace between England and the various nations of the world."
The debate which followed, and which was prolonged over four nights, was marked on both sides by speeches of unusual oratorical power and brilliancy. The speeches of Lord Palmerston, Sir Robert Peel, Mr.
c.o.c.kburn, Mr. Cobden, Mr. Disraeli and Mr. Gladstone were p.r.o.nounced as remarkable orations. Sir Robert Peel made a powerful speech against the Ministers, which was made memorable not only for its eloquence, but because it was his last. Lord Palmerston defended himself vigorously in a speech of five hours" duration. "He spoke," said Mr. Gladstone, "from the dusk of one day to the dawn of the next." He defended his policy at every point. In every step taken he had been influenced by the sole desire that the meanest, the poorest, even the most disreputable subject of the English Crown should be defended by the whole might of England against foreign oppression. He reminded them of all that was implied in the Roman boast, _Civis Roma.n.u.s sum_, and urged the House to make it clear that a British subject, in whatever land he might be, should feel confident that the watchful eye and the strong arm of England could protect him. This could not be resisted. _Civis Roma.n.u.s sum_ settled the question.
Mr. Gladstone"s reply was a masterpiece. It was exhaustive and trenchant, and produced a great effect. He first spoke upon the position of the Government and the const.i.tutional doctrines which they had laid down in regard to it, and then severely condemned the conduct of the Premier for being so heedless of the censure of the House of Lords and in trying to shield himself behind the precedents which are in reality no precedents at all. With reference to the Greek question, he repudiated precedents which involved the conduct of strong countries against weak ones. The Greek Government had put no impediment in the way of arbitration. Instead of trusting and trying the tribunals of the country and employing diplomatic agency simply as a supplemental resource, Lord Palmerston had interspersed authority of foreign power, in contravention both of the particular stipulations of the treaty in force between Greece and England and of the general principles of the law of nations. He had thus set the mischievous example of abandoning the methods of law and order, and resorted to those of force.
Non-interference had been laid down as the basis of our conduct towards other nations, but the policy of Lord Palmerston had been characterized by a spirit of active interference.
Mr. Gladstone"s words were in part as follows: "Does he [Lord Palmerston] make the claim for us [the English] that we are to be lifted upon a platform high above the standing-ground of all other nations?...
It is indeed too clear ... that he adopts, in part, the vain conception that we, forsooth, have a mission to be the censors of vice and folly, of abuse and imperfection among the other countries of the world; that we are to be the universal schoolmasters, and that all those who hesitate to recognize our office can be governed only by prejudice or personal animosity, and shall have the blind war of diplomacy forthwith declared against them."
Again: "Let us recognize, and recognize with frankness, the equality of the weak with the strong; the principles of brotherhood among nations, and of their sacred independence. When we are asking for the maintenance of the rights which belong to our fellow-subjects, resident in Greece, let us do as we would be done by, and let us pay all respect to a feeble State and to the infancy of free inst.i.tutions.... Let us refrain from all gratuitous and arbitrary meddling in the internal concerns of other States, even as we should resent the same interference if it were attempted to be practiced toward ourselves."
In this address Mr. Gladstone evinces his inclination to appeal to the higher and n.o.bler nature of man, to the principles of brotherhood among nations, to the law of G.o.d and nature, and to ask as a test of the foreign policy of the government, not whether it is striking, or brilliant, or successful, but whether it is right.
This speech of Mr. Gladstone"s was recognized as the finest he had delivered in Parliament, and its power was acknowledged by both sides of the House, by political opponent and friend. Lord Chief Justice c.o.c.kburn, then a member of the House, referring in a speech the following evening to Mr. Gladstone and his remarkable speech, uttered these words: "I suppose we are now to consider him as the representative of Lord Stanley in the House--Gladstone _Vice_ Disraeli, am I to say, resigned or superseded?" The government was sustained.
We have already stated that it was during this memorable debate that Sir Robert Peel made his last speech.--On the following day, 29th of June, 1850, Sir Robert called at Buckingham Palace for the purpose of leaving his card. On proceeding up Const.i.tution Hill on horse back he met one of Lady Dover"s daughters, and exchanged salutations. Immediately afterwards his horse became restive and shying towards the rails of the Green Park, threw Sir Robert sideways on his left shoulder. Medical aid was at hand and was at once administered. Sir Robert groaned when lifted and when asked whether he was much hurt replied, "Yes, very much." He was conveyed home where the meeting with his family was very affecting, and he swooned in the arms of his physician. He was placed upon a sofa in the dining-room from which he never moved. His sufferings were so acute that a minute examination of his injuries could not be made. For two or three days he lingered and then died, July 2d. An examination made after death revealed the fact that the fifth rib on the left side was fractured, the broken rib pressing on the lung, producing effusion and pulmonary engorgement. This was probably the seat of the mortal injury, and was where Sir Robert complained of the greatest pain.
The news of Sir Robert"s death produced a profound sensation throughout the land. Great and universal were the tokens of respect and grief.
There was but one feeling,--that England had lost one of her most ill.u.s.trious statesmen. Even those who had been in opposition to his views, alluded to the great loss the nation had sustained and paid a fitting tribute to his memory. The House of Commons, on motion of Mr.
Hume July 3d, at once adjourned. In the House of Lords the Duke of Wellington and Lord Brougham spoke in appreciative words of the departed statesman. "Such was the leader whom Mr. Gladstone had faithfully followed for many years."
Supporting Mr. Hume"s motion, Mr. Gladstone said: "I am quite sure that every heart is much too full to allow us, at a period so early, to enter upon a consideration of the amount of that calamity with which the country has been visited in his, I must even now say, premature death; for though he has died full of years and full of honors, yet it is a death which our human eyes will regard as premature; because we had fondly hoped that, in whatever position he was placed, by the weight of his character, by the splendor of his talents, by the purity of his virtues, he would still have been spared to render to his countrymen the most essential services. I will only, sir, quote those most touching and feeling lines which were applied by one of the greatest poets of this country to the memory of a man great indeed, but yet not greater than Sir Robert Peel:"
"Now is the stately column broke, The beacon light is quenched in smoke; The trumpet"s silver voice is still; The warder silent on the hill."
"Sir, I will add no more--in saying this I have, perhaps, said too much.
It might have been better had I confined myself to seconding the motion.
I am sure the tribute of respect which we now offer will be all the more valuable from the silence with which the motion is received, and which I well know has not arisen from the want, but from the excess of feeling on the part of members of this House."
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 censorship, 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 lordship"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 lordship, 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."