THE CRY OF THE PRISONER.
NOT since the inhuman treatment of the Sicilian political prisoners at Naples under Bomba has such a well-authenticated and painful narrative of political persecution been laid before the British public as is pro- vided in the letters from Adeline Duchess of Bedford, printed by the Times and Daily Mail. The Duchess of Bedford has examined the facts in Lisbon, as Gladstone examined them in Naples, without a suspicion of political motive. When Gladstone was moved to write his famous letters to Lord Aberdeen he was a Conservative member of Parliament, and his sympathies were opposed to the struggle for Italian unity. But during the months he spent in Naples the facts were too strong for him to keep silence. He passionately championed the cause of the unhappy Sicilians not because he liked their aims but in spite of them ; he burned to help them simply because they were suffering human beings victimized by a system which was from top to bottom the very negation of justice, decency, and elementary humanity. It is no exaggeration to com- pare the state of the Portuguese Royalist prisoners with that of the Sicilians, nor to match for nobility the efforts of the Duchess of Bedford with those of Gladstone. The Duchess of Bedford most rightly refrains from appealing for justice for the Portuguese prisoners merely because they are Royalists. We cannot emphasize that point too strongly. For ourselves we can honestly say that when a country manifestly desires a republic rather than a monarchy, we regard a republic as the best form—indeed, the only form—of government for that country. We should heartily welcome the establishment of a healthy republic in the place of any monarchy that had grown effete.
The Duchess of Bedford is, moreover, a witness not merely free from political motive, but one devoid of the sentimentality of inexperience in penal affairs. Her con- nexion with the British Home Office—she holds an official post—in the matter of the treatment of female convicts has given her a firm standard of judg- ment. She has visited prisons all over Europe. She is not just a kind-hearted traveller who has given way to a panic of pity. We earnestly hope, therefore, that the facts which she has related with perfect restraint and lucidity will cause Englishmen to bring all the pressure of public opinion here to bear on the conduct of the Portuguese Government. Portugal is our ally ; we have at least a right to say what our feelings are. And we are glad to know that the vast majority of the Portuguese are highly sensitive to British opinion. The Portuguese Premier himself is said to be desirous of granting a general amnesty to the political prisoners, but he is completely coerced by the Carbonaria secret society. The members of this society swear on oath to assassinate anyone who is declared to be an "enemy of the Republic "—a phrase which of course merely means an enemy of the Carbonarios. But the people of the Republic may after all be too strong for the secret society, as the Turks were, temporarily at all events, too strong for the Committee. If this is to happen the decent Republicans need all the encouragement and help they can get. Nothing outside Portugal will help them more than a wide and concerted expression of popular opinion in Great Britain that there ought to be either a general amnesty for the prisoners or a speedy and just trial. The features of the ill-treatment are only too familiar, as the pages of history have been disfigured by similar wrongs over and over again. They bear a particularly close resemblance to the sufferings of the Sicilians described by Gladstone. We cannot survey the whole record of misery, but a few examples may be repeated here. The Duchess of Bedford writes of her visits to the Limoeiro and Aljube prisons :— "The system of espionage practised throughout Portugal spreads like a network, in the meshes of which many unsuspecting persons are entangled. A chance word said to a barber sufficed for the arrest of a doctor well known and respected ; the boast of a police sergeant that he had served under three Rings condemned him to a life sentence ; an aged and helpless priest with his sacristan had been hurried away from his poor presbytery without the pretence of an accusation against him ; a count, having supplied his guests at a dinner party with small Royalist flags for their buttonholes, was for this slight imprudence arrested, and, though eight months have elapsed, is still untried. Some of the prisoners have been awaiting trial for two years; a few have been sentenced to the Penitenciaria (the convict prison) for six or seven years, whence they are deported to the penal colonies for life. These have not yet, however, been consigned to this dreaded abode, on account of its already overcrowded con- dition. Herded together in cramped rooms and narrow passages, the men's faces wore a look of unspeakable anguish which, once seen, could never be forgotten. Without exercise or employ- ment of any kind, the endless hours drag wearily past. Dependent entirely on their friends for an occasional book or paper, there is little to distract their thoughts from the sense of the inhuman injustice of their treatment. As I passed through the courtyard on leaving, dozens of dark, sad faces were pressed against the bars, and it was with a pang I realized that my visit had aroused a passing gleam of hope. My next visit was to the Aljnbe Prison (for women), where seven so-called political offenders are detained. Five of these were peasant women from the Azores, whose 'crime' consisted in making some effort to resist the spoliation, by Republican orders, of their village church. They were hurried from their homes to the steamer, and without trial on their arrival were consigned to the Aljnbe."
The incident of the five peasant women is to our mind more touching than the condition of many of the better- known persons. One can imagine how these simple and probably devout souls, knowing little or nothing of law or politics or constitutional movements, tried to prevent any injury being done to the little church in which they had been accustomed to worship, and were hurried off in utter bewilderment as dangerous enemies of the Republic. The Duchess of Bedford goes on :- "The third prison I visited, the Peniteuciaria, is a modern building, adapted from the prison of Louvain' in which criminals of the worse type are confined. Here no distinction is made between `politicals and criminals ; all are in convict dress, solitary confinement is strictly observed, even in the infirmary, and the exercise ground, divided into several compartments, is adapted to one individual at a time. Here I conversed with the elder of two brothers (the younger I had seen in the Limoeiro), sons of the Countess of Ficalho, who with their friends, the Marques Belmont and Don J056 Mascarefias, were arrested at their country home at Cintra in consequence of well-known Royalist sympathies. Although not actively concerned in any attempt to embarrass the Government, they were seized by a body of Carbonarios, treated with violence and indignity, sustaining injuries which might have proved fatal. Their trial was conducted by the usual system of false witness. There is no doubt that the jury received an intimation that, should the verdict be an acquittal, both prisoners and jury would be shot on leaving the Court. They were promptly sentenced for life. Two of these men were at work, one in the dispensary and the other in the office, so I was able to speak to them on my rounds, but in this place words of hope seemed to die upon my lips. The saddest scene was yet to come. Two of the prisoners were brought to the grilles of the pariatario, which are so low that the prisoner is forced to kneel on one side and the visitor to stoop or kneel on the other. These men were Belmonte and Don To:a-o d'Almeida, a naturalized Austrian, who was taken in a Royalist rising in September 1912. A gallant soldier must abide the fortune of war, and his case, though deeply pitiful, differs in this respect from others I have mentioned. Through the heavy gratings I could scarcely hear their whispered words, but their eyes implored help with an indescribable pathos."
The Duchess of Bedford believes that about eight hundred prisoners in all are detained, the great majority of whoni are untried and have no hope of getting a trial of any sort, much less of a just trial. One old prisoner, gasping with heart disease, exclaimed, "I shall never leave this place, tried or untried." Some of the prisoners have been locked up for as long as two years without trial. Some live in handcuffs day and night. In a pamphlet entitled "Portuguese Political Prisoners : A British National Protest" (L. Upcott Gill and Son, Ltd., 3d.) instances of the prisoners' suffering are given in more detail. We have not space to quote more than one passage. On April 15th, 1912, a priest named Avelino de Figueiredo wrote the following letter :— " Although Senhor &inches de Miranda (Governor of the Limoeiro) wrote in the Capital that prisoners could not be kept more than a fortnight in the secret cells, I declare that I was in one of the worst of these for more than this permitted time. I had no bench to sit upon, no fork to eat with, no mattress on which to sleep, and all day I sat on the cold, damp stone floor. If I was thirsty, having no glass, I was obliged to drink from tho hollow of my hands, while the water from the tap poured down upon the floor. The cell was so dark that the warders lighted matches in order to see me. I had hardly sufficient space to breathe. For eleven days I was given nothing but water and sour bread, and, being ill, I asked to see a doctor. According to the rules of the prison he ought to have come at once,- but the
authorities did not send him. . . . After a while, a member of the Government visited the prisons and ordered medical attention for me. The doctor then declared to the Governor that he would not be answerable for my life unless I was removed from the secret cell within twelve hours. However, I was left there five days longer. The Minister had ordered that I should be given food immediately, but it was not brought until the following day at two in the afternoon. As it was so dark I could not see to eat, I asked for a candle, and on this being given to me I saw that I was covered with vermin. My bed was an old board, full of holes, and those holes infested with insects ; dozens of mice ran over me every night. For three days the sink was stopped, and the atmo- sphere became sickening beyond the power of words to describe."
The pamphlet goes on to comment on this letter :— "The Minister who had visited the Limoeiro at this date did not attempt to palliate the existing conditions ; on the contrary, he wrote to the Republican paper 0 Seculo, and indicated—though he did not describe—the sufferings of the victims: I should be ashamed,' he declared, to tell anyone what came under my obser- vation at the Limoeiro. Better not to relate what I beheld, nor what I guessed. It suffices to say that I called the prison doctor and told him he had the right of visiting the secret cells."
Gladstone's first letter to Lord Aberdeen, dated April 7th, 1851, shows that the system of employing informers to give false evidence on oath was as common in Naples as it is alleged to be now in Portugal. The letter says :— "I do not scruple to assert, in continuation, that when every effort has been used to concoct a charge, if possible, out of the perversion and partial production of real evidence, this often fails : and then the resort is to perjury and to forgery. The miserable creatures to be found in most communities, but especially in those where the Government is the great agent of corruption upon the people, the wretches who are ready to sell the liberty and life of fellow-subjects for gold, and to throw their own souls into the bargain, are deliberately employed by the Executive Power to depose according to their inventions against the man whom it is thought desirable to ruin. Although, however, practice should by this time have made perfect, these depositions are generally made in the coarsest and clumsiest manner; and they bear upon them the evidences of falsehood in absurdities and self-contradic- tions, accumulated even to nausea. But what then ? Mark the calculation. If there is plenty of it, some of it, according to the vulgar phrase, will stick. Do not think I am speaking loosely. I declare my belief that the whole proceeding is linked together from first to last ; a depraved logic runs through it."
As for the state of the prisons, Gladstone wrote :— "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 upstairs to them at that charnelhouse 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 profes- sional men should consent to earn bread by entering them. As to diet, I must speak a word for the bread that I have seen. Though black and coarse to the last degree, it was sound. The soup, which forms the only other element of subsistence, is so nauseous, as I was assured, that nothing but the extreme of hunger could over- come the repugnance of nature to it. I had not the means of tasting it The filth of the prisons is beastly. The officers, except at night, hardly ever enter them."
The Duchess of Bedford's descriptions might plainly do service for those of Gladstone and vice versa. It is the old story over and over again ; even the ingenuity of cruelty runs in a groove. Gladstone was struck by the dignity and restraint of the prisoners, and the Duchess of Bedford makes exactly the same observation. Gladstone ends his first letter with these words :- "It is time that either the veil should be lifted from scenes fitter for hell than earth, or some considerable mitigation should be voluntarily adopted. I have undertaken this wearisome and painful task, in the hope of doing something to diminish a mass of human suffering as huge, I believe, and as acute, to say the least, as any that the eye of Heaven beholds."
In conclusion, we need say no other word than that Gladstone's motive is the one we profess—to relieve the mass of human suffering. This is a matter above politics, and above all the punctilios of international conduct. The Duchess of Bedford has shown the way with high personal courage and devotion. We trust that Liberals and Liberal newspapers will remember the pride they have often con- fessed in the splendid labours of Gladstone for oppressed people, and will echo his great voice now, and not be back- ward to help suffering because the only available method will require co-operation with their political opponents. A refusal would be to place partisanship above humanity. Of that great refusal we are sure they will not be guilty, A. united voice of indignation from Great Britain will alone nerve reputable Portuguese Republicans to defy the Carbonarios, support their better-minded rulers, and give a humane answer to the cry of the prisoner.
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