SOUTHERN ITALY.
TWO remarkable letters have appeared this week on the condition of Southern Italy. The author of one, Sir George Bowyer, is an ultramontanist of the most advanced description, a man more Catholic than the Camarilla, more Papal than the Holy Father himself. The writer of the other, Massimo d'Azeglio, is a Liberal of the highest Italian school, a constitutionalist de la veille, deeply uriPregnated with English sentiments, who has suffered and fought to relieve Italy from the twofold curse of Papal and Austrian rule. These two men, so widely at variance in objecte and sympathies, without perhaps a political idea or even a wish in common, unite in expressing dislike of the Piedmontese effort to reconquer order in Southern Italy. The phenomenon is one which may well make the most ardent Liberal pause, and ask himself ciiLSII lly whether the work now in progress in Southern Italy be indeed in ac- cordance with those high principles to which any temporary expediency must in the end give way. The objections of Sir George Bowyer will not perhaps trouble hitn greatly. Like every other Ultramontanist, Sir George Bowyer con- siders that honest belief is equivalent to evidence, and asks us to accept the strangest assertions simply because he be- lieves them. In his letter, nominally addressed to Lord Palmerston and really to the people of England, he asserts that persons suspected of being Legitimists have been assas- sinated in the streets of Naples, that the prisons are full of the victims of Piedmontese tyranny, that prisoners are shot in masses and in cold blood, that venerable ecclesiastics have been exiled, and that all these punishments have been inflicted on strictly political grounds. And for all this he declares the British Ministry, " which lends its support and influence to the Piedmontese invasion," is responsible, and shall be called to account. We are not concerned to examine whether these statements are precisely in accordance with actual facts. The notions entertained by an Ultramontanist of the value of evidence are generally of the vaguest de- scription, but we will accept the assertions, except the first, as if they had been proved by unprejudiced spectators ; and so accepted, their force is simply nothing at all. The question for Parliament to consider is not the fact of the infliction of punishments in Italy, but the justice of such infliction. If fifty brigands were caught red- handed after a night of murder and violation, and fifty brigands were shot, so much the worse for the brigands and the better for honest men. That Bourbonists are under arrest is very likely true, and they may congratulate themselves on being in the hands of a Government which treats them precisely as the British Government once treated Chartists of the same class, viz. by keeping them under humane restraint until they have ceased to be mischievous. That certain priests have been sent into exile is certainly true, and a more mode- rate punishment was never devised. They have endeavoured for months to induce the people to join the disorderly, and the Government was compelled either to restrain or banish them for a time. Cialdini chose the milder alternative, and the peasants whom the priests have led into crime, may envy the easy fate of their far guiltier chiefs. It is, however, a waste of time to answer charges like these. When an ad- herent of Ferdinand of Naples denounces exile as cruelty, he may well be left to the sarcastic applause of the master whose bloodthirstiness he, with such scathing effect, indi- rectly condemns. We turn to the more important epistle with a feeling of some reluctance, for there is much in its writer which com- mands the highest respect of every man of principle. Massimo d'Azeglio belongs to a class of men who bear to sound politi- cians the relation which prudes bear to sober matrons, or men with crotchety consciences to really sound-hearted Christians. The prudes, no doubt, help to keep up a high standard of purity of manners, and it is useful occasionally to test our moral altitude by a barometer somewhat more sensitive than we in every-day life can employ. But prudery is not chastity because prudes may be chaste, and it is not by their standard, however high we may deem it, that sensible men will try a deliberate charge. When M. d'Azeglio taxes the Pied- montese Government with tyranny in its retention of Southern Italy, he forces us to throw aside the pretty shrink- ings which only.adorn morality, and reconsider in what the real virtue of Liberalism consists.
Massimo d'Azeglio argues that the national will in Naples is opposed to the Piedmontese, and believing that Liberals have no right to coerce a national will, he argues that the Government in Naples has abandoned the Liberal principles, in virtue of which it exists. The syllogism is of course per- fect if only the premises are true; but they involve at the outset three assumptions of a somewhat alarming magnitude. To justify M. d'Azeglio's line of argument it must be ad- mitted that the Neapolitans are a nationality, that they are opposed to the existing rule, and that they are governed by an authority not created by themselves. We deny every one of those propositions. 1. To admit that the people of Naples are a nation, is simply to give up the whole cause of Italian unity. Con- tented or discontented, well governed or oppressed, they are Italians, part of the great race to which they are proud to belong, and to which, by their own will and through the efforts of their own selected leader, they were, only one year since, formally reunited. The only nationality to be consulted in Italy is the Italian, and it is the Italian na- tion which, thrpo:,:. Cialdini, is acting on one of its own provinces,and,&t a foreign Government acting on a separate kingdom. .The majority of Italians have just as much moral right to coerce Naples, as the majority of Englishmen to coerce Tipperary ; as much claim to suppress Neapolitan riots in the interest of the Bourbon, as Scotland to suppress Highland outbreaks in the interest of the Stuart. In either case they are responsible to God for the sincerity of their motives, and to man for the leniency with which they employ their power, but their right as a political right is beyond dispute. As well might Wales declare its right to choose a king for itself in opposition to England, as Naples in defiance of Italy. Either would have the right if oppressed beyond the limit which freemen are bound to endure, but it would be a measure to be justified as revolutions are jus- tified, not an assertion of national independence requiring no justification at all. Massimo d'Azeglio would scarcely assert that each of the dozen tyrannies established in Italy was a nation, and yet if the Neapolitans form a nationality, why not the Tuscans ? Their autonomy was as old, their social organization as distinct as that of the South, yet if their claim be admitted, what is Italy except the " geographical expression" M. d'Azeglio once denounced ? 2. Are the Neapolitans opposed to the existing rule, or only to the existing form of that rule ? Certain classes are most certainly opposed to the rule itself, would rather have a Bourbon and despotism than a Savoyard and constitutional Government. But those classes by no means constitute a numerical majority, nor if they did, would they in any but a very partial degree represent the popular will. We pro- test utterly, as firm Liberals, against the voice of any mob, however numerous, being confounded with the voice of a nation. The intelligent classes of Naples, however deeply or justly discontented with the administration, is distinctly on the side of the Government. They are annoyed by per- petual blundering, by the social disorder, by the attacks on an ancient ecclesiastical system, by all the confusion which a series of incompetent governors have managed, in spite of warnings, to create. But there is not the slightest evidence that they ask for any Government other than that of Italy. On the contrary, they have armed at Cialdini's call to defend the Government, and their most urgent complaint is that he will not arm them fast enough to fight for Victor Emanuel. Not one representative has quitted the national Parliament, not one Neapolitan declined office within the National Ministry. The resistance, such as it is, comes from the mob alone, and if they are to be finally ap- pointed the judges, God help the Liberal cause, for man has given it up. Even of the mob, we believe, the infinite Ma- jority are contending against measures, against the vacillating resolves about commonage, against the restrictions placed on the priesthood, against an order too strict to allow of pecula- tion and robbery, and not in any degree against the unity of Italy. If it were not so, if the people were really united for the Bourbon, how happens it that two Garibaldians have succeeded without a soldier in expelling the Bourbon from the Calabrias ? Is it the entire people whom they have ex- pelled ? 3. Finally, we deny that Naples is governed by any authority except its own. For every act he has done Cialdini is liable with his head to a free Parliament, freely elected by the people, and in which Neapolitans have even more than their fair share of representation. They are just as much self-governed as Irishmen are. If they do not like the mode in which their affairs are administded, their repre- sentatives have only to act in a body to compel the Govern- ment to change its whole course of proceeding. They are oppressed, if at all, by a Ministry whom they help to sup- port, one section of whom they nominate, and all of whom they can influence to any extent short of the betrayal of the national interests. Massimo d'Azeglio is bewildered by provincial recollections, and forgets that the Neapolitan is a member of a State where political privilege is at least secure, and that a really representative Government, though it may readily become oppressive, can never be foreign. The Con- vention was oppressive enough, but for La Gironde to attack it, as opposed to its nationality, would have been simply absurd.
We have tried to argue the question wholly on. principle, but there exists in politics one element no party or principle can ever affect. Every civilized government once esta- blished, becomes responsible to God and to Europe for the maintenance of its position, and with its responsibility acquires the right of self-defence. It is bound to modify or reverse its action in accordance with the will of the people it is created to guard, but it is not bound to commit suicide. Ferdinand of Bourbon had no right to govern by "erecting the negation of God into a system," but he had a clear right to defend himself against Garibaldi, and the just instinct of mankind declared his fierce defence of Gaeta the one redeeming feature of his misrule. The right we acknow- ledge in him cannot be denied to Victor Emanuel. The true charge against the Italian Government, if charge there be, is not that it insists on existing, not that it crushes rebellion, but that it performs that just task with too little attention to the laws which should regulate chastisement. The victory at Culloden was just, but its justice did not extenuate the barbarities which followed. Upon this charge, and only on this, it may be difficult to arrive at a verdict of complete acquittal. The situation in Naples is most difficult, and the facts before us very imper- fect, but we incline to believe that while the brigands are justly treated, and the priests only too leniently forgiven, the stupid policy of suppressing revolution per force of police annoyance has been too readily adopted by men who do not yet comprehend that sitting on the valve produces speed and not safety.
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