The Italian Premier, General Pelloux, seems to have decided to
give no quarter to the Maffia, the secret society, which in Naples and Sicily protects criminals, levies black- mail on all landlords and traders, and professes to protect the weak against the strong. The correspondent of the Morning Post at Rome states that under the General's orders Marquis Cassis, Prefect of Messina, arrested in one day forty- four leaders of the society belonging to all grades of society, and including many officers of the Municipality. The society was thunderstruck ; for it must have been betrayed from within, and if the blow were followed up would probably break up, so rendering Messina a safe town to live in, but the perseverance of the authorities cannot be relied on. A prefect, one of the Medici, a few years ago held the Sicilian Maffia in fetters, but his successor relaxed the reins, and it possessed itself again of its old authority. The bases of its strength are two, the excessive unfairness of local taxation, and the inveterate reluctance of Italians to punish assassination by death.
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