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JUSTICE AT HOME . ( a sequel to mb . Gladstone ' s revelations . ) ( From La Preste of the 3 rd instant . ) Can the system I am about to describe be called justice ? Can the following statements , of the authenticity of which I am well assured , be deemed credible ? No ! surely they were past belief , did we not know how the cruelty of despotism , broadens , like a pyramid , from crown to base . Justice is distributed at Rome with closed doors , and upon bare information . The accused is indeed permitted the choice of counsel to defend him , —only , if the advocate be not to the taste of his judges , he must either select another , or accept any nominee of the
President of the Court , for a substitute . The counsel is served with the indictment ; but neither he nor the prisoner is confronted with his accusers , or with the impeaching witnesses , whose identity remains a secret to the " defence . " Under these dark forms of trial , it may well be understood how difficult it becomeB to establish innocence ; and , on the other hand , how personal enmity or a private grudge may wreak rewenge on the victim of anonymous denunciations ! Vet , notwithstanding the authority to condemn at pleasure any object of their spite , these petty inquisitors dare not brave the public horror of human
sacrifices : they seldom pronounce the extreme sentence . But if their victims escape the headsman ' s axe or the auto-da-fe in the public square , they are mot spared the moral and physical tortures of the gaol * and of the dungeons , in which a Power of darkness , on the pretext of a necessary delay in iraming the indictment , claims the right of indefinite detention , and so deals out , drop by drop , the lingering anguish of a cruel death ; and all this savagery is " fulfilled , " according to the jargon of fanatics , "for the greater glory of God , and of his iChurch . "
The Roman gaols have one common room for the Sierd of prisoners , or such as have not the wherewith to p * y for the privilege of one of the detached cells , an which each prisoner is granted a couch of straw , . or a squalid mattress , instead of the foul and putrid itruss wMch is thrown to the inmates of the segretta jpiana , as . the common room is called . A hideous sefcy of irrfeelion , misery , desolation , where human !> eings are flieaped together like unclean beasts in loathsome filth- ; and if from some poor wretch despair extorts too sharp . 41 cry , a hundred weight of iron is . attached to his feet ; but not before he has received 41 / more or less severe scourging on the shoulders or
tte'Joins with sticks or rods . This latter punishment , as humiliating as it is savage , is called the Cavaletto , and in the " good old times , " was inflicted publicly , on men and women naked . The squeamish decency g > i the present governors of Rome no longer daring ( tp ^ ske a public show of this revolting cruelty , € hey . make amends to their sense of duty by confining it to -the ' recesses of the gaols . No other mitigation of the ) suffering . s of captives can these successors of the Apostles devise than to restore the ignominious found time to
-atrocities whi * h the Republic had ^ suppress , in abolishing by the same decree capital punishment . Not content with restoring , they aggravate ; before the Republican regime , the weight of iron attached to the prisoners' ancles was only fifty pounds ; it is now increased to ninety-six . No language can give a just conception of this heartrending spectacle of all the tortures of humanity driven to despair , humiliated , degraded , debased by 4 . he most ignoble usage , in this ward , or rather in this > cavern , reeking with deadly mephitie exhalations .
Passing from the segretta piana to the detached cells you iind two prisoners shut in each . These tcells are about 8 ft . 11 in . in length , 7 ft . 7 in . in breadth , and 7 ft . 10 in . in height . The allowance of air is barely sufficient for one man ' s life , where two are buried alive , devoured by fever and b y the Terinin that fester where the iron hus lacerated and
ttorn . It is thus that a government of priests " obtain the scaffold ' s aim by means more cruel than the scaffold , and without the outcry which the scaffold would create . " As to the wards destined for pri-« oners " ut large , " or those who are confined by night only , mul who in the daytime have the privilege of walking in the inner court , these rooms designed to 'hold ten prisoners each are made to hold twenty . "Think of the agonies to be endured by these unhappy anen , pent up during the suffocating heatB of a Roman « uinm < -r , in u den to which-light and air can only pierce through one solitary crevice placed at a height of nearly seven feet from the ground . The only . relief to be obtained in this pestilential furnace is by itheir mounting upon ouch other ' * shoulders in turn tto gulp u faint and momentary breath of stifled air .
The ullowance of food to each prisoner Is sixteen «« mccs of bread duily , two ounces and n half of meat , weighed raw , and three ouiicch of bouillon ; the meut und the bouillon are replaced 011 fast days by vtgetublot ) boik ' d in Bait and water . Only once a month can they receive a visit from relatives or friends ; mud then thoy must speuk with them through u double * grating , ami in the presence of two gaolers . Within the last few duyo six prisoners have literally died of starvation in their cells . Two attempted * uicide , ' nn < l have been put in irons for the uttein . pt ,
to undergo a further condemnation . Two others , raving mad , have been carried to the hospital of La Longara . . The prison of San Michele contains more than 400 political prisoners , the Bagni , and the new prison more than 200 ; in the latter the politically accused are crowded indiscriminately with robbers and assassins . Here every new comer is subjected bv the chief of the community to the most disgusting offices , and if he happen to be a youth , to exigencies the most revolting , if he cannot pay his ransom ! This ' chtet of the company is an elective despot , to whom his companions award the title of Sovereign Pontiff . It is the most distinguished thief and murderer who attains to this supreme dignity of crime ! lo him
his fellows pay imperial honours ; and it is his privilege after meals to be carried round the yard on the shoulders of his subjects . ... » By this despot ' s orders every new comer is stripped of his good clothes , and even of his shoes , and it need scarcely be added , of his money . If the victim lodge a complaint with the governor of the gaol , what is the result ? A perquisition by the turnkeys , who being themselves remitted convicts , are accomplices ^ to the robbers , and never find the objects lost . The complainant gets a murderous attack the next night , and a savage beating for his pains . If in this pestilent atmosphere , or from ill usage , a prisoner fall seriously illhe is carried to the infirmary , where the
, assistant-surgeons and dressers are also robbers and assassins of repute , to whom Valori , the senior physician , and Baccelli , the chief surgeon , delegate their authority and their functions . In the midst of all these tortures , and all these daily and hourly moral and physical degradations , these unfortunate martyrs of their political faith preserve an admirable courage , a noble dignity ; each is proud to suffer , and happy to die , to assure the triumph of justice and of liberty , whose advent is at hand for all mankind , in spite of the selfish hate of oppressors , who would fain arrest the very dawn !
To such excess has reached this blind hate at Rome , that the Cardinal-Vicar has dared to suppress the passage of the Catechism which recommends the Christian duty of visiting and succouring the captives 1 Nay , certain alms , and the revenues of pious foundations , bequeathed for the relief of prisoners , are diverted from their destination , and employed in the service of the Jesuitical Propaganda , at home and abroad . Here are the names of a few prisoners , actually detained at this moment , or condemned , on political
accusations : — Silvestre Campetti , of Rome , has been in gaol for more than a year , kept in solitary confinement , and in irons . He suffers all the tortures of starvation , as the allowance of bread and water is barely sufficient to prevent his escape—through death . The pretext for accusation is , that it in his power to give information of a pretended Republican plot , of which , throughout his agonies , he persists in asserting entire ignorance . Bonafede Ippolito di Fuligno was arrested in a cafd , notwithstanding a safe-conduct from General Rostolan , and a passport delivered to him by the police . He is detained in prison , and treated with the same barbarous rigour as Campetti , and on the same pretext of a fabricated plot .
Ermand Clavari de Rubino , ex-commissary of police of Rione du Borgo , at Rome , was arrested at Urbino and brought back , to Rome , kept in solitary confinement , and forbidden to write to his family , or to receive news of them . Up to this day he has not learned the cause of his arrest .
Ripari , of Cremona , phyaicinn-in-chief of the military hospitals , who had only remained at Rome at the instance of General Levaillunt , in charge of the wounded Lombards , was arrested and thrown into prison , where he still remains , Bernardino Federici , of Monte-Rotondo , advocate , was arrested and condemned to the galleys for five yeara , on a charge of profanity und impiety , he having when suffering from a cold in his head , coughed and cleared his throat in the parish church , during the sermon ! Now , as he passed for a " Liberal , " this fit of coughing was imputed to him us un insult to God und to IIiu minister , und such is the crime for which ho is condemned .
Seipione Auiict was imprisoned with hiu futher on a charge of Liberalism . They leave two young girls ( one uged thirteen and the other nine yeurs ) in most dreadful distress . The young man is dangerously wounded and ill from the intolerable brutalities of the vile desperudocs with whom he was herded in the guol . Michcle Lucatelli ( capo popolo ) of Rione doi Monte , at Rome , is incarcerated on an uccusution which entailu ipao facto , ho is informed , excornmimicution . They refuse to tell him his crime : und no judge will examine him , for fear of incurring excommunication by a sort of infection , from mere contact with the accused . Jly this unheurd-of dcniul of justice , a man must rot in gaol , imeonvicted , uncoudemned ! Drocsti , Sabutiui , Duart , Bruni , Catenucci , are the flv « young uiwu who wore wrested qh the 30 th of
April , 1850 , with several of their companions in an artist ' s studio , on a charge of having manufactured the *• Bengal lights , " which were let"off at Rome on . the anniversary of the Republic . Although , in the course of a domiciliary visit which was made in their presence , and lasted three hours , not a vestige of proof was discovered in support of the charge , they were chained and plunged into prison . The judges , accompanied by sbirri and carabiniers , paid a second visit to the studio , which had been left open all night ; and in that second perquisition , in the absence of the accused , was found the powder , fusees , and matches they had sought in vain for on the previous day . It was on these materials for conviction , which
constituted a simple misdemeanour and not a crime , and which , by common report , had been introduced into the studio during the night , that these young men were sentenced to the galleys for twenty years . This sentence , it should be added , is not founded , even ostensibly , upon any criminal act : it refers neither to Bengal lights , nor to fusses , nor to powder : it rests on the simple and sole consideration , " that , under present circumstances , it is requisite , by a severe punishment , to put a stop to the subversive manoeuvres of factious men . " In such haste was the court to deliver this Iniquitous sentence , that they pronounced it without waiting for their oton official nominee to present the defence of the accused .
These youths * at first incarcerated in Fort St . Angelo , were transferred to the prison of St . Michael after the escape of the accused Offreduzzi . On that occasion the young Droesti , on the bare suspicion of having assisted the escape , had to undergo the cavaletto . He was then plunged into a dungeon , from which he was only dragged after fifty-two day 3 to the Infirmary , reduced almost to a skeleton by a wasting fever , and by the lacerations which ninetysix pound weight of iron attached to his feet night and day had worn into the flesh , and the crawling vermin had made festering sores ! Another prisoner , who had complained of the gaoler for striking him brutally with the heavy keys because he returned to his cell but slowly , was condemned to the cavaletto , and then to fourteen
days of solitary confinement in a dungeon , and in heavy irons . An old man , after three months' earnest entreaty , had at length obtained permission to visit his son , who was in prison as a Republican . The sight of his lean and famine-wasted son , who looked like a walking spectre , made so painful an impression upon the old man that he was seized with a convulsive nervous attack , and carried out of the prison dying . The son , betrayed into some hasty expression at this sad seizure , was thrown into a dungeon and loaded with irons .
It is two prelates of the Church of Jesus Christ , Monsignori Matteucchi and Benvenuti , the one Seccretary of the Consulta , the other Fiscal General , who are the directors , the ingenious designers of these refinements of cruelty towards miserable prisoners ; and it excites wonder that their victims should repulse with indignation their ironical message of charity and mercy , and that in their despair they should strike or insult their relentless persecutors
when they dare to present themselves in their forlorn abode to gloat over the tortures of captivity ! And it is at Rome , in the capital of the Christian world , in the midst of the traditions and relics 01 the great Apostles of universal charity and freedom , that human beings of all classes of society , men of property , merchants , advocates , officers of all ranks , and young men of exalted patriotism are barbarously thrown into dungeons of filth and infection , and subjected to the most cruel torturesmoral and p hysical
, —for why ? because , forsooth , they trusted and believed in the solemn promises of u Sovereign Pontiu , of a man who culls himself the Vicar of the Iucurnatc God who died for the emancipation of Humanity It is in these prisons of Rome that fresh and stainless youths are forced to provoke solitary confinement by any breach of discipline , even to violence and insult , as an escape from the intolerable po 1 u ' tions of the abandoned convicts with whom they are herded : pollutions of which some have died an ma % rf m * 4 V «~* * mj \* r m ^ ^ 4 u » ^ r m AU ^ # * f V IA » ly'lb •* «^ m + m ^ - * — — - - - v > in c (
others have prayed for death us a rescue from {* j * cribable disease ! It is at Rome that a judge r . c | ll ^ to interrogate a prisoner , for fear of contact witu excommunicated person ! It is at Rome that h 0 "" 11 ^ ablo women and pure girls are forced to prost * u ^ themselves to the persecutors of their hushim "" their fathers , to obtain their liberty , , if only bo ^ respite and alleviation to their Bufferings , w i ^ others become the instruments of denunciation » g 11 their friends , relatives , and neighbours , as ! ( ) rill [ meaiiH of obtaining some relief from an " 1 ( l . ! j ) er , ipolice , and the only escape from starvation lor
/ selves and their children ! . r ( , T ) M « i » what the " Party of Order" call tuc establishment of legitimate authority ! O I >> ' » <; J ' JSllIUi |> K tl iUAKUW "
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CONTINENTAL N O T 11 b . . ^ Apart from the Parisian fdton , French newfl 1 H * out interest ; the notable event being the dccisio' r ; Assembly , by 3 J 6 to 288 , authorizing the city <>» ^ ^ to contract a loun of fifty millions of iruiic »» ^ nuruoso of building new markotu J » n < l continu
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746 «!> * Ut a * et . [ Saturday ,
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Aug. 9, 1851, page 746, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1895/page/6/
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