the government
compared with the severity of which martial law is lax and mild; and the
crime which provokes these harsh measures has revived again from the
disaffection which they produce. All authorities on the subject are
agreed that brigandage finds its shield and support in the fears of the
people, and the complete system of espionage which the robbers are
enabled to maintain through their accomplices in society. These are
sometimes priests and persons of station, but more commonly peasants
whose friends or relatives are brigands. During the French-republican
rule of Naples, when Manhes was at the head of the troops assigned the
duty of extirpating brigandage, the robbers were for once destroyed by
the terrible measures taken against their accomplices. No one suspected
of communicating with them in any way was spared. Men were shot for
selling them food. Women and children taking food into the fields to eat
while at work were shot, under an order forbidding this custom lest the
provisions should fall into the hands of the robbers. For once, the
authorities outbid the brigands for the terror of the wretched
inhabitants, and annihilated them. But it was natural, in a country
where every peasant is a possible brigand, and only waits for a lawless
impulse or lawless deed to make him an actual brigand, that brigandage
should flourish again as soon as the rigid procedure against it was
relaxed. The returning Bourbons found it on every hill; and though they
combated it with fitful severity and unremitting treachery, they left it
essentially unimpaired to the Italian government in 1860. It is by no
means true--as Mr. Moens asserts upon the authority of Murray's
Guide-Book--that the late Bourbon government did anything towards
effectually suppressing brigandage. The brigands were put down in one
place to spring up in another, and they swarmed everywhere after a lean
harvest. They never were effectually suppressed, except by Manhes; and,
as the Italian government has mercifully refused to adopt his course for
their destruction, it is probable that they will exist until the country
is generally opened with roads, and the people educated, and, above all,
Protestantized. For it must never be forgotten that, since the union of
Naples with Italy, brigandage has been fostered by the Bourbons and the
Papists, and that the Italians have had to fight, not only the robbers
in Naples, but Francis II. and Pius IX. at Rome.

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