kindle wrath. The
government of Naples had sworn to maintain a free constitution, but had
disgracefully and without compunction violated every one of its
conditions, and perpetrated cruelties and injustices which would have
appalled the judges of imperial Rome, and defended them by a casuistry
which surpassed in its insult to the human understanding that of the
priests of the Spanish Inquisition.

The indignation created by Gladstone's letters extended beyond England
to France and Germany, and probably had no slight influence in the final
overthrow of the King of Naples, whose government was the most unjust,
tyrannical, and cruel in Europe, and perhaps on the face of the globe.
Its chief evil was not in chaining suspected politicians of character
and rank to the vilest felons, and immuring them in underground cells
too filthy and horrible to be approached even by physicians, for months
and years before their mock-trials began, but in the utter perversion of
justice in the courts by judges who dared not go counter to the
dictation or even wishes of the executive government with its deadly and
unconquerable hatred of everything which looked like political liberty.
All these things and others Mr. Gladstone exposed with an eloquence
glowing and burning with righteous and fearless indignation.

The Neapolitan government attempted to make a denial of the terrible
charges; but the defence was feeble and inconclusive, and the statesman
who made the accusation was not convicted even of exaggeration, although
the heartless tyrant may have felt that he was no more guilty than other
monarchs bent on sustaining absolutism at any cost and under any plea in
the midst of atheists, assassins, and anarchists. It is said that Warren
Hastings, under the terrible invectives of Burke, felt himself to be the
greatest criminal in the world, even when he was conscious of having
rendered invaluable services to Great Britain, which the country in the
main acknowledged. In one sense, therefore, a statement may be
rhetorically exaggerated, even when the facts which support it are
incontrovertible, as the remorseless logic of Calvin leads to deductions
which no one fully believes,--the _decretum quidem horribile_, as Calvin
himself confessed. But is it easy to convict Mr. Gladstone of other
exaggeration than that naturally produced by uncommon ability to array
facts so as to produce conviction, which indeed is the talent of the
advocate rather than