had on
his side in Sicily the Maffia, just as in Naples the Liberals were
supported by the Camorra. This alliance with the Camorra is not even
yet quite dissolved, as the occurrences in Naples at the time of the
recent disturbances in the Italian Parliament have shown, nor will
matters probably improve. Criminals usually take a large share in the
initial stages of insurrections and revolutions, for at a time when
the weak and undecided are still hesitating, the impulsive force of
abnormal and unhealthy natures preponderates, and their example calls
forth epidemics of excesses.

[1] Lombroso, _Die Anarchisten_, p. 33. Hamburg, 1896.

[2] Cataline as a follower of Cicero is a new version of the
supposed facts.--TRANS.

"Chenn, in his remarks upon revolutionary movements in France before
1848, has shown that political passion gradually degenerated into
unconcealed criminal attempts; thus the precursors of Anarchism at
that time had for leader a certain Coffirean, who finally became a
raving Communist, and exalted thieving into a socio-political
principle, plundered the merchants with the aid of his adherents,
because in his opinion they cheated their customers; by thus doing
they believed they were only making perfectly justifiable reprisals,
and at the same time converting the plundered ones into discontented
men who would join the revolutionary cause. This group also occupied
themselves in the manufacture of forged bank notes, which led in 1847
to their being discovered and severely punished after the real
Republicans had disowned them. In England at the time of the
conspiracies against Cromwell, bands of robbers collected in the
neighbourhood of London, and the number of thieves increased; the
robber-bands assumed a political colouring and asked those whom they
attacked whether they had sworn an oath of fidelity to the Republic,
and according to their answer they let them go or robbed and
ill-treated them. Companies of soldiers had to be sent to repress
them, nor were the soldiers always victorious. Hordes of vagabonds,
bands of robbers, and societies of thieves in unheard-of numbers also
appeared as forerunners of the French Revolution. Mercier states that
in 1789 an army of 10,000 vagabonds gradually approached Paris and
penetrated into the city; these were the rabble that attended the
wholesale executions during the Reign of Terror and later took part in
the fusilades at Toulon and the wholesale drown