ends in a strange city, relying
on their sense of right, and sustained by their own firmness and
courage, was truly heroic. Their father, one of the most patriotic and
useful public men in the north of England, warmly approved of
their course of conduct, and pursued their views for redress. It is
humiliating to our country to write what historical truth compels us
to admit, that their efforts were met by the chicanery of diplomacy and
treachery on the part of British officials, which have left behind an
unpleasant impression of incapacity and want of principle, when
the purest honour, and a high sense of national justice should have
exclusively prevailed. They were well sustained, however, in their
course by the generous sympathy of the people of Florence, and at home
by the warmest feelings of their countrymen. As an eloquent public
writer earnestly expressed himself in reference to their conduct, and
that of the Earl of Malmesbury, the successor to Earl Granville:--"Both
father and sons have nobly vindicated themselves as Englishmen; it was
only when the national honour was confided to the minister, that the
national honour was degraded by the spirit of the Jew pedlar." After
several weeks' delay in Florence, the Mathers removed from that city to
Genoa, where the father leaving his sons in safety, and for the purpose
of the better recovery of the eldest, himself returned to England, to
press the case personally upon the foreign minister of England. His
first demand was punishment of the officer who had committed what Lord
Granville called, "a cruel and cowardly outrage," and then, but not
without the first was granted, compensation to the injured youth by
the government under whoso jurisdiction the culprit acted. The Earl of
Malmesbury, then foreign minister (the Whigs having left office), after
several imperfect and ineffectual attempts for the better security of
his countrymen abroad, by the signal punishment of the Austrian officer,
wrote to Mr. Mather, senior, by his undersecretary, a letter, on the
24th of May, 1852, in very pitiable terms, to the effect that no national
redress had been obtained; but that one thousand francesconi had been
placed to the credit of his son, by the Tuscan government, for the
injury which he had sustained. Mr. Mather's answer, with his indignant
refusal of the acceptance of such redress, received high eulogies from
the public writers of the day, and brought on debates in both houses of