hope to escape; 50,000 persons were under police supervision, to be
imprisoned at will. The police often refused to set at liberty those
whom the judges had acquitted. The government had a Turkish or Russian
fear of printed matter. A wretched barber was fined 1000 ducats for
having in his possession a volume of Leopardi's poems, which was
described as 'contrary to religion and morals.'

What was meant by being an inmate of a Neapolitan prison was told by
Mr Gladstone in his two 'Letters to the Earl of Aberdeen,' which the
latter sent to Prince Schwarzenberg, the Austrian Prime Minister, with
a strong appeal to him to make known their contents to the King of the
Two Sicilies, and to use his influence in procuring a mitigation of
the abuses complained of. Prince Schwarzenberg did nothing, and it was
then that the 'Letters' were published. The impression created on
public opinion was almost without a parallel. The celebrated phrase,
'The negation of God erected into a system of government,' passing
into currency as a short history of Bourbon rule at Naples, kept
alive the wrathful feelings which the 'Letters' aroused, even when
these ceased to be read. Some small errors of fact (such as that of
stating that all the prisoners were chained, whereas an exception was
made of those undergoing life sentences) were magnified by the
partisans of Ferdinand II.; but the truth of the picture as a whole
was amply confirmed from independent sources. Baron Carlo Poerio
(condemned to nineteen years' imprisonment) _was_ chained to a common
malefactor, the chain never being undone, and producing in the end a
disease of the bone from which he never recovered. His case was that
of all the political prisoners in the same category with himself.
Luigi Settembrini and the others on whom sentence of death had been
passed, but commuted into one of life imprisonment, were not chained,
but they were put to associate with the worst thieves and assassins,
while their material surroundings accorded with the moral atmosphere
they were forced to breathe.

The Neapolitan prisoners did more than suffer for freedom; they
delivered the name of their country from being a reproach among the
nations. They showed what men the South of Italy can produce. Those
who wish to know what types of probity, honour and ideal patriotism
may grow out of that soil, which is sometimes charged with yielding
only the rank weeds planted by despotism, may read the letters and