DIPLOMATIC DISPUTE WITH AUSTRIA AND TUSCANY, ARISING FROM AN OUTRAGE UPON A YOUNG ENGLISH GENTLEMAN AT FLORENCE.
It was early in January, 1852, that the tidings arrived in England of one of the most unprovoked and barbarous outrages ever perpetrated upon one of her sons, but the event itself occurred in 1851. The events of this chapter relate to that year, but as the transactions at Florence, in which England suffered so much humiliation, extended into 1852, it is proper the narrative should also extend into that year, so far as they are concerned.
It appears that a young English gentleman, Mr. Erskine Mather, about nineteen years of age, and his younger brother, Mr. Thomas M. Mather, about sixteen, had been for some time in Paris, where their parents had placed them to promote their education. The elder brother being delicate, had been ordered south as the winter approached. In this search after health they had a desire, at the same time, to acquire in the country a knowledge of the language of Italy, and of the art for which that land is celebrated. They had already spent two or three months at Nice, and in November had moved down to Genoa, and then on to Florence, where they meant to reside for the winter; at which place the injury and insult were inflicted. On the 29th of December Earl Granville, the foreign minister of England, in writing to the Honourable P. C. Scarlett, the charge d’affaires at Florence, thus speaks of these young Englishmen, and the outrage:*—
* From No. 3 Despatch, in Official Documents.
“The story of the young men is so candidly told, and they appear, from the tenor of another letter which has been shown to me, to be such well-conditioned and inoffensive persons, that I cannot question the truth of their statement, or entertain any doubt that a cowardly and cruel injury has been inflicted on the elder of them.” The following are the facts of the case as detailed by the young gentleman himself to M. Salvagnoli, the distinguished Tuscan lawyer, and which were afterwards confirmed, in every point, by the evidence of Italian and French witnesses who saw the deed committed.