In the route to the hospital, in the occurrences there, as well as in the account of the outrage, the graphic details by the generous-hearted Giovanni Pini bring the reader in presence of the cruel and bloody scene. While ill in hospital, pressed by professing friends, the British chargé d’affaires among them, to authorise proceedings in the Tuscan law courts, Mr. E. Mather firmly refused his sanction. He at once elevated the question to its right position by an appeal to the representative of his country for the redress of an injury done to a British subject, and for the future protection of British subjects, to be redressed by the Tuscan government to the satisfaction of that of Britain, without reference to his own private wrong. His young brother, before the day had closed, sought out Mr. Scarlett, the British chargé d’affaires, and also Prince Lichtenstein, the Austrian commander-in-chief, taking with him two witnesses to testify to the exactitude of his statement, and to them he poured out in clear and emphatic language the story of the outrage committed. The conduct of these two young Englishmen, without friends 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 parliament. We extract a portion of the letter:—
“Now, my lord, you will do me the favour to remember, that a British subject, my son, was attacked in Florence by two armed Austrian officers, receiving the most ‘unmerited and brutal treatment,’ as your lordship has expressed it; that he was cut down by one of them, left in his own blood, his life in danger for a length of time, and his health perhaps for ever injured; and all this without any provocation, any offence, as it has been proved by evidence not to be controverted, of the most respectable witnesses,—people the subjects of the state whose officers had so acted,—yet for all this no real redress has been obtained; that officer is still at large, and remains unpunished....
“Whatever personal reparation you might deem proper to demand, which I conceded with regret, to your lordship’s express commands (as I foresaw a probable misapplication of such concession), was, as you know, to give place to public honour.
“You now inform me that Prince Schwarzenberg, the late prime-minister of Austria, ‘prior to his death had addressed a note to her majesty’s government expressing his great regret at the occurrence, and at the act of the Austrian officers.’ The extent of such regret may be estimated by this:—the Austrian officer, who stained the honour of the Austrian army by his bloodthirsty and cowardly act, has been allowed to go free and unpunished, and his conduct has been approved, at least defended, by Prince Schwarzenberg’s lieutenant, the Austrian commander-in-chief in Tuscany, Prince Lichtenstein. This man I frequently saw, in all the pride of military array and overbearing insolence, in the streets of Florence, a public example to his brother officers, and the world, of the impunity with which British subjects may be treated, and the evidence of the low estimation of his superiors for British honour, and British power. This all the while that British statesmen and diplomatists were making urgent demands for redress, your lordship among the number.... Has it been obtained?...
“The patriotic manner in which I have repeatedly expressed myself in this unfortunate affair, as you are pleased to observe, has originated in feelings that induce me now to express the pain which I feel that this crime is sought to be compromised, and the indignation, as far as I am concerned, with which I reject the offer of the Tuscan government, and any participation in such proceedings.
“I will not pretend to be a judge of what is due to the honour of England, but I know what is due to my own.”
The effect of this note was that Lord Malmesbury threw the responsibility on Mr. Scarlett, his representative in Tuscany, and annulled his proceedings. He then sent out Sir Henry Bulwer to endeavour to arrange the affair, or to withdraw the embassy from Florence. A sort of apology was given by the court of Florence for the outrage, and a responsibility was assumed by it for the future, in case of injury to British subjects—as if the law of nations had not already secured it. No redress or punishment for the outrage ever followed Sir Henry’s mission. He might, for all its purposes, have as well remained in England. The Mathers refused to the last the money compensation, and to this hour, in this infamous matter, the guilty officer has never met his just punishment, nor public honour been satisfied. It is known that had the course been pursued which the father and sons adopted, and justice been satisfied, any personal compensation was to have gone chiefly to the public hospital of Florence, and for other public institutions of that refined capital, in which those Englishmen had received so much kindness and sympathy when it was personally dangerous to yield it, in the presence of their barbarous Croat invaders. Mr. Erskine Mather is now a scientific British officer, and bears amidst the ranks of England’s defenders the visible scar of the wound so treacherously and wantonly inflicted upon him because he was an Englishman: a remembrance to every Englishman of how little he may rely upon the defence of his own honour, or the honour of his country in his person, while the diplomacy of England is in the hands of men who sympathise with foreign despotism, or find luxurious and lucrative appointments at foreign courts under the ostensible duty of watching over the interests of their country.
The remaining features of English affairs, in relation to foreign nations, were of too little interest to require notice in these pages.