The journals of the rival parties and the placards of the rival parties are not going the way to mend matters. Il Credente Cattolico comes out every day with a black band round it, and it prints on its title-page ‘Il Sangue di Rossi invoca Giustizia'—the blood of Rossi calls for justice. It also pleasantly describes the Liberals as the ‘congrega di Satana'—the congregation of Satan. La Liberta, after a terrific onslaught, calls attention ‘alle infami manovre Radicali,’ and I count the words ‘infamy’ and ‘infamous’ fourteen times on one page. Il Dovere, a Radical sheet, hurls every awful adjective in the Italian language at the Conservative party, and finishes up with a fit of violent hysterics. The Gazette Ticinese can find no heading to its fierce wrath at the result of Sunday’s election, and so contents itself with an inarticulate ‘!?!’ while another journal declares the vote to be valueless, and writes in huge letters that the Conservative majority is an iniquity, and cries aloud in mighty wrath that 12,066 Liberals return only 35 Deputies to the Grand Council, while 12,833 Ultramontanes return 77. Both sides call each other assassins, and both sides call each other thieves, and the Conservative journals always speak of the Liberals as ‘the party of brigands,’ and it is evident that in Ticino a Republican form of government has not been productive of liberty or equality, and most decidedly not of fraternity.
The placards on the walls are all couched in fiery language, with the exception of Colonel Kunzli’s proclamation, which simply forbids any public meeting to be held in any place in Ticino. ‘Proibisco ogni assemblia populare in tutto il Cantone Ticino.’ (What do you think of that in a Republic, my Trafalgar Square friends?) The Liberal addresses al Popolo Ticinese denounce the Conservatives as ruffians, liars, slanderers, thieves, and oppressors; and a proclamation which is posted up all over the walls of Bellinzona itself, within a few feet of the Government House, and signed by ‘The Liberal Committee in Milan,’ calls upon the people to drive out a Government which for years has tyrannized over the country and been guilty of intolerance, assassination, the liberation of the guilty, the condemnation of the innocent, persecution, swindling, extortion, robbery, ‘and all possible subdivisions of these and other iniquities.’ I have never read as much strong language in my whole life as I have been compelled to peruse during the last fortnight in Ticino.
To-day (Wednesday) we have had another ‘incident’ in Lugano. This morning a great hulking fellow told a little boy of twelve to go and insult the sentries on duty at the Municipio. The lad, nothing loath, trotted off and called the sentries all the bad names he knew. One sentry ordered him off. The boy, encouraged by some roughs, refused to go, whereupon the sentry, like an idiot, prodded him playfully in the arm with his bayonet.
Soldiers and populace alike seem to have lost their heads, and now are thirsting for each other’s gore. A man in a café told me that if it went on they would fire at the soldiers from the windows. Good business this. O Liberty! Liberty! what crimes, etc.
That the military fear a rising is certain. When the train came in from Milan on Tuesday a guard of soldiers with fixed bayonets was posted at every entrance. A number of agitators from Milan were expected to come to the aid of the Luganese. ‘My God!’ exclaimed the station-master, when I asked him what the armed force at the station meant, ‘one would think we were all murderers here.’
The Lucerne and Berne soldiers will be heartily glad to get back home. They have been badly treated in Ticino, where, although Swiss, and the real Swiss, they are looked upon as foreigners. The arrangements made for their accommodation have not increased the pleasure of their stay. Some of them have had to sleep and live in a church, lying down at night on straw spread about on the floor. The accommodation provided for the others is even worse, being at a disused seminary, where they have absolutely had no water-supply at all, and have had to go down to the lake to wash.
Let us turn from the revolution to more pleasant matters. To-day is market-day in Lugano. The greatest crowd is round a man who is displaying on a pole an enormous and highly-coloured picture of a man dripping with blood, who is stabbing a very décolletée lady in blue silk. The banner is labelled in huge letters, ‘Jack, l’Assassino di Londra! Lo Sventratore di Donne!’ The man is doing a roaring trade in a penny book which is no less than the life and adventures of our old friend Jack the Ripper.
The country people who have come from the mountains and the valleys are positively trampling each other down in their eagerness to purchase copies, and presently the vendor raises his price from a penny to twopence. What a reputation has Jack made for himself! All over the world he is famous. Gladstone is not in the same street with him as a European celebrity. Such is fame!
The women of Ticino are surely the hardest worked women in the world. In the lower classes they are simply beasts of burden. The little girl of twelve and the old woman of eighty carry huge loads everywhere, while the boys and the men carry nothing. I meet old women toiling up the great mountains with huge baskets on their backs. In these baskets they carry not only goods, but animals. I have seen a woman toiling along with a big calf in the basket on her back and a great bundle of faggots under her arm. In the town it is the same. All the heavy porterage is done by the women. At one of the steamboat piers yesterday it was a woman who came for the luggage, and she positively reeled under the weight of a Saratoga trunk, while the men sat with their hands in their pockets and smoked cigars.
From this same steamer there landed a couple of men of the peasant class. Their wives, with baskets on their backs, were waiting for them. The men had a number of packages with them. These they instantly loaded on to their wives, and then, lighting their cigars, strolled off up the mountain path that led to their village. And behind them at a long distance, heavily laden, toiled their beasts of burden—their wives.