Thus Panizzi replied to the first of these passages:—
“British Museum, April 24th, 1851.
“My dear Lord,
I have had the honour to receive, a few days ago, your Lordship’s letter of the fifth inst., than which no letter could have given me greater pleasure. I should have acknowledged this honour ere this, had not the malady and subsequent death of Lord Langdale, one of the best friends I have ever had, taken from me the power of fulfilling even the most agreeable duty of thanking your Lordship for the kindness in remembering my request in reference to Alberoni, and still more for that of addressing to me so excellent a letter as you have been pleased to do. I cannot give your Lordship better proof of the value I set on your communication than by respectfully and frankly laying before your Lordship my views on the various topics to which your letter draws my attention, even when those views do not unfortunately coincide with your Lordship’s. Before coming to that, however, I wish to say a few words respecting Alberoni. From Prince Castelcicala I had already received a message, for which I begged him to thank your Lordship, showing that you had not forgotten the favour I had been encouraged by your kindness to ask your Lordship. I now beg to enclose a memorandum in Italian, stating in a few words what I want from Rome, and why I want it, and if a further attempt could be made I should feel obliged; if not, we must have patience. The Emperor of Russia has actually graciously condescended to order the copies of certain documents in his Imperial Archives to be made out and sent to me, and at Rome one cannot, even through the powerful interest of your Lordship, find means of knowing whether certain papers contain any charge against a Cardinal, who was certainly innocent, who is calumniated in history, and whose innocence, it is expected, would be fully established were the contents of the papers in question known. These are mortifying comparisons, my Lord, for us both as Catholics, and for me, moreover, as an Italian. The schismatic Emperor more ready to assist in proving the innocence of a Cardinal than Rome!!! Whatever has been printed and published respecting Alberoni I have procured, and the letters mentioned by your Lordship were the documents which led me first to suppose him innocent and calumniated, a supposition which further researches have amply confirmed.
I sincerely wish Cardinal Wiseman had remained at Rome, not so much on account of the assistance which, I do not doubt, his Eminence would have lent me in the Alberoni affair, as, on account of the irreparable mischief that his coming back to England has produced....”
The reader need hardly to be reminded that the last sentence refers to the celebrated “Papal aggression” of 1851. Panizzi’s answer to Lord Shrewsbury’s curious laudation of the Government of Naples is direct and incisive:—
“I am grieved, my Lord, more than I can express, at the praises your Lordship bestows on the Government of his Sicilian Majesty. I am grieved, because the countenance of such a Government by so high an authority as your Lordship’s encourages tyranny and despotism, to which two abominations all the miseries of mankind are to be attributed. I say all advisedly; for all the follies, the wickedness, the crimes of the extreme Republicans, whom I detest as cordially as the Neapolitan Government can do, are all owing to the detestable Governments under which people live, and by which they are driven to madness. Nations are, to a very great extent (I am almost inclined to say altogether) what their spiritual and temporal rulers make them; and in the same manner that we attribute much of the unfortunate state of Ireland to the English misgovernment of old, we must be just and attribute the miseries of Sicily, her dissatisfaction, her rebellious spirit, her crimes, and her cruelties to misgovernment. It is misgovernment that makes repealers, socialists, red republicans, &c. I wish I could say that things have improved of late in the Neapolitan Government; but, my Lord, Europe has heard with horror of the iniquitous, cruel, and worse than heathenish trials and condemnations that have lately taken place against men whose innocence is as well known and clear as daylight. I should not speak so positively were it not that Mr. Gladstone, the member for the Oxford University, whose talents, whose honesty, and whose sober political principles need no praise, has just come from Naples in such a state of indignation against the Government as I should never have expected to see in such a man. He has made it his business to enquire into the truth of the charges, into the proofs brought forward to support them, into the character of the accusers, witnesses, and judges, into the conduct of the Government, into the treatment of the accused, both before and after condemnation, and he has come to the conclusion, which he has expressed to me and to others in these precise words, deliberately weighed and then repeated, the Government of Naples is the Government of Hell upon earth. These expressions from an English gentleman, uttered in English, with the accent of deep religious conviction, need no comment. Mr. Gladstone has shown me documents in support of his conviction, and they bear him out most abundantly. As a strong Conservative, and because he is a Conservative, as a Christian and as a gentleman, Mr. Gladstone (I use his own words) feels himself bound in conscience to expose iniquities which I am horrified in thinking of. He will do so in the House of Commons, as far as he can, but the details are so horrible, so revolting, so indecent that he will not be able to tell before an assembly of gentlemen the whole truth. But what he will and can say will produce the proper effect in Europe, not on Republicans only, but on statesmen of Conservative principles, who feel these principles disgraced and compromised by such abominations. No Government can be formed in England, should the present one be forced to make way, without Mr. Gladstone, who, in office as out of office, will not spare the guilty. Another man of unimpeachable character, of remarkable talents, of opposite political principles, Sir William Molesworth, fully agrees with Mr. Gladstone, and both say openly that they rejoice at the majority of the House of Commons that kept Palmerston in office last summer, when they both voted in the minority.
Your Lordship is at perfect liberty to state all this; neither Mr. Gladstone nor Sir William Molesworth shrink from the responsibility of their statements; on the contrary, they make them openly and unreservedly. I pledge my honour that I do not overstate what they say; in fact, it is IMPOSSIBLE to do so. If your Lordship, however, has any doubt, just please to write to either or both of them, and ask if I exaggerate.
And now, my Lord, allow me for the sake of humanity, whose cause I know no one has more at heart than your Lordship, for the sake of good government and religion, allow me to beseech you heartily to refrain from praising a government like that of Naples, or rather let me entreat your Lordship to use the powerful influence you must possess to open the eyes of the authorities, and induce them, for their own sake, for the sake of humanity, to behave like Christians.”
The reply to this contained in the following extract is both in form and substance a wonderful specimen of logical reasoning. We abstain from further comment on it and at once insert it, lest we detract from the enjoyment the reader must derive from its perusal:—