“June 21st, 1851.
“My dear Panizzi,
You speak of the scanty justice done here to the cause of Italy. No doubt it is true, but something must be allowed for the imperfection of all organs contrived by men. Parliament fails, sometimes egregiously, in its duty to England. I have often thought it impenetrably hardened in injustice when the question has been about some acts of our own to Foreign Powers or countries. I am then the less surprised that it has little time or thought for Italy, not having enough for its own immediate duties, and of course preferring, not perhaps without a tinge of selfishness, what lies nearest home. I do, however, most deeply grieve over the silence of Parliament about the expedition to Rome in 1849. That was a great opportunity and should not have been missed. It was missed, out of a misplaced regard to democracy, the sham democracy of France.
I am, however, certain as matter of fact that the Italian habit of preaching unity and nationality in preference to showing grievance, produces a revulsion here; for if there are two things on earth that John Bull hates, they are an abstract proposition or idea and the Pope....
Most sincerely yours,
W. E. Gladstone.”
To speak of Lord Shrewsbury as an honourable, high-minded man—a gentleman in the strictest sense of the term, who honestly espoused the worse, inasmuch as he conscientiously believed it to be the better cause—would be almost offering an insult to his memory. An English Roman Catholic of the older sort, he was religiously (though perhaps unconsciously) rather than politically biassed in favour of the peculiar manner of Government obtaining in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Many members of that great Church to which he belonged will not hold her disparaged by the assertion that, in her relations to man, there are two great points which she chiefly regards. First, that men shall always be kept in due subjection to the powers that be in both Church and State, and secondly that they shall, while in that state of subjection, be rendered by their rulers as comfortable and contented as possible under the circumstances. A third object, which Christians are apt to look on as of some little importance—that men should be in mind so developed as to deem themselves of some account, both as individuals and as members of the State—she regards but distantly, if at all. Considering Lord Shrewsbury’s mental constitution, his view of the matters around him is in no wise surprising; but let the first well-authenticated case of anything approaching to tyranny and oppression reach his ears, and his humanity and indignation are at once apparent. Of this he shall be his own witness. Nor is his feeling of generosity lessened by the fact that, in protesting against the treatment awarded to the unhappy Poerio by the best of all possible governments, he accuses the sufferer of political crimes of the deepest dye, and brings accusations against him, the falsehood of which the most superficial enquiry would have demonstrated. Lord Shrewsbury confined himself not to expressions of sympathy only; he forthwith set himself heartily to bring what personal influence he possessed to bear towards procuring alleviation of the sufferings of the hapless criminal:—
“Palermo, June 26th, 1851.
“It was this day’s post that brought me your favour of the 4th. I cannot say how distressed I am at what you tell me of the fate of poor Poerio, for however guilty the man may be, his punishment is barbarous, inhuman, and unchristian. I cannot doubt what Mr. Gladstone saw. I really had no idea that, in these times, old habits and ways of thinking in these matters had still prevailed in Naples, to the exclusion of those more becoming, polite, and enlightened methods of dealing with State criminals. Our worthy Chief Governor is not yet returned from his tour, but I hope to see him before our next post leaves, and shall not fail to press this point upon him; and too happy shall I be to be able to report that the rigors of Poerio’s confinement have been already mitigated. Though I know full well that no man is more capable of discriminating between truth and falsehood than Mr. Gladstone, still I have heard so much of Poerio’s criminality as to leave no reasonable doubt upon my mind that, whatever defects there may have been in the evidence upon which he was convicted, there is no question of his guilt. He was, I think, an exile for his conduct in ’30, lived at Paris on terms of intimacy with Mazzini, and there published several Revolutionary Pamphlets, in fine, the whole Ministry, of which he formed a part, Dragonetti’s, perhaps, excepted, were noted and proved Republicans, such as Pepe and Saliceti. How, then, can any one doubt their determination to dethrone the King by means of the Constituent Assembly into which they were determined to transform the new Chamber, in May, ’48? No one at Naples doubted it....
“June 29th.