Views and Opinions

by Ouida

The commercial world, the financial world, and the world of pleasure are beside themselves with terror. In Italy this passion of fear is being used to secure the passing of laws which will completely paralyse the press and enable the government on any pretext to carry away its foes out of the Chambers, and to confine to domicilio coatto any person, male or female, in whom it may suspect any danger to itself, or who may be merely personally disliked by the men in office.

There is no exact equivalent in English for domicilio coatto; it means the right of Government to send anyone it pleases to reside in any district it selects, for as long a period as it may choose to ordain. A journalist was the other day arrested in Rome whilst talking with a friend, his offence being the expression of republican opinions. He was ordered to reside in an obscure village where he had been born, but which he had left when in swaddling clothes; his house, family and means of livelihood were all in Rome. He had been previously domiciled in Bologna, whence he had been expelled for the same offence of opinion. The confinement of a man of this profession to an obscure and remote village is, of course, the deprivation of all his means of livelihood. There is nothing he can do in such a place; meanwhile his family must starve in Rome or wherever they go.

Another journalist, merely accused of desiring another form of government than the monarchial, was put in the felon’s dock, loaded with chains and surrounded by gendarmes, in the same place where Paolo Lega had been sentenced an hour before. A seller of alabaster statuettes and ornaments, though there was nothing against him except the suspicion of the police, was so harrassed by the latter in Civita Vecchia that he sold off all his stock at ruinous prices, and went towards Massa, his native place, hoping to dwell there in peace; he was, however, arrested at Corneto, on a vague charge of anarchism and flung into prison. These are only a few examples out of thousands. Can any better plan be devised for the conversion of industrious, harmless and prosperous persons into paupers and criminals?

It apparently seems a little thing to the violent old man who throughout 1894 has been unfortunately paramount in Italy, to uproot men from their homes and occupations and pitchfork them into some hamlet where they were born, or some barren sea-shore or desolate isle. But to a man who maintains himself by the work of either his hands or his brain, such deportation from the place where all his interests lie, is a sentence of ruin and starvation for him and his family; and if the Government gives him a meagre pittance to keep life in him (which it does not do unless he is actually a criminal or one condemned as such), all the women and children belonging to him must fall into complete misery, being deprived of his support. The English Press takes no notice of these seizures of citizens, and their condemnation to domicilio coatto, perhaps it does not comprehend what domicilio coatto means; or perhaps it thinks that it would not matter at all to a journalist, a solicitor, or a merchant, living and working in York, in Exeter, or in London, to be suddenly transported thence to some obscure hamlet in Hants, in Connaught, or in Merionethshire, and ordered never to leave that place.

There is a project for deporting all those thus uprooted and condemned in Italy to ‘domicilio coatto,’ to an island on the Red Sea, there to rot out their wretched lives in fever and famine. On a barren shore, where not a blade of grass will grow, in face of a sun-scorched sea which no vessel ever visits save once a year, the skiffs of pearl-fishers, many of the most intelligent, the most disinterested, and the most patriotic men of Italy will be left to die by inches in the festering heat, deriving what consolation they may from the reflection that whilst honest men are thus dealt with for the sin of political opinion, the men who forged, robbed and disgraced their nation, at the Banca Romana, are set at liberty and caressed and acclaimed by the populace.

‘I hope the country will draw a parallel between Tanlungo and ourselves,’ said Dr Barbato, a man of high talent and character, who has been condemned to the agonies of solitary confinement in the prisons of Perugia for political offences; he is well known as a writer; and when the famous Liberal deputy, Cavallotti, was allowed to see him the other day, he merely said that he hoped he might be allowed more air, as the confinement to his cell made him suffer from almost continual vertigo, which prevented him from pursuing any intellectual thought.

The fortresses, prisons and penitentiaries are crowded all over Italy with prisoners, many of them as worthy of respect as Dr Barbato, as innocent as Molinari, as high-spirited and noble-hearted as De Felice. Under the additions which have been made to the Code in the last parliamentary sessions these captives will be increased by thousands.

Here is the text of some articles in the draft of the new laws recently passed at Montecitorio:—

‘Whoso uses the press to excite to crime, does not merely commit an offence of the press but commits a common felony, with the aggravation of turning to a felonious purpose an instrument designed to uphold education and instruction. Whereas the destructive aim of those who would reduce existing society to the last gasp, is above all, to inoculate the army with the passion of discord and insubordination, the army which is our joy and pride by its example of patriotism, of self-denial, and of self-sacrifice, we propose, with the second article of this projected addition to the code, a punishment for this especial offence which, as the code stands at present, escapes penal chastisement. Thus we propose that any incitement to lawlessness, any propaganda leading to insubordination and rebellion, do not cease to be felonious offences because the offender employs the medium of the press instead of that of speech, and ... this form of offence should also be raised to the honour (sic) of a crime meet to be judged by the assizes whenever the offender shall use for such purpose the public press, and the greater gravity of the offence shall render it more ignoble, and shall not any longer allow it to escape under an aureole of political glory.’

It then proceeds to provide that such offence shall be punishable by a term of not less than[than] five and of not more than ten years; and it is plain with what ease this clause may be stretched to comprehend and condemn every phase of liberal opinion in any way obnoxious to the Government in power.