There is not even the gloss of affected legality in the countless arrests which have filled to overflowing the prisons of Italy. The charges by which these arrests are excused are so wide that they are a net into which all fish, big and little, may be swept. The imputation of ‘inciting to hatred between the classes’ is so vague that it may include almost any expression of social or political opinion. It is an accusation under which almost every great writer, thinker or philosopher would be liable to arrest, and under which Jesus Christ and Jean Jacques Rousseau, Garibaldi and John Milton, Washington and Brahma, Tolstoï[Tolstoï] and St Paul would be all alike condemned as criminals.
Equally vague is the companion accusation of inciting to civil war. As I pointed out in my article of last month, Italy owes her present existence entirely to civil war. Civil war may be a dread calamity, but it may be also an heroic remedy for ills far greater than itself. What is called authority in Italy is so corrupt in itself that it cannot command the respect of men, and has no title to demand their obedience. The creator itself of civil war and disturbance, such authority becomes ridiculous when draping itself in the toga of an intangible dignity. Moreover, it is now incarnated in the person of a single unscrupulous opportunist. Why should the nation respect either his name or his measures? The King of Italy, always servilely copying Germany, has decreed the name and measures of the lawyer Crispi sacred, as Germany has sent to prison many writers and printers for having expressed opinions hostile to the acts or speeches of German public men. Under the state called piccolo stato d’assedio military tribunals judge civil offences, or what are considered offences, and pass sentences of imprisonment varying in duration from six months to thirty years. The infamous sentence of twenty-three years’ imprisonment, of which three are to be passed in solitary confinement, passed on the young advocate Molinari, for what is really no more than an offence of opinions, has forced a cry of surprise and disgust even from the German press. The monstrous iniquity of this condemnation has made even the blind and timid worm of Italian public feeling turn writhing under the iron heel which is crushing it, and this individual sentence is to be carried for appeal into the civil courts, where it is fervently to be hoped it may be altered if not cancelled.[[G]] Hundreds of brutal sentences have been passed for which there is no hope or chance of appeal, and vast numbers of men, in the flower of youth or the prime of manhood, are being flung into the hell of Italian prisons, there to be left to rot away in unseen and unpitied suffering, till death releases them or insanity seizes them. Insanity comes quickly in such torture as Italian prison-life is to its victims.
A journal called L’Italia del Popolo contained a spirited and eloquent article proving that Crispi was neither courageous nor honest, as a Socialist deputy had in a moment of flattery called him: this perfectly legitimate and temperate article caused the confiscation of the paper! ‘If Crispi be Almighty God, let us know it!’ said the Secolo of Milan, a courageous and well-written daily newspaper which has itself been frequently confiscated for telling the truth.
As specimens of other sentences passed in the month of February of the present year, take the following examples:
In Siena the proprietor of the journal Martinello del Calle was condemned to thirty-five days of prison for having called the deputy Piccarti ‘violent and grotesque.’
The journal Italia del Popolo was seized because it contained quotations from the Memoirs of Kossuth.
The Secolo of Milan was seized for protesting against the condemnation to twenty years’ imprisonment of the soldier Lombardino, although he had completely proved his innocence of the offence attributed to him.
The barber, Vittorio Catani, having been heard, in the Piazza S. Spirito of Florence, to say that the revolts in Sicily were due to hunger and distress, was condemned to three months’ imprisonment and fifty francs fine.
At San Giuseppe, in Sicily, an old peasant surrendered one gun; confessed to having a better one, and showed where he had put it; he was sentenced to a year’s imprisonment.
A day-labourer, Stefano Grosso, went to visit his father who was dying; a revolver being found in the cottage, during his visit, he was condemned to six months of prison for owning it, although there was no proof of his ownership.