If we have heard much of the personal unpopularity of the Piedmontese in Southern Italy, it is a theme which cannot be exaggerated. There is not, perhaps, throughout Europe a people who have less in common than the sub-Alpine and the South Italian. If Garibaldi and his followers came as liberators, the Piedmontese entered Naples as conquerors. The Garibaldians won all the suffrages of a people who loved their free-and-easy manners, their indiscipline, that “disinvoltura” so dear to the Italian heart;—their very rags had a charm for them. The rigid, stiff, unbending Piedmontese, almost unintelligible in speech and repulsive in look, were the very reverse of all this. Naples was gay, animated, and happy under the sway of the same lawless band of red-shirted adventurers, but she felt crushed and trampled down by the regular legions of the King.
In the great offices of the State, and in the Prefectures, it was easy enough for the Piedmontese to appoint their own partisans; but how do this throughout the rural districts, the small towns, and the villages? In these the choice lay between a Royalist—that is, a Bourbonist—and a Mazzinian. If you would not accept a follower of the late King, you must take one who disowned sympathies with all royalty. The Syndics and “Maires” of the smaller cities have been almost to a man the enemies of the Northern Italian. It is through these all the difficulties of propagating “union” sentiments have been experienced. It is by their lukewarmness, if not something worse, that Brigandage is able still to hold its ground, not so much because they are well affected to the Bourbons, or that they cherish sentiments of Mazzinianism, but simply that they disliked Northern Italy, nor could any rule be so distasteful to them as that which came from that quarter. That the French occupation of Rome has tended to maintain and support Brigandage cannot for a moment be disputed. The policy of France, from the very hour of the treaty of Villafranca, has been to perpetuate the difficulties of Italian rule—to exhibit the country in a state of permanent disorder, and the people unquiet, dissatisfied, and unruly—to reduce the peninsula to that condition, in fact, in which not only would the occupation of Rome be treated as a measure of security to Europe at large, but the graver question urged whether a more extended occupation of territory might not be practicable and possible.
If Garibaldi’s expedition had not terminated so abruptly at Aspromonte, it is well known the French would have occupied Naples. When they would have left it again, it is not so easy to say. It is clear enough then to see, how little soever the French may like that Brigandage that now devastates the South, they are not averse to the distress and trouble it occasions to the Italian Government, all whose ambitions have been assumed as so many menaces against France. Had you been content with the territory we won for you—had you remained satisfied with a kingdom of six millions, who spoke your own language, inherited your own traditions, and enjoyed your own sympathies, you might have had peace and prosperity, say the oracles of the Tuileries; but you would be a great nation, and you are paying the penalty. “This comes of listening to England, who never aided you, instead of trusting to us who shed our blood in your cause.”
France never has consented to a united Italy; whether she may yet do so is, however improbable, still possible; one thing is, however, clear—until she does give this consent, not in mere diplomatic correspondence, but in heart and wish, the southern provinces of the peninsula will remain unconquered territories, requiring the presence of a large force, and even with that defying the power of the Government to reduce them to obedience.
Brigandage is but the open expression of a discontent which exists in every class and every condition in the districts it pervades. It is the assertion of the Catholic for the Pope, of the Royalist for the Bourbon, of the Revolutionist against a discipline, and last of all, of the Southern Italian against being ruled by that Northern race whose intelligence he despises, and for whose real qualities of manliness he has neither a measure nor a respect.
One word as to the Camorra before we conclude: and first of all what is this Camorra of which men talk darkly and in whispers, and whose very syllables are suppressed while the servants are in the room? The Camorra is an organised blackmail, which, extending its exactions to every trade and industry, carries the penalties of resistance to its edicts even to death.
The Camorra has its agents everywhere. On the Mole, where the boatman hands over the tenth of the fare the passenger has just paid him—at the door of the hotel, where the porter counts out his gains and gives over his tithe—at the great restaurant, at the theatre, at the gaming-table—some one is sure to present himself as the emissary of this dreaded society, and in the simple words, “for the Camorra,” indicate a demand that none have courage to resist.
The jails are, however, the great scenes for the exercise of this system. There the Camorra reigns supreme. In the old Bourbon days the whole discipline of the prisons was maintained by the Camorristi, who demanded from each prisoner as he entered the usual fees of the place. The oil for the lamp in honour of the Madonna had to be paid for, then came a sort of fee for initiation, after which came others in the shape of taxes on the income of the prisoner and his supposed means, with imposts upon leave to smoke, to drink, or to gamble. His incomings too were taxed, and a strict account demanded of all his gains, from which the tenth was rigidly subtracted. To resist the imposts was to provoke a quarrel, not unfrequently ending fatally; for the Camorristi ruled by terror, and well knew all the importance of maintaining their “prestige.”
The revenues of the Camorra, amounting to sums almost incredibly large, are each week handed over to the treasurer of the district, and distributed afterwards to the followers of the order by the Capo di Camorra, according to the rank and services of each, any concealment or malversation of funds being punished with death. The society itself not only professes to protect those who belong to it, but to extend its influence over all who obey its edicts; and thus the poor creature who sells his fruit at the corner of the street sees his wares under the safeguard of one of these mysterious figures, who glide about here and there, half in listlessness, and whose dress may vary from the patched rags of almost mendicancy to the fashionable attire of a man of rank and condition.
In the cafés where men sit at chess and dominoes, the Camorrist appears, and with his well-known whisper demands his toll. In vain to declare that the play is not for money; it is for the privilege to play at all that his demand is now made. The newly appointed clerk in a public office, the secretary to the minister, it is said, have been applied to, and have not dared to dispute a claim which would be settled otherwise by the knife.