Recognised by the old police of Naples, tolerated and even employed to track out the crimes of those who did not belong to the order, the Camorrists acquired all the force and consideration of an institution. Men felt no shame at yielding to a terror so widespread; nor would it have been always safe to speak disparagingly of a sect whose followers sometimes lounged in royal antechambers as well as sought shelter under the portico of a church.
It has been more than once asserted that Ferdinand II. was a sworn member of the order, and that he contributed largely to its funds. Certain it is the Camorra in his reign performed all the functions of a secret police, and was the terror of all whose Liberalism made them suspected by the Government. To the Camorra, too, were always intrusted those displays of popular enthusiasm by which the King was wont to reply to the angry remonstrances of French or English envoys. The Camorra could at a moment’s notice organise a demonstration in honour of royalty which would make the monarch appear as the loved and cherished father of his people.
It was, however, by the Liberals themselves the Camorra was first introduced into political life, and Liberio Romano intrusted the defence of the capital to these men as the surest safeguard against the depredations of the disbanded soldiers of the King; and, strange to say, the hazardous experiment was a perfect success, and for several weeks Naples had no other protectors than the members of a league who combined the atrocities of Thuggee with the shameless rapine of the highwayman. The stern discipline of Piedmont would not, however, condescend to deal with such agents; and Lamarmora has waged a war, open and avowed, against the whole system of the Camorra. Hundreds of arrests have been made, and the jails are crowded with Camorrists; but men declare that all these measures are in vain—that the magistracy itself is not free from the taint: and certain it is that the system prevails largely in the army and navy, and has its followers in what is called the world of fashion and society.
The Mezzo Galantuomo is the most terrible ingredient in the constitution of a people. The man who is too bad for society but a little too good for the gallows, is a large element in this land, and it will require something more than mere statecraft to deal with him.
A Parliamentary Commission is at present engaged in the investigation of the whole question of Brigandage, and their “Report” will probably be before the world in a few days. It is very doubtful, however, if that world will be made much the wiser by their labours. There is, in fact, no mystery as to the nature of this pestilence, its source, or its progress.
It may suit the views of a party to endeavour to connect it with Bourbonism, but it would be equally true to assert that the peasant-murderers in Ireland were adherents of the Stuarts! The men who take to the mountains in the Capitanata are not politicians. They have no other “cause” at heart than their own subsistence, for which they would rather provide at the risk of their heads than by the labour of their hands. All that they know of civilisation is taxation and the conscription. In these respects the old régime was less severe than the present; neither the imposts were so heavy, nor the levies so large; not to add that, under the Bourbons, soldiers led lives of lounging indolence, and “no one was ever cruel enough to lead them against the Austrians.”
The Bourbon Government of Naples had many faults, but the Piedmontese rule has had no successes. There is that of ungeniality in the Northern temperament that renders even favours at their hands little better than burdens, and their justice has a smack of severity in it that wonderfully resembles revenge.
What may be the future fate of Southern Italy it is not easy to say; but one thing at least is certain, the influence of Piedmont has not obtained that footing there which promises to make her cause their cause, or her civilisation their civilisation. If the Bourbons governed badly, their successors do not govern at all!
LUDWIG UHLAND.
Incontestably, since the death of Goethe, Ludwig Uhland has been, at least in the hearts of the people, the Laureate of Germany. He is not a poet who took the world by storm with his earliest productions; but he has been gradually growing in favour and general acceptance, until his death is now deplored as a national affliction. He died quietly at Tübingen, the place of his birth, on the 13th of November 1862, in his seventy-sixth year, having been born on the 26th of April 1787. He was said never to have known a day’s illness until his last, which was occasioned by his attending the funeral of a friend and brother poet, Justin Kerner, in inclement weather.