condemned fifteen months after arrest. The
cells in which these unfortunate detenuti are
confined, are so loathsome that the surgeons
will not enter them; and the sick and half-
dead patient is made to toil upstairs to
receive medical advice. The food allowed is
also nauseous; and common felons are
crammed with political offenders at night, to
sleep as they can, in a low, dark, unventilated
room. Judge Peronte was treated even worse,
for he and two other men were kept for two
months in an underground cell, eight feet
square, and with one small grating through
which it was impossible to look out; nor were
they allowed to leave the cell for any purpose
whatever. Similarly, the Baron Porcari was
immured till his trial in a dungeon twenty-four
feet below the level of the sea. And, but a
few weeks ago, I heard Captain Acutí declare
that he had flogged uncondemned prisoners
by order of the government; yet such treatment
is expressly forbidden by law. Now, it
must be distinctly remembered that the
victims selected for this terrible persecution
are not a number of violent low-born
republicans, but the middle class, the strength of
the state; and, as few of them have independent
property, and confiscations sometimes take
place on arrest, each prisoner or refugee becomes
to his friends the centre of a circle of misery.
Out of one hundred and forty deputies who
came to the Parliament at Naples, seventy-
six were in confinement or exile in eighteen
hundred and fifty-one; and the rest only
purchase liberty by absolute submission to the
royal will. On the other hand, the lazzaroni,
the lowest class in the state, and
probably in the world, are flattered and
caressed, and were slipped like bloodhounds,
in eighteen hundred and forty-eight, on their
unfortunate countrymen. An occasional
largess, and, in great crises the promise of plunder,
suffices to repress their strength, or to
arouse it when required on the side of the
king; while those orders whose intelligence
and moral force the government not unnaturally
dreads, are specially thinned out and
intimidated. A system like this is evidently
suicidal, but it is, nevertheless, one which
calls for the serious attention of all who
have the power to abolish or restrain its
excesses.

The prisoner is next brought before his
judges; and here we may shortly describe
the Neapolitan Bench. In the trial just
concluded at Naples, the judges are said to have
behaved more kindly and independently than
usual. But, on the whole, the courts are as
servile and untrustworthy as when Mr. Gladstone
attended them. English judges are models
of learning and integrity, selected from the
highest ranks of the bar. Neapolitan judges, on
the contrary, are under-paid, of an inferior grade
of the bar, and hold office during the royal
pleasure. Thus, they are mere creatures of
the court; and in several instances have
been summarily dismissed for presuming to
acquit men whom the government had
accused. Navarro, who was President at
Poerio's trial, induced the other judges by
such threat to convict the ex-minister and
his fellow-prisoners, though one of the
charges against them was conspiring to kill
Navarro himself; a fact which in any other
country would have prevented him from
acting at their trial as chief judge. The
same man also, when a witness was suspected
of not even knowing by sight the prisoner he
was accusing, and was therefore asked by the
counsel to identify him, affecting not to hear
the question, called out, "Signor Nisco, stand
up! the court has a question to ask you;"
and by this convenient interference rendered
the desired proof of the witness's perjury
impossible. On another occasion, the serious
illness of a political prisoner suspended the
sittings of the court for some days; but
Navarro compelled the medical attendants to
certify his convalescence, and the poor
creature himself to be carried on a chair into
court, where he was brow-beaten and accused
of feigning to be ill, until the surgeons
insisted on the immediate danger to his life
unless speedily removed to his cell. In a
few days he was laid in his grave. Finally,
special courts are held for the sake of
dispatch; and on such occasion, many forms
most valuable to a prisoner are dispensed
with. This happened in the instance of
Poerio; and thus about forty persons were
deprived of valuable aids for the sake of the
expedition, after having been eighteen
months and upwards awaiting their trial.

Carlo Poerio is the son of a distinguished
lawyer, an accomplished man, and of
unblemished character. Under the constitution
he was a minister of the crown, enjoying the
king's full confidence, his advice being asked
even after his resignation. His principles
were certainly not more liberal than those of
Lord John Russell; but when the king
determined to over-ride the constitution, it was
necessary to get rid of him. In July, eighteen
hundred and forty-nine, therefore, an anonymous
letter warned him to fly; which, if he
had done, it would have been taken at once
as an acknowledgment of guilt. He remained
at his house, and next day was arrested. His
offence was not told him, as it should legally
have been, although, in a week's time, he was
brought up for examination. A letter was
put into his hand, alleged to have been
received by him from the Marquis Dragonetti,
and containing of course the most treasonable
expressions. The marquis is an accomplished
man; but, in this letter, had been guilty of
mis-spelling and of ungrammatical sentences.
Besides, he had given all his names and titles
in full, and committed the strange imprudence
of sending his treasonable document by the
ordinary post. To confirm suspicion of forgery,
some real letters of his were found among
Poerio's papers, and, on being compared with
the seditious letter, they proved it to be a