But round that symbol were twined the Bourbon lilies and the name of Francesco II., and about it were gathered Clericals, Federalists, Autonomists, as well as the more violent section of the Republicans. The language spoken in those days smacked of all these dialects in turn; the men who figured in the movement were of all those shades of opinion; and in fact Hope brought together to blow the coals men of the most discordant views, who agreed only in their desire to upset the Italian monarchy under the House of Savoy.

'No wonder that they chose to hide this harlequin guise under the cloak of republicanism, the most incomprehensible of all things to the Sicilian lower class, and the most impossible of all governments in Sicily. The cloak would easily have been cast off, when success had been achieved, and the strongest party would then have seized the spoil.'-Anarchia di Palermo, &c.

The rumours of a revolution at hand, that were diffused among the people for some time before the event, occasionally took a very precise shape. A friend of ours, about a week before the disaster, was consulted by a family as to what had been told them by a countryman who supplied them with garden-stuff. Now ladies,' he had said, 'lay in your supplies for a week at least, for they are going to have four days of republic, and then Francesco will come back.' This is a small incident, but very significant, and is only a sample we are told of many of the same kind.

The Bourbonist masqueraders however would never have put on the republican domino, had there not been a party in Sicily, and especially in Palermo, for which this garb had a charm, and some at least of that party took it in all seriousness. Of that party were those who plunged into the fray with the cry of 'Da cosa nasce cosa ;'* and here we may add an anecdote from the experience of the same Sicilian friend. Some days after the revolt was suppressed, but before the after-swell had subsided, he met an elderly man who had been a life-long worshipper of the Republic, and who showed strong resentment in reading the censures heaped on the Palermo movement by the press of Naples and Genoa, breaking out in these words: 'Look there

'This saying of Mazzini-" one thing begets another"-which was in the mouths of the engineers of the movement, is pregnant with all its author's delusions. One revolutionary fire kindles another when the material of revolution is everywhere ready; but only the profoundest blindness could fancy a new revolution possible in Italy at the very time when she is in the full development of that Great Revolution which is setting her in her place among the nations. Such blindness may well be left to him who from first to last has been able to find no mission for himself in the Italian cause other than that of demoralising it and plunging it into needless difficulties.'—Anarchia di Palermo, &c.

now!

now! Ten years more lost! How ready they are to revile Palermo after leaving it in the lurch. They pretended that if Palermo would give the signal, they would be ready to answer it. If Naples and Genoa had risen like Palermo, as was settled, a pretty figure the heroes of Custozza and Lissa would have cut! Ten years lost! Ten years more!' Perhaps the old man was only raving, but he spoke in all earnestness.

The great mass of the Liberal parties, and the Italian Government at the head of them, hastened to point to the Clerical party as the prime movers of the plot. It is a pity that they did not proceed with more circumspection in this matter, in which it is to be feared their precipitancy has only raised a fog about the real truth. There can be little doubt however that some part of the Clericals had a share in the movement, and a larger part sympathised with it. The sympathy is perhaps not much to be wondered at if we consider the way in which the Clergy have been habitually handled by the Italian press, and, what is of more moment, by the Italian Government.

It is an undoubted fact that the Sicilian clergy, both secular and regular, and even the nuns, contributed no despicable aid to the movements which expelled the Bourbons; and the clerical order in the island generally hailed Victor Emanuel with acclamation. The growth of the split with Rome has no doubt materially tended to a change. But the way in which the clergy have been treated by the Government has powerfully aided in extinguishing every spark of liberal sentiment among them :

'The religious orders' (it is a Catholic who speaks, a sincere but liberal one), 'have roots deeply entwined in the structure of Catholic society as it exists in Italy, but more particularly in Sicily; and whilst Italy remains Catholic, the clergy must always continue to be an important social element. In rooting up the orders so violently as has been done, and in treating the clergy on all occasions with contempt and dislike, whilst the Government all the while professes its conviction that Italy is to remain Catholic, it is sowing moral disorganisation. The powers that be have treated the clergy as enemics; it is not surprising that the clergy regard them in turn as such. And thus, instead of having a question with the Church that might be settled with equity, prudence, and magnanimity, they have brought it to be a question of force; and a specimen of the fruits they have tasted in the September Week of Palermo.'-Anarchia di Palermo, &c.

Bourbonism was a chief element in the movement; for as on

The writer quoted is not opposing the abolition of the convents, but the precipitation with which that measure has been carried out.

one

ne side common cause has been made between the expulsion of the Bourbons and the summary extinction of the religious corporations, so on the other side the conservation of the monasteries has allied itself to the restoration of the Bourbons; though in Sicily, in former days, the Bourbons could scarcely claim to have a party even among the priesthood. The hatred of the dynasty was in fact so great and general that it is hard to imagine a more bitter reproach to the King's Government than that it should have found itself put in the balance with them for one

moment.

The Autonomists also had their share; and the fanatics of this faction were perhaps the most hopeful of success, for their sentiment has still deep roots in Sicily; it is the bond of various parties hostile to the Government, and is the element that threatens most danger to the future of the island, though it is that which the ruling powers have cared least to understand. Even sage professors were to be found in Palermo in the middle of those seven inglorious days, whose hearts beat high when anarchy seemed to be getting the upper hand, and who busied themselves in parcelling out Italy, devising Federal Diets, restoring old sovereignties and inventing new ones, in short, preparing the regeneration of the world through their pet

nostrum.

The menstruum that held all these elements in noxious solution, the real force from which they derived this power of mischief was that diffused popular dissatisfaction which, pushed to extremity in days of old Mosse Palermo a gridar Mora! Mora!' at a later date effected the forfeiture of the Bourbons, and yet again drove away that dynasty once for all, and joined with all Italy in calling Victor Emanuel to the throne. Now, though the dissatisfaction has been far from reaching the old pitch, and the late émeute has in fact met with nothing but condemnation, nobody can say that the popular mind is in any state approaching to that content which was looked for, even by reasonable people, from the new state of things. Some will have it that the prevailing ill-humour in Palermo is only that of an ill-conditioned people who will not understand that liberty must be paid for with great sacrifices. There is an amount of truth in this, no doubt. Expectations from the revolution of immediate wellbeing were extravagant; whilst it is true that measures such as the conscription, the reduction of public establishments, the introduction and increasing weight of direct taxation, the inconvertible paper currency, the forced loan, and the abolition of the religious corporations, were inevitable in the eventual universality of their application, though they have been felt Vol. 122.-No. 243.

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more severely in Sicily than elsewhere, from the poverty and ignorance of the population, and the fact that the island had not passed, like continental Italy, in the beginning of the century, under the influences of the French Revolution or the conscription laws. But this is not the whole truth; nor is the Government blameless, even as to some of these measures, in the precipitation with which they have been carried out.

It is undeniable that the constant state of war with the Government, which had existed from 1815 onwards, had a very injurious effect on the people of Palermo, as is well indicated by Marquis Rudini in one of his letters to Ricasoli (October 11th):

"The most influential and respected men of the country,' he says, bent on the overthrow of the Bourbon Government at all hazards, did not scruple to direct their constant efforts to the destruction of the principle of authority wherever it might exist. Law lost all respect through the savage character of its enactments, the extravagance of its abuses, and its constant persecution of the best men; whilst habitual hatred of the agents of Government became almost a mark of civic virtue.

'I will add, that men of honour, engaged with scanty means in conspiracy to effect the liberty of their country, too often made common cause with robbers and assassins in order to recruit their forces in acting against the Government. The three Revolutions of 1820, 1848, and 1860, with the minor movements of 1824, 1831, 1837, 1850, 1856, and 1859, in their rapid succession completed the perversion of a mass of ignorant people too easily habituated to blood and spoil. Sentiments of honour and virtue could not but be extinguished in such people when, on the morrow of revolt or restoration, as the case might be, they saw general pardons extended to common criminals, and the highwayman or murderer too often hailed as a hero, and loaded with medals and pensions.'

Now, after the Bourbons were fairly got rid of, let us see what steps were taken by the Italian Government to train Sicily to an understanding of the new position which she had voluntarily accepted as part of the Italian kingdom; and what was likely to be the effect of those steps on a people, large classes of whom had been affected by such demoralising influences.

'It was under a most unlucky form that Italian government first showed itself in Sicily, that of the pro-dictatorship. This, though in a manner adopted by the King's Government, had already been launched under Republican auspices; and its agents, according to their own open confession, never regarded the Monarchy as anything but a scaffolding by means of which to set up their goddess the Republic. In their hands and for their objects agitation was a supreme necessity, and unceasing agitation became in fact the system

of

of their government. Every occasion, however trifling, was seized as an occasion for agitation; all the greedy passions were kept inflamed by the profusion with which employments were bestowed, and facilities afforded to those who were in haste to be rich. Autonomism was put forward as the ostensible moving power, whilst Republicanism was cherished as the basis of intrigues and the object of all aspirations. Instead of seeking to make straight the way for the introduction of the Italian monarchy, the whole course of administration deliberately tended to sow its path with hatred. It led the people to look on the Monarchy as an incumbrance which had to be borne for a time, but was to be shaken off on the first opportunity. . . . And when

the agents of the pro-dictatorship could do no worse, and the union with the Italian monarchy was inevitable, the Plebiscito, instead of being allowed to spring forth as the spontaneous act of the people of Sicily, was snatched from them as if it had been the act of a tyrant, and then vaunted as the work of those who had so snatched it.

Thus the Vote of Union, the solemn act which brought to a close the Norman kingdom of Sicily, and joined the island with the whole Peninsula in the formation of the Italian Monarchy, was vitiated in its very birth, was stript of all power of wholesome action, and came to be looked on as a stratagem of Italian aggrandisement.'-Anarchia di Palermo, &c.

Here also we have some light as to the reason why life and property became worse protected, instead of better, after the revolution. The very life of the pro-dictatorship being agitation, the Government had no power and no mind to deal with the serious questions that were involved in the union; least of all with the question of public security. Systematic agitation and public security were two things quite incompatible in Sicily; so malandrinaggio had ample scope. Not that we are so absurd as to imply that malandrinaggio and mismanagement were new in Sicily; or that such administration and training as Bourbon rule afforded would not have sufficed to make malandrini of all the nations on the face of the earth! But surely it is high time to have done with that threadbare and shabby habit of excusing present evils by casting the blame of them for ever and exclusively on the Bourbons :—

"The pro-dictatorship, by pampering republican aspirations among the young men of the country, opened new wounds; by tickling the fancies of Autonomism among those more advanced in life, it kept the old wounds wide and gaping. Systematic and factious opposition to the Italian Government became, under these different impulses, Autonomist and Republican, the ruling spirit of the Liberal press and the Liberal associations, whilst the small part of the press which professed to maintain the United Monarchy was paltry, vacillating, and without popularity or influence. The National Guard was

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deeply