Cavallotti[C] has written, in his letter of protest against the arrest
of the Sicilian deputy, De Felice, a sentence which deserves to be
repeated all over the land: one of those sentences, _multum in parvo_,
which resume a whole situation in a phrase: he has written: ‘Invece che
del pane si da il piombo.’ Instead of bread to the suffering and
famished multitudes there is offered lead, the lead of rifle bullets and
of cannon-balls. That is the only response which has as yet been given
to demands which are in the main essentially just. Is the English public
aware that the Italian city of Caltanissetta has been, the first week of
the year, bombarded by Italian artillery, and that in that town alone
six hundred arrests have been made in one day? If this were taking place
in Poland the English public and its press would be convulsed with rage.
-----
Footnote C:
Deputy for Corteolona, and leader of the Extreme Left.
-----
The attitude of the press in England towards the present Italian
struggle against overwhelming fiscal burdens is so singular that it can
only be attributed to one of two things: Bourse interests or German
influence. All that is said in the English press concerning Italian
affairs is at all times marked by singular ineptitude and inaccuracy;
but at the present crisis it is conspicuous for a resolute and
unblushing concealment of facts. The unfortunate flattery which has been
poured out on Italy by the German press and Parliament for their
emperor’s ends, and by the English press and Parliament out of hatred of
France, has been taken for gospel truth by the Quirinale, the Palazzo
Braschi, and every deputy and editor from Alps to Etna, and has fed the
natural vanity of the Italian disposition, until, in a rude awakening,
the whole nation finds itself on the brink of bankruptcy and anarchy.
To all conversant with the true state and real needs of the country ever
since the death of Victor Emmanuel, the language of the German and
English press and Parliaments has seemed almost insane in its optimism,
as it has been most cruel in its fulsome falsehood. Much of the present
woe may be attributed to it; for if Berlin and London had not taken, or
pretended to take, Messer Francesco Crispi for a statesman, it is very
possible that that ingenious lawyer might never have dragged his
sovereign into the meshes of the Triple Alliance and the Slough of
Despond of a bottomless debt. That unintelligent and interested flattery
is as injurious to nations as to individuals and gives them vertigo, is
a truth too frequently forgotten or purposely disregarded.
Perhaps one of the oddest and least admirable traits in the public
opinion of the latest half of this century is its absolute
unconsciousness of its own caprices and inconsequence; its entire
ignorance of how flatly its assertions of to-day contradict those of
yesterday and will be contradicted by those of to-morrow. History has
accustomed us to such transmogrifications, and we know that power is
potent to turn the insurgent into the reactionist, but certainly the
drollest and most picturesque episode in connection with the Sicilian
revolution is the arrest of the deputy De Felice, for inciting to civil
war, coupled with the fact that the last deputy arrested for precisely
the same cause was Francesco Crispi at the time of Aspromonte! History,
in all its length and breadth, does not furnish us with any droller
antithesis than that of Crispi as arrested and Crispi as arrester. The
Italian press has contented itself with merely stating the
circumstances, and letting them speak for themselves; the European press
does not appear even to be aware of them. For the European press, with
the exception of the French, the Crispi of Aspromonte is dead and
buried, as the Crispi of Montecitorio and the Quirinale would desire
that he should be. The prostration of the English press in especial
before the latter is infinitely comical to those who know the real
career of the fortunate Sicilian notary who began life as a penniless
republican, and is ending it as a plutocrat, a reactionist, and a Knight
of the Order of the Association. It is probable that Europe on the whole
knows but little of the Crispi of Aspromonte; it is possible that De
Felice and his friends will cause it to know more. Falstaff abjuring
cakes and ale, and putting two mirthful roysterers in the pillory, would
present the only companion picture worthy of comparison with the Crispi
of Montecitorio gravely defending the seizure of the leader of the Fasci
on the score that the offence of the latter is _lesa alla patria_. Why
is revolutionary effort in ’93 and ’94 treason to the country when
revolutionary effort in ’59 and ’48 was, we are taught by all Italian
text-books, the most admirable patriotism? It is a plain question which
will never be honoured by an answer. Crispi of Montecitorio does not
condescend to reason; he finds it easier to use cannon and bayonets, as
they were used against that Crispi of Aspromonte of whom he considers it
ill-bred in anyone to remind him. Crispi understands the present era; he
knows that it does not punish, or even notice, such inconsistencies, at
least when they are the inconsistencies of successful men.
Were the national sense of humour as quick as it was in the days of
Pulci and Boiardo this circumstance would be fatal to the dictatorship
of the ex-revolutionist.
In the national litany of Italy the chief of gods invoked are Mazzini,
Ugo Foscolo, Garibaldi, Manini, and a score of others of the same
persuasion, and all the present generation (outside what are termed
Black Society and Codini Circles) are reared in religious veneration of
such names. Now, it does not matter in the least whether this veneration
be well or ill founded, be wise or unwise; it has been taught to all the
present youth and manhood of all liberal-minded Italian families as a
duty, a pleasure, and a creed in one. What sense is there in blaming
this multitude if they carry out their own principles to a logical
conclusion, and refuse to see that the opinions which were noble and
heroic in their fathers become treason and crime in themselves? The
House of Savoy, by a lucky chance for itself, drew the biggest prize in
the lottery of national events in 1859; but it was not to place the
House of Savoy on the Italian throne that Garibaldi fought, and Mazzini
conspired, and a host of heroes died in battle or in exile. To all those
whose names are like trumpet-calls to us still, the merging of their
ideal of United Italy into a mere royal state must have seemed bathos,
must have caused the most cruel and heartbreaking disillusion. They
accepted it because at the time, rightly or wrongly, they considered
that they could do no less; but they suffered, as all must suffer who
have cherished high and pure dreams and behold what is called the
realisation of them in the common clay of ordinary circumstance.
No one can pretend that the chief makers of the union of the country
were monarchical. They were Red; and were hunted, imprisoned, exiled,
shot for the colour of their opinions, precisely in the same manner as
the leaders of the Fasci and the deputies of the Extreme Left are being
dealt with now. Measures of this kind are excusable in absolute or
arbitrary governments, such as Russia or Prussia; but in a State which
owes its very existence to revolutionary forces, they are an anomaly. It
is truly the sad and sorry spectacle of the son turning on and
strangling the father who begat him.
At the present date Italy is a military tyranny. It is useless to deny
the fact. Many parts of the country are in a state of siege, as though
actually invaded and conquered; and although recent events are alleged
in excuse for this, it is by no means the first time that the army has
been used for the suffocation of all public expression of feeling.
Arbitrary and unexplained arrest has always been frequent; and when the
sovereigns visit any city or town the gaols thereof have always been
filled on the vigil of the visit with crowds of persons suspected of
democratic or dangerous tendencies. A rigid censorship of telegrams has
long existed, as inquisitorial as any censorship of an _ancien régime_;
and at the present moment telegrams from Sicily are absolutely forbidden
to be despatched. Wholesale invasion of the privacy of private houses
takes place at the pleasure of the police, and seizure of private
letters and papers follows at the caprice of the Questura.
Where is there any pretext of liberty? In what does the absolutism of
1894 differ from that of the Bourbon, or of the Este-Lorraine? In what
sense can a Free Italy be said to exist? The Gallophobia now so general
amongst English political speakers and writers may account for the
determination in them to applaud the Italian Government, alike when it
is wrong as when it is right; but it is quite certain that, whatever be
the motive, the English press has, with very few exceptions, combined to
hide from the English public the true circumstances and causes of a
revolution which, however to be deplored in its excesses, is not a whit
more blameable, or less interesting and excusable than the other
revolutions of Italy which filled England with such delight and
sympathy. The kingdom of Italy was created by revolution. As the life of
a nation counts, it was but yesterday that Garibaldi’s red shirt was
pushed through the gates of Stafford House, narrowly escaping being torn
to rags by the admiring and enthusiastic crowds of London. To the
philosophic observer there is something extremely illogical in the
present denunciation of men who are now doing nothing more than
Garibaldi did with the applause of Europe and America. To set up statues
in every public square to Garibaldi, and imprison Garibaldi Bosco, and
charge with high treason De Felice Giuffrida, is a nonsense to which it
is difficult to render homage.
It is well known that the King, unconstitutionally, refused to accept
the Zanardelli Ministry because it would have led to reduction of the
army, and, as a necessary consequence, to withdrawal from the German
incubus. He is possessed with a mania for German influences; influences,
of all others, the most fatal to public freedom and political liberty.
Nothing in the whole world could have been so injurious to Italy as to
fall, as she has done, under the mailed hand of the brutal Prussian
example and exactions.
Germany has always been fatal to Italy, and always will be. The costly
armaments which have made her penniless are due to Germany. Her army and
navy receive annual and insulting inspection by Prussian princes. The
time will probably come when German troops will be asked to preserve
‘social order’ in the cities and provinces of Italy. So long as the
German alliance continues in its present form, so long will this danger
for Italy always exist, that, in the event of the Italian army proving
insufficient, or unwilling, to quell revolution, the timidity or
despotism of Italian rulers may beg the aid of Germany to do so.
In the manifesto of the Extreme Left, after the fall of Giolitti, the
state of the country was described in language forcible but entirely
true.
‘Commerce is stagnant, bankruptcy general, savings are seized, small
proprietors succumb under fiscal exactions, agriculture languishes,
stifled under taxation, emigration is increased in an alarming
proportion to the population, the municipalities squander and become
penniless; the country, in taxes of various kinds, pays no less than
seventy per cent., _i.e._, four or five times as much as is paid by rich
nations. The material taxable diminishes every day, because production
is paralysed in its most vital parts, and misery has shrunken
consumption; in a word, the whole land is devoured by military exactions
and the criminal folly of a policy given over to interests and ambitions
which totally ignore the true necessities of the people. The hour is
come to cry, “Hold, enough!” and to oblige the State not to impose
burdens, but to make atonement.’
There is nothing exaggerated in these statements; they are strictly
moderate, and understate the truth. The Extreme Left may or may not be
Socialistic, but in its manifesto it is entirely within the truth, and
describes with moderation a state of national suffering and penury which
would render pardonable the greatest violence of language.
The Extreme Left affirms with the strictest truth that its members have
never contributed to bring about the present misery, and are in no
degree responsible for it. The entire responsibility lies with corrupt
administration, and with military tyranny and extravagance.
When a people are stripped bare, and reduced to destitution, can it be
expected, should it be dreamed, that they can keep their souls in
patience when fresh taxes threaten them, and the hideous Juggernauth of
military expenditure rolls over their ruined lives?
Italians have been too long deluded with the fables of men in office;
and many years too long, patient under the intolerable exactions laid
upon them. It is not only the imperial, but the municipal tyrannies
which destroy them; they are between the devil and the deep sea; what
the State does not take the Commune seizes. The most onerous and absurd
fines await every trifling sin of omission or commission, every
insignificant, unimportant, little forgetfulness leads to a penalty
ridiculously disproportioned to the trifling offence—a little dust swept
on to the pavement, a dog running loose, a cart left before a door, a
guitar played in the street, a siesta taken under a colonnade, a lemon
or a melon sold without permit to trade being previously purchased and
registered, some infinitesimal trifle—for which the offender is dragged
before the police and the municipal clerks, and mulcted in sums of
three, five, ten, twenty, or thirty francs. Frequently a fine of two
francs is quite enough to ruin the hapless offender. If he cannot pay he
goes to prison.
The imperial tax of _ricchezza mobile_ is levied on the poorest; often
the bed has to be sold or the saucepans pawned to pay it. The pawning
institutes are State affairs; their fee is nine per cent., and the goods
are liable to be sold in a year. In France the fee is four per cent.,
and the goods are not liable to be sold for three years. When a poor
person has scraped the money together to pay the fees, the official
(_stimatore_) often declares that the article is more worthless than he
thought, and claims a _calo_ of from ten to a hundred francs, according
to his caprice; if the _calo_ be not paid the object is sold, though the
nine per cent. for the past year may have been paid on it. The gate-tax,
_dazio consumo_, best known to English ears as _octroi_, which has been
the especial object of the Sicilian fury, is a curse to the whole land.
Nothing can pass the gates of any city or town without paying this
odious and inquisitorial impost. Strings of cattle and of carts wait
outside from midnight to morning, the poor beasts lying down in the
winter mud and summer dust. Half the life of the country people is
consumed in this senseless stoppage and struggle at the gates; a poor
old woman cannot take a few eggs her hen has laid, or a bit of spinning
she has done, through the gates without paying for them. The wretched
live chickens and ducks, geese and turkeys, wait half a day and a whole
night cooped up in stifling crates or hung neck downwards in a bunch on
a nail; the oxen and calves are kept without food three or four days
before their passage through the gates, that they may weigh less when
put in the scales. By this insensate method of taxation all the food
taken into the cities and towns is deteriorated. The prating and
interfering officers of hygiene do not attend to this, the greatest
danger of all to health, _i.e._, inflamed and injured carcasses of
animals and poultry sent as food into the markets.
The municipalities exact the last centime from their prey; whole
families are ruined and disappear through the exactions of their
communes, who persist in squeezing what is already drained dry as a
bone. The impious and insensate destruction of ancient quarters and
noble edifices goes on because the municipal councillors, and engineers,
and contractors fatten on it. The cost to the towns is enormous, the
damage done is eternal, the debt incurred is incalculable, the loss to
art and history immeasurable, but the officials who strut their little
hour on the communal stage make their profits, and no one cares a straw
how the city, town, or village suffer.
If the Italian States could have been united like the United States of
America, and made strictly neutral like Belgium, their condition would
have been much simpler, happier, and less costly. As a monarchy, vanity
and display have ruined the country, while the one supreme advantage
which she might have enjoyed, that of keeping herself free to remain the
courted of all, she has wilfully and stupidly thrown away, by binding
herself, hand and foot, almost in vassalage, to Prussia. For this, there
can be no doubt, unfortunately, that the present King is mainly
responsible; and, strange to say, he does not even seem to be sensible
of the magnitude of the evil of his act.
It is as certain as any event which has not happened can be, that
nothing of what has now come to pass would have occurred but for the
disastrous folly which has made the Government of Italy strain to become
what is called a Great Power, and conclude alliances of which the
unalterable condition has been a standing army of as vast extent as the
expenditure for its maintenance is enormous. There is nothing abnormal
in the present ruin of the country, nothing which cannot easily be
traced to its cause, nothing which could not have been avoided by
prudence, by modesty, and by renunciation. As the pitiful vanity and
ambition to reach a higher grade than that which is naturally theirs
beggars private individuals, so the craze to be equal with the largest
empire, and to make an equal military and naval display with theirs, has
caused a drain on the resources of the country, a pitiless pressure upon
the most powerless and hopeless classes, which have spread misery
broadcast over the land.
It might be deplorable, unwise, possibly thankless, if the country
dismissed the House of Savoy; but in so doing the country would be
wholly within its rights. The act would be in no sense whatever _lesa
alla patria_; it might, on the contrary, be decided on, and carried out,
through the very truest patriotism. The error of the House of Savoy is
the same error as that of the House of Bonaparte; they forget that what
has been given by a plebiscite, a later plebiscite has every right and
faculty to withdraw. The English nation, when it put William of Orange
on the throne, would have been as entirely within its rights and
privileges had it put him down from it. When a sovereign accepts a crown
from the vote of a majority, he must in reason admit that another larger
and later majority can withdraw it from his keeping. A plebiscite cannot
confer Divine Right. It cannot either confer any inalienable right at
all. It is, therefore, entirely illogical and unjust to visit the
endeavour and desire to make Italy a republic as a crime of high
treason. An Italian has as much right to wish for a republican form of
government, and to do what he can to bring it about, as the Americans of
the last century had to struggle against the taxation of George III. And
if the Casa Savoia be driven from the Quirinale, it will owe this loss
of power entirely to its own policy, which has impoverished the nation
beyond all endurance. The present King’s lamentable and inexplicable
infatuation for the German alliance, and all the frightful expenditure
and sacrifice to which this fatal alliance has led, have brought the
country to its present ruin.
At the moment at which these lines are written, the flames of revolution
are destroying the public buildings of the city of Bari; before even
these lines can be printed, who shall say that these flames may not have
spread to every town in the Peninsula? Of course, the present revolts
may be crushed by sheer armed force; but if a reign of terror paralyse
the movement for awhile, if a military despotism crush and gag the life
out of Palermo and Naples and Rome, as it has been crushed and gagged by
similar means in Warsaw and in Moscow, the causes which have led to
revolution will continue to exist, and its fires will but die down
awhile, to break forth in greater fury in a near future. The Crispi of
Montecitorio is now busy throwing into prison all over the country a
large number of citizens, for doing precisely the same things as the
Crispi of Aspromonte did himself, or endeavoured to do. But in the
present age a man may abjure and ignore his own past with impunity. As
it is always perfectly useless to refute Mr Gladstone’s statements by
quotations from his own earlier utterances, so it would be quite useless
to hope to embarrass the Italian premier by any reminder of his own
younger and revolutionary self. Renegades always are impervious to
sarcasm, and pachydermatous against all reproach.
Crispi is very far from a great man in any sense of those words, _Au
pays des aveugles le borgne est roi_, and he has had the supreme good
fortune to have outlived all Italian men of eminence. If Cavour and
Victor Emmanuel were living still, or even Sella and Minghetti and La
Marmora, it is extremely probable that the costly amusement of making
Crispi of Aspromonte First Minister of the Crown would never have been
amongst the freaks of fate. He has had ‘staying power,’ and so has
buried all those who would have kept him in his proper place. It is
possible that if he had adhered to his earlier creeds he might have been
by this time President of an Italian Republic, for his intelligence is
keen and versatile, and his audacity is great and elastic. But he has
preferred the more prosperous and less glorious career of a minister and
a _maire du palais_. He has emerged with amazing insolence from
financial discredit which would have made any other man ashamed to face
the social and political worlds; and, _mirabile dictu!_ having dragged
his King and country into an abyss of poverty, shame and misery, he is
still adored by the one and suffered to domineer over the other.
Successful in the vulgar sense of riches, of decorations, of temporary
power, and of overweening Court favour, the Sicilian man of law is;
successful in the higher sense of statesmanship, and the consolation of
a suffering nation, he never will be. And that he has been permitted to
return to power is painful proof of the weakness of will and the moral
degradation of the country. There is no great man in Italy at the
present hour, no man with the magnetism of Garibaldi, or the intellect
of D’Azeglio, or even the rough martial talent of Victor Emmanuel, and
in the absence of such the sly, subtle, fox-like lawyers, by whom the
country is overrun, come to the front, and add one curse more to the
many curses already lying on the head of Leopardi’s beloved Mater
Dolorosa. It is possible that, for want of a man of genius who would be
able to gather into one the scattered forces, and fuse them into
irresistible might by that magic which genius alone possesses, the cause
of liberty will be once more lost in Italy. If such a leader do not
appear, the present movement, which is not a revolt but a revolution in
embryo, will probably be trampled out by armed despotism, and the
present terror of the ruling classes of Europe before the bugbear of
anarchy will be appealed to in justification of the refusal to a ruined
people of the reforms and the atonement which they have, with full
right, demanded.
_January 1894._