_Elements of International Law._ By HENRY WHEATON, LL. D., etc.
Eighth Edition. Edited, with Notes, by RICHARD HENRY DANA, Jr.,
LL. D. Boston: Little, Brown, & Co. 1866. 8vo. pp. 749.
LORD WESTBURY, in one of his masterly speeches on law reform, spoke with
much truth, and in terms of severe censure, of the neglect with which
public law has heretofore been treated in England, and the scanty
contributions of English writers to it. And it is undoubtedly true,
that, as the English language has no name by which to designate that
branch of the law called by the civilians _jus_, and by the French
publicists _droit_, so English libraries are without any great national
work on this subject, although the English bar has produced innumerable
treatises on municipal law, which are high models of profound learning,
acute logic, and luminous exposition; and Great Britain is still chiefly
dependent for her international law upon the decisions of Lord Stowell
and a few other judges, and the commentaries of the Continent and
America.
But from an early period in our political history, international law has
been a favorite study in the United States, both with jurists and
statesmen. Our war of independence and the succeeding treaties gave rise
to questions for solution by it of the greatest nicety, and thus
attracted immediate attention to the whole science. To these there
followed in quick succession our long-pending dispute with Great Britain
upon her exercise of the oppressive claims of visitation and search, our
position as a neutral nation during the long wars in Europe, our own war
with England, and the wars between Spain and her revolted colonies. Such
a succession of events, fruitful in international controversies, created
a demand for the study of the law of nations such as is always sure to
be supplied. The state papers of Mr. Madison and Mr. John Quincy Adams
are a permanent monument to their familiarity with this subject.
Contemporaneous with them were the unrivalled decisions of the Supreme
Court when presided over by Chief Justice Marshall, and later have been
published the works of Kent, Wheaton, Story, and other writers. All of
these together comprise a treasure of learning of which we may well be
proud.
Mr. Wheaton, by general consent, occupies the first place among our
commentators. Inferior as a jurist to Chancellor Kent, he is not so high
an authority upon any question which the latter carefully and thoroughly
examined; but long study and training, first before the Supreme Court,
when he was not only the reporter of its decisions during the
international era, but was of counsel in most of the important cases
involving international law, and afterwards in an extended and useful
diplomatic career in Europe, gave him an unequalled familiarity with the
whole subject; and he treated it in a much more elaborate manner than
did Kent, who only discussed it as a branch of the more general science
covered by his Commentaries. No better evidence of the value of Mr.
Wheaton's book is needed than the high estimation in which it is held in
Europe, and particularly in England, where, as the production of a
common-law lawyer, it has a greater value than the works of Continental
scholars, and for reasons of which we shall speak presently. Lord
Lyndhurst early bore testimony to its great merits, and during the last
few years it has been universally regarded as an authority of the
highest standard. No other publicist has been so frequently cited in the
controversies which have grown out of our late civil war. The
translation of the book into Chinese is a most interesting fact,
flattering to the author, and a proof of the progress which Western
thought and civilization are making in the extreme East.
It is of Mr. Dana's edition of this valuable work that we are now called
upon particularly to speak. As a new edition of the book was demanded,
it was of the greatest importance that it should be placed in the hands
of an editor competent to discuss, in a manner worthy of the
distinguished commentator, those numerous and perplexing questions which
have arisen since his death. The representatives of Mr. Wheaton were
singularly fortunate in obtaining the aid of so prominent and so busy a
man as Mr. Dana,--one who is himself a high authority on many branches
of international law; for it is not an easy matter to prevail upon a
leader of the bar, and especially one immersed in the cares of official
as well as of professional duties, to undertake a laborious literary
work, even if it be of a legal character. Of the editor it is a delicate
matter to speak; but we can say without violating good taste, that few
members of his profession unite at once, and to an equal degree with
him, high professional acquirements, an enviable reputation as an orator
and advocate, and the accomplishments of a varied and extensive
scholarship, so that the words with which the President of Harvard
College, at the recent Commencement, conferred upon him the degree of
Doctor of Laws, _Virum eloquentium jurisperitissimum, jurisperitorum
eloquentissimum_, could be applied to him with far less disregard of
strict truth than university dignitaries consider allowable on such
occasions. A large practice for more than twenty years in the maritime
courts has given Mr. Dana an extensive and intimate acquaintance with
one part of the subject he has here undertaken; and his duties as United
States District Attorney for Massachusetts, throughout the late war,
obliged him to examine most carefully the whole law of prize, of neutral
and contraband trade, and of blockade. The results of his labors
comprise nearly half of the volume before us, and deserve some higher
appellation than notes. Nowhere, however, does Mr. Dana push himself
before his author. He never seems to forget that his duty is to prepare
a new edition of Wheaton's Commentaries, not to write a book of his own;
and he is content modestly to illustrate the text, and to supply the
omissions needed to bring the book down to the present day.
It is not necessary to say that, in a literary point of view, Mr. Dana
has done his work well. His style is a model of terseness, vigor, and
perspicuity, and yet the reader is constantly charmed by its chaste
purity and grace. We can say of him what Macaulay said of Bacon, that he
has a wonderful talent of packing thought close and rendering it
portable. It is a long time since we have read a book in which so much
matter was compressed into so small a space. The good taste and polished
courtesy with which Mr. Dana treats of any controverted point cannot be
too much praised; and his calmness and moderation in their discussion
are judicial in their nature and extent, and give additional weight to
his opinions.
We have been surprised to see notices of the work in which Mr. Dana is
criticised for want of enthusiasm. If by this is meant that he lacks
enthusiasm for his subject, the criticism is entirely misplaced. We
doubt whether, without that, he could ever have been induced to edit
this book; and on every page, and in almost every line, convincing proof
can be found of the love and devotion which the editor feels for the
law, and especially for this department of it, to the study and practice
of which he has devoted so many years. It is this enthusiasm that
renders the notes to us more interesting than the text. Things which Mr.
Wheaton discusses as abstractions seem in Mr. Dana's hands to become
living realities. In one the scholar's temperament predominates; in the
other the lawyer's and the politician's. If, however, the criticism
applies to the rigid impartiality which the editor brings to the
discussion of those contemporaneous events concerning which the passions
of men have been most recently and deeply aroused, we regard it as high
praise. If Mr. Dana's views be wrong, it is not likely that the
indulgence of a partisan enthusiasm would have corrected them; if they
be right, the absence of all passion, the studied courtesy and tolerant
moderation which mark every line of argument, add infinite strength to
his conclusions.
The legal merits of Mr. Dana's annotations require other and higher
tests. They depend upon the accuracy of his statements and reasoning,
and the amount of assistance which those will obtain who seek it from
him. To investigate this would require more space than we can now give,
and rather falls within the province of a professional reviewer. A
strong conviction of the soundness of his logic, however, involuntarily
follows a careful perusal of these notes, and will have no little
influence with those who feel it. This is partly owing to the
passionless tone of his discussion, of which we have before spoken. The
amount of historical and general political information which this book
contains will give it value aside from its legal character, and demands
for it a very general circulation.
The note upon the sources of international law is exceedingly
instructive. Notwithstanding his long practice in admiralty and constant
study of civil and foreign law, our editor adheres to his strong Saxon
preference for actual judicial decisions as the best evidence of all
law. The opinion of Continental writers is seen in its strongest light
in a recent French author, who has pushed the doctrine as far as any one
else, if not farther. After quoting several definitions of international
law, Mr. Dana says:--
"Hautefeuille divides international law into two parts, which he calls
_primitif_ and _secondaire_,--the first containing, as he says, the
principles, the absolute basis, of the law; and the second, the measures
or provisions for calling up these principles and securing their
execution. In the application of this theory, it will be found that the
distinguished writer usually treats the primitive law, or the well or
fountain of first principles, as of actual authority, where no express
agreement departs from it; and so much of the practice of nations as
consists in judicial decisions adopted, enforced, and acquiesced in, he
considers as of less authority than the primitive law as it lies in the
breast of the text-writers....
"Commentators seem agreed as to what are the sources of international
law. They differ as to the relative importance and authority of these
sources. Hautefeuille especially gives little weight to the decisions of
prize courts, and places far before them the speculations of writers. It
is noticeable that Continental writers incline the same way, although
they may not go as far; while Wheaton, Kent, Story, Halleck, and
Woolsey in America, and Phillimore, Manning, Wildman, Twiss, and others
in England, give a higher place to judicial decisions. This is
attributable to the different systems of municipal law under which they
are educated. In England and America, judicial decisions are
authoritative declarations of the common law, i. e. the law not enacted
by decrees of legislators, but drawn from the usages and practices of
the people, and from reason and policy. They are at the same time the
highest evidence of what the law is. Under those systems, writers are
brought to the test of judicial decisions; and even those portions of
the opinions of the court itself not necessary to the decision of the
cause before it are termed _obiter dicta_, and are not authority, but
stand on no higher ground than voluntary speculations of learned men as
to what the law might prove to be in a supposed case. The Continental
writers, on the other hand,--living under municipal systems in which
judicial decisions hold no such place, and are neither precedents,
authoritative declarations, nor authentic evidence of the law,--are led
by their education to look to but one authoritative source of law,--the
decrees of legislators; and, in the absence of these, naturally put the
scientific treatises of learned men, systematic, and enriched with
illustrations, above the special decisions of tribunals on single cases,
which, by their systems, do no more than settle the particular
controversy, without settling the principles evoked for its decision."
The editor then sums up the respective merits of these two methods of
deducing the principles of international law at a length which prevents
our quoting the whole for the benefit of our readers. In conclusion he
says:--
"As an offset to this [the supposed impartiality of commentators], it is
to be remembered that the commentator will often be a man of books and
speculations, rather than of affairs; and that the judicial habit of
determining actual controversies, in full view of both their nature and
consequences, is most likely to evoke such rules of law as will be able
to hold their place among the interests, policies, passions, and
necessities of life.
"Attempts to deduce international law from a theory that each individual
is by nature independent, and has, by an implied contract, surrendered
some of his natural rights and assumed some artificial obligations, for
the purpose of establishing society for the common advantage,--and that
each state is, in like manner, independent, and has made like
concessions for a like purpose of international advantages,--such
attempts fall with the theories on which they rested. As no such state
of things ever existed, and no such arrangements or compacts have ever
been made, it is safer to draw principles of law from what is actual.
Later writers, since philosophy has dropped the theory of the social
compact, go upon the assumption, that men and communities are by nature
what they have always been found to be; that the rights and duties of
each man are, by Divine ordination, originally and necessarily, those at
once of an individual and a member of society; and that the rights and
duties of a state are, in like manner, those at once of an individual
state and one among a number of states; and that neither class of these
rights or duties is artificial, voluntary, or secondary.
"In considering, therefore, whether a certain rule should or should not
be adopted, the test is not its capacity to be carried through a
circuitous and artificial course, beginning in a supposed natural
independence of the human being, and ending in another supposed entity
compounded of all civilized states, but various elements enter into the
solution of international questions, and in various degrees, as fitness
to conduce to the highest and most permanent interests of nations as a
whole, of nations taken separately, differing as nations do in power and
pursuits and interests, and of the human beings that compose those
societies. If the question involves high ethics, it must be met in the
faith that the highest justice is the best interest of all. If it be a
question chiefly of national advantage, and of means to an admitted end,
it must be met by corresponding methods of reasoning."
M. Hautefeuille, particularly, finds little favor with Mr. Dana.
Repeatedly rules laid down by him are dismissed with the bare remark,
that "he is without support either by judicial decisions, treaties, the
opinions of commentators of received authority, or diplomatic positions
taken by nations"; or, as in another place, that the principle broached
"is merely a suggestion of the learned commentator as a possible policy,
and has no support either in the practice of nations or the works of
publicists";--but the editor never condescends to meet the French writer
upon his own field of casuistry and speculation. And in this we think
he is right. The discussion of rules existing only in a text-writer's
belief in their abstract justice, would be entirely useless labor in any
writer in the English language; for whatever may be the system of
Continental Europe, neither the United States, nor Great Britain, nor
any one of the future kindred nations that will grow out of the English
colonies, will ever pay much regard to a doctrine so foreign to that
noble system of law which, like their common tongue, will be a permanent
proof of their common origin.
Two of the most admirable of Mr. Dana's notes are those on the
"relations of the United States judiciary to the Constitution and
statutes," and on "the United States a supreme government"; and they
deserve careful perusal from all desirous of fully understanding our
system of government. From the first we cannot refrain from making one
extract, which may help to explain to our non-professional readers a
difficult principle of law which we have never before seen so concisely
and at the same time so clearly stated.
"In cases before it, the Supreme Court has no other jurisdiction over
constitutional questions than is possessed by the humblest judicial
tribunal, State or national, in the land. The only distinction is, that
it is the court of final resort, from whose decision there is no appeal.
The relations of all courts to the Constitution arise simply from the
fact that, being courts of law, they must give to litigants before them
_the law_; and the Constitution of the United States is _law_, and not,
like most European political constitutions, a collection of rules and
principles having only a moral obligation upon the legislative and
executive departments of the government. Accordingly, each litigant,
having the right to the highest law, may appeal from a statute of
Congress, or any other act of any officer or department, State or
national, and invoke the Constitution as the highest law. The court does
not formally set aside or declare void any statute or ordinance
inconsistent with the Constitution. It simply decides the case before it
_according to law_; and if laws are in conflict, according to that law
_which has the highest authority_, that is, the Constitution. The effect
of the decree of the final court on the _status_ of the parties or
property in that suit is of course absolute, and binds all departments
of the government. The constitutional principle involved in the
decision, being ascertained from the opinion,--if the court sees fit to
deliver a full opinion,--has in all future cases in courts of law simply
the effect of a judicial precedent, whatever that may be. Upon the
political department of the government and upon citizens the principle
decided has, in future cases, not the binding force of a portion of the
Constitution, but the moral effect due to its intrinsic weight and to
the character of the tribunal, and the practical authority derived from
the consideration that all acts inconsistent with it will be
inoperative, by reason of the judicial power which any citizen may
invoke against their operation."
Our space will not allow us to make further quotations. Among those
notes which are especially interesting to the non-professional reader we
may mention those on the much misunderstood Monroe doctrine; on
naturalization; on the effect of belligerent occupation on slavery, and
the President's Proclamation of Emancipation,--in which Mr. Dana
maintains the same position that he has heretofore taken in his
political speeches, and of the correctness of which there can be no
doubt; the very excellent examination of the neutrality statutes and
decisions, and the note on the case of the Trent,--a model of calm,
judicial dissertation. The recent agitation of the subjects of all of
these makes them matters of general interest, and we cannot but think
that the timely publication of this edition of Mr. Wheaton's work will
aid efficiently in the satisfactory settlement of some of them. True to
the principles which he holds of the evidences of international law, Mr.
Dana avoids spending much time in discussing questions still unsettled,
satisfying himself with a clear statement of the present state of each
controversy, and leaving it for the future attention of statesmen and
jurists. Attached to the volume is a full and carefully prepared
Index,--sufficient for all the requirements of any reasonably
intelligent reader.
We cannot dismiss this book without alluding to the newspaper
controversy which the editor of the two preceding editions has started,
and seems determined to keep alive, even if he have no antagonist. We
wish to do full justice to Mr. Beach Lawrence's services to the science
of public law. His industry and the extent and variety of his
information will always make his writings valuable as books of
reference,--much as we think this value is lowered by his method of
treatment and partisan views. Some natural disappointment and
irritation would be excusable in him on the announcement that a work, of
which he imagined he enjoyed a monopoly, was receiving the attention of
so formidable a rival; but this does not excuse the bad taste and bad
temper with which he has published his complaints. Of the merits of his
dispute with Mr. Wheaton's heirs we know little, and shall say nothing,
except that they have been guided in their conduct by what they regarded
as high legal opinion of their rights and obligations, and that, if Mr.
Lawrence has been wronged, the courts of which he talks so much, but to
which he seems to be so slow to appeal, will give him redress. But if it
be considered becoming to drag ladies and their private circumstances
before the public in the manner in which Mr. Lawrence has done it, there
must be a grievous decline of the old chivalrous feeling in regard to
women. Still more solemnly must we protest against his recent charges
against Mr. Dana. In these he impugns the honor of a distinguished
contemporary, charging him with gross and impudent piracy of the results
of another's labors. If there be foundation for these charges, they
ought to be made; but there are two ways of making them, and the course
which Mr. Lawrence has taken in bringing them, at a time when Mr. Dana
is absent from the country, and leaving them to rest solely on his own
unsupported assertion--without citing or referring to any of the facts
which he declares exist--is highly censurable. We have found no evidence
of the truth of his charges in a cursory examination of a considerable
part of both works; and a friend upon whose judgment we place full
reliance, and who has carefully compared the labors of the two editors,
assures us that there is nothing which at all substantiates them. Mr.
Lawrence has needlessly involved his own character in this affair; and
the public will demand from him proofs of a most flagrant violation of
the rights of literary property, before it will be inclined to admit any
palliation for the errors he has committed in conducting the
controversy.
_English Travellers and Italian Brigands. A Narrative of
Capture and Captivity._ By W. J. C. MOENS. New York: Harper and
Brothers.
_Prison-Life in the South: at Richmond, Macon, Savannah,
Charleston, Columbia, Charlotte, Raleigh, Goldsborough, and
Andersonville, during the Years 1864 and 1865._ By A. O.
ABBOTT. New York: Harper and Brothers.
The narrative of Mr. Moens, so far as it relates to the general subject
of brigandage in South Italy, will hardly present anything novel to
those who have at all studied the history or character of that scourge.
In fact, Italian brigandage is a very simple affair, about which it is
hard to say anything new. Given a starving, beaten, superstitious
population in a mountainous country, destitute of roads, and abounding
in easy refuges and inaccessible hiding-places, and you have brigandage
naturally. Given centuries of weak, cruel, and corrupt government, and
you have the perpetuation of brigandage inevitably. From time
immemorial, the social and political conditions in Naples have been
deprivation and oppression; and cause and effect have so long been
convertible, that it is often difficult to know one from the other. The
prevalence of brigandage demands measures on the part of the government
compared with the severity of which martial law is lax and mild; and the
crime which provokes these harsh measures has revived again from the
disaffection which they produce. All authorities on the subject are
agreed that brigandage finds its shield and support in the fears of the
people, and the complete system of espionage which the robbers are
enabled to maintain through their accomplices in society. These are
sometimes priests and persons of station, but more commonly peasants
whose friends or relatives are brigands. During the French-republican
rule of Naples, when Manhes was at the head of the troops assigned the
duty of extirpating brigandage, the robbers were for once destroyed by
the terrible measures taken against their accomplices. No one suspected
of communicating with them in any way was spared. Men were shot for
selling them food. Women and children taking food into the fields to eat
while at work were shot, under an order forbidding this custom lest the
provisions should fall into the hands of the robbers. For once, the
authorities outbid the brigands for the terror of the wretched
inhabitants, and annihilated them. But it was natural, in a country
where every peasant is a possible brigand, and only waits for a lawless
impulse or lawless deed to make him an actual brigand, that brigandage
should flourish again as soon as the rigid procedure against it was
relaxed. The returning Bourbons found it on every hill; and though they
combated it with fitful severity and unremitting treachery, they left it
essentially unimpaired to the Italian government in 1860. It is by no
means true--as Mr. Moens asserts upon the authority of Murray's
Guide-Book--that the late Bourbon government did anything towards
effectually suppressing brigandage. The brigands were put down in one
place to spring up in another, and they swarmed everywhere after a lean
harvest. They never were effectually suppressed, except by Manhes; and,
as the Italian government has mercifully refused to adopt his course for
their destruction, it is probable that they will exist until the country
is generally opened with roads, and the people educated, and, above all,
Protestantized. For it must never be forgotten that, since the union of
Naples with Italy, brigandage has been fostered by the Bourbons and the
Papists, and that the Italians have had to fight, not only the robbers
in Naples, but Francis II. and Pius IX. at Rome.
To the readers of the newspapers, the name of Mr. Moens is known as that
of the English gentleman who was taken by brigands in May of last year,
on his return from a little pleasure excursion to Paestum. He and his
party--consisting of his wife and the Rev. Mr. Aynsley and wife--had
trusted too implicitly in the notice given by their landlord that the
road from Salerno to the famous temples was free from brigands, and
guarded by troops. Near a little town called Battipaglia, the military
having been withdrawn temporarily to permit the families of some
captives to negotiate their ransom with the band of Giardullo, the band
of Manzo swooped down upon the unhappy tourists, and carried off both
the gentlemen of the party. The troops appeared almost immediately after
the capture, but the brigands escaped with their prisoners, one of whom
they released a few days later, that he might return to Naples, and
raise the ransom demanded for himself and his friend. The book, from
this point, is the relation of Mr. Moens's trials and adventures with
the bandits, and Mrs. Moens's hardly less terrible efforts and anxieties
for his release. It was decided by the band that their captive was a
Milord, and they demanded a ransom of $200,000 for him, subsequently
reducing the sum to $30,000, which was paid them in instalments, and
which having received in full, they released their prisoner after a
captivity of four months. All the negotiations for the ransom of Mr.
Moens had to be carried on in defiance of Italian law, and by indulgence
of its officers; for to supply the brigands with food or money is an
offence punishable with twenty years in the galleys. Generous English
friends at Naples interested themselves in the affair, and the aid which
Mrs. Moens received from Italians in private and official station was no
less cordial and constant. Indeed, the business of Mr. Moens's recapture
became of almost international importance. All the Italian troops in the
region were employed in pursuit of Manzo's band; and a British
man-of-war was sent to a certain point on the coast, in the hope that
the bandits could be induced to go on board by the promise of impunity,
and transfer to England.
In the mean time Mr. Moens remained with his captors, sharing all their
perils and privations, and making perforce the most faithful study ever
made of their life. It must be confessed that the picture has few
features attractive to people at peace with society. Most of the
brigands are men who have placed themselves beyond the law by some
hideous crime,--or misfortune, as they would call it in Naples,--and in
other cases they are idle ruffians, who have taken to robbery because
they like it. They generally look forward to a time when, having placed
a sufficient amount of money at interest, they can surrender themselves
to the authorities, pass a few comfortable years in prison, and issue
forth ornaments to society. To be sure, this scheme is subject to
chances. They are hunted by the soldiers, day and night, like wild
beasts; and, if taken under arms, are shot without trial. Half the time
they are without food, and suffer the agonies of hunger and thirst; and
they are always without shelter, except such as trees or caverns can
give. When they have anything, they "eat their bread with carefulness,
and drink their water with astonishment,"--quarrelling over it a good
deal, and trying to steal from one another. When they have nothing, they
buckle their belts tighter, and bear it as best they may.
Mr. Moens, who fared no better than the rest, does not seem to have
fared much worse. Indeed, he was much more comfortably situated than the
ladies of the band, who, being dressed as men, were armed and obliged to
fight like their comrades, and yet had no share of the spoils, but
received many more cuffs and hard words than we, who have only seen
them in pictures, can well associate with the idea of brigandesses.
Being poor ignorant peasants originally, and being afterwards poor
ignorant robbers, the brigands inflicted little unnecessary suffering
upon their prisoner. Occasionally, to be sure, they struck him; but this
was in hot blood, and he was allowed to strike back and restore the
balance of justice. These wretched creatures, imbruted and stained with
innumerable murders, seem to have had very little idea of the usages of
civilized people in regard to captives; and any one who will compare the
story of Mr. Moens with the narratives of the prisoners given in Mr.
Abbott's book, will see how absurdly the bandits neglected their
advantages. After all, it is your high-toned Southern gentleman, compact
of the best blood of the Cavaliers and the Huguenots, and presenting in
this unhappy hemisphere the finest reflection of the English nobleman's
character, who understands best how to use a prisoner. There is nothing
like having in your power from childhood a number of helpless human
beings, to teach you how to treat a captured enemy; and we cannot help
thinking that Mrs. Moens, who will not spare the American Unionists a
sneer in the first chapter of her diary, would have understood us better
if her husband had been in the hands of Captain Wirz instead of Captain
Manzo. Had Mr. Moens been a soldier of the Union, taken while fighting
to defend his country against rebellion, he would have been carried into
the midst of a people inured to the practice of cruelty by slavery, and
all the more abominable because they believed themselves Christian and
civilized. There he would have been thrust into a roofless close,
already densely thronged with thousands of famished, sick, and maddened
men. He would have had no shelter from the blazing sun or drenching
storm, except such as the happier wild creatures make themselves in
holes and burrows. Guards, emulous in murder, would have been set over
him, with instructions to shoot him, if he reached, in the delirium of
famine, across a certain line to clutch a bone, or stooped to moisten
his lips in a pool less filthy than those at which his comrades quenched
their thirst within the bounds. In the mountains of Naples, the brigands
gave him to eat and drink of their scanty fare, and shared with him the
last crust and the last drop. In Georgia, in the midst of plenty, his
keepers would have slowly starved him to death, and would have driven
away, with threats and curses, any that offered to succor his distress.
If he escaped, they would have hunted him with bloodhounds, and so
brought him back; and if he sickened under his torture, they would have
left him, naked and unsheltered, to languish with wasting disease and
devouring vermin,--to die, or to rot and drop away piecemeal while yet
alive.
Other writers on brigandage, besides Mr. Moens, relate anomalous facts
concerning it, which can, perhaps, be matched only in this country,
where alone the cruelty and impunity of Italian brigandage can be
matched. It is well known that for a long time the heirs of Fra Diavolo
received from the government a pension bestowed in recognition of that
distinguished chief's services to humanity. The retired chief, Talarico,
is now in the undisturbed enjoyment of the gains of brigandage upon his
place near Naples; and Count Saint-Jorioz, in his interesting work, _Il
Brigantaggio alla Frontiera, Pontificia,_ declares that in some cases
the _employes_ of the Italian government in the Neapolitan provinces are
men known to have been in other times _manutengoli_, or accomplices of
brigands; nay, that sometimes the very courts of law have favored,
instigated, and connived at brigandage. Similarly, in our own country,
we find men guilty of the cruelties of Andersonville and Columbia, and
stained with treason, in the enjoyment of offices and honors throughout
the South, while the servants of the law lend themselves to violence and
murder with a boldness unheard of in Naples, where there is some show of
decency in these things. At least, we have not read of the _sindaco_ and
policemen of any town of the Abruzzi who have openly applauded and
joined the brigands in hunting and slaughtering peaceable inhabitants,
as happened lately in New Orleans and Memphis; and we feel quite sure
that, if they had committed such an offence, it would not have been
passed over in silence by the head of the Italian people. But, then,
with all their errors, the Italians have not yet intrusted great power
to the hands of a peasant of the class which produces brigands; whereas
we have taken for our chief magistrate a man in whom everything generous
and noble seems to have been extinguished by the hard conditions of a
poor white's life at the South.