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The Week's Republic in Palermo

IN the middle of September, 1866, the eyes of Italians were all turned northward, longing for the conclusion of the weary negotiations at Vienna.

The irritations and disappointments of the war were gradually subsiding, and, if the old enthusiasm was under the circumstances impossible, still the substantial and immense result was beginning to be appreciated with some quiet satisfaction, and a hope that peace and progress were at length to dawn on Italy free and united.

This state of hopeful expectation was startled by an unlooked for explosion in the rear. On Sunday morning, the 16th of September, the electric wire brought word to Florence that Palermo was in revolt; and shortly afterwards the telegraph ceased to speak.

We propose m sketch this event and its incidents, and then to try to illustrate some of the causes which rendered it possible. In our narrative we can speak with some confidence, having the testimony of those who chanced to be upon the spot, and who were, of course, strongly interested in such a piece of history passing before their eyes. But to trace the causes needs a much more intimate knowledge of Sicilian temper and history, as well as of the recent internal politics of Italy, than foreigners can pretend to; and we shall, therefore, draw largely from the last paper in the heading of this article, which has been placed at our disposal by its author, one whose deepest interests are wrapped up, not only in the prosperity of the kingdom of Italy, but in a most especial degree in the revival and welfare of Sicily, and whose life has been devoted, with no few sacrifices, to these objects.

During the whole summer the power of the local administration to protect life and property in the province of Palermo, at least beyond the walls and immediate suburbs, seemed almost entirely to have ceased; and this powerlessness was most notable within ten or twelve miles from the city. Gang-robberies in houses and on the highways, murders of police-officers and other officials, sequestrations as they are technically called, i. e. the abduction of persons of known means to be held to ransom, attacks upon the mails and other public conveyances, in short, all the indications of that state of endemic outrage which is known by the name of malandrinaggio, a term for which even Ireland, fertile in analogies with Sicily, scarcely affords us an exact equivalent, were of daily occurrence. The enjoyment of a walk or a drive towards the mountains that form the glorious girdle of the city had long ceased to be thought of. Even the well-trodden highway to the Duomo of Monreale, lined by continuous houses for half the distance, was hardly deemed safe; and the road to the charming Park of the Favorita had been the scene of more than one abduction. It was a curious sight to see, as was seen in those days, a carriage enter one of the northern gates of Palermo preceded and followed by a large convoy of armed and mounted travellers, a kind of kafila that would have been more in place in the opening chapter of one of James's romances than in the latter half of the nineteenth century.

This state of things was an old Sicilian heritage. As one of the pamphlets in our list says in substance, ours has been a malandrinesco country, as France has been a military country, or England a commercial country.' The whole country was corrupted by the tone of feeling so produced; and its peculiar ethics were embodied in a kind of decalogue of popular proverbs. As thus

A chi ti toglie il pane, e tu togliegli la vita!

Ciò che non ti appartiene né male né bene!

Quando ci è l'uomo morto deve pensarsi al vivo!

La testimonianza è buona, finché non nocca al prossimo!

The disease more or less affected all classes of society. Generally speaking, no one would prosecute; it was a point of honour not to give evidence against a criminal however atrocious; an assassin escaping from the scene of his crime could always count on popular aid; it has been possible to hire men to stab at a shilling a day, and men were so hired in numbers in a late notorious case still wrapped in mystery; ((*) persons robbed of large amounts of property denied the fact; dying men refused to name their murderers. Men of the highest rank in Palermo were known as the protectors of bands of ruffians, who stood to them in the relation of client to patron, and were ready to lend their arms for defence—not to say for vengeance—in any emergency, on condition of being shielded from the law, and receiving a certificate of character when needed.

Overt acts of outrage had been kept within bounds now and then for a season under the Bourbons by exceptional laws, or by systematic compacts with the criminal population, and less efficiently since the revolution by spasmodic military efforts. But the Austrian war had almost stript the island of her garrisons. What remained were untrained levies, raised since the war broke out; whilst the bands of malandrini were strengthened more than ever by the recusants from the conscription, whose numbers in this province and year alone amounted to much more than a thousand. Other causes during the last summer had tended to swell the ranks of disorder. Great drought had prevailed; the fall of rain had been only about two fifths of the average, and though the crops turned out somewhat better than was anticipated, the price of flour had been greatly raised by the stoppage of mills. The railway works had been suspended by the contractors on the introduction of inconvertible paper currency, five thousand labourers being thus thrown out of employment; and the abolition of the convents was imminent, and with it the probable loss of their present means of livelihood to great numbers of persons. ((*)

These circumstances led to a rapid aggravation of the disorders of the province. Some idea of the extent to which they had grown may be gathered from the notes below, abstracted from one of the Palermo daily papers e Amico del Popolo' for the whole of August and first twelve days of September.

Strange to say, such notices seldom or never appeared in the official paper (‘Giornale di Sicilia’); whilst in the chief Fiorentine papera, at least in those which support the Government, they seemed to be systematically suppressed. In fact it looked as if the Italian Government were determined steadily to keep its eyes shut to an evil which it was not at leisure or not disposed to deal with. And the first intimations of the outbreak itself which were published, attempted in a measure the same delusive system.

Like blindness, inveterate or wilful, attached to the local authorities of Palermo, if not as to the facts of the disorder, at least as to what they threatened. The body of the citizens seeing them unalarmed took no alarm themselves. After the outbreak, indeed, circumstances became generally known which showed that some considerable part of the community, besides those implicated, had been in a state of expectancy, whilst others had received hints to which they attached no importance. Many of the lower class, well used to the indications of the revolutionary barometer, crowded the markets on the 15th to lay in stores of bread and maccaroni; whilst General Camozzi, the head of the National Guard, as early as the 12th, had proposed to the Prefect Torelli a general summons of that body, a proposal which he repeated three or four times up to the moment of the explosion without shaking the Prefect's incredulity. ((*) And a letter, addressed from Palermo to the Perseveranza of Milan the day before the outbreak, speaks of the general uneasiness and expectation, of the laying in of provisions and ammunition, &c. Indeed this last goes so far beyond any common prevision in the matter, that one is half inclined to suspect that the writer spoke from precise knowledge of what was brewing, rather than from what he observed of public agitation. Certain, however, it is, that none of the English residents, nor of the other families, foreign or Sicilian, with whom the English usually carne in contact, had any anticipation of what was about to occur; nor do we believe that any such anticipation was general among the middle or higher classes of the citizens. In fact, when, on the 8th of the month, it had been reported that handbills were spread about announcing the inauguration of the Republic next day, the intimation was simply laughed at. Was not Palermo a city of 200,000' inhabitants, with a garrison, reduced certainly, but stili numbering more than 2000 soldiers, with two generals covered with, decorations, with a Prefect and a Mayor of reputation for energy, a considerable force of gendarmes and other police, and a National Guard mustering some 10,000, not very zealous, it is. true, in ordinary duties, but capable of easily crushing any concentrated movement by the gangs of starving ruffians who had been murdering carters and policemen from behind orchard-walk and canebrakes? 'The storm without might roar and rustle,' but surely the city itself was safe enough.

A week later the same reports were renewed. If they were not laughed at this time, it was because the jest was stale.

This was on Saturday, the 15th. Next morning, about half-past seven, were heard discharges of musketry, which seemed to have the ring of ball-cartridge; and, on going downstairs, the residents were told that a ‘spezie di rivoluzione' had broken out. So the Republic was no joke after all 1 The bands had entered before daylight, and the firing had disturbed lighter sleepers at a much earlier hour than has been named.

The story will not be intelligible without a plan, or such poor substitute as can be given in words. (See p. 106.)

Palermo lies on the west side of its bay, forming nearly a rectangle, of which one of the shorter sides follows the shore. From Porta Felice, at the middle of this seaward face, the Toledo, a handsome street, straight as an arrow, runs westward (or more nearly south westward) with a gradual rise through the city for nearly a mile and a half, its long vista terminating in the middle of the landward face at Porta Nuova, a gate standing e F in close contact with the royal palace.

This fast is a heterogeneous cluster of buildings of all ages, from the lofty Saracenic donjon of King Roger to the pastry-cook's Gothic of the later Bourbon, and having on its front towards the city a vast open square, called Piazza Reale.

Another street, similar to the Toledo, but somewhat inferior in length and character, crosses it at right angles in the heart of the city, where the intersection is formed iato a handsome architectural circus, adorned with fountains and statues of the Spanish kings, known as the Quattro Cantoni.

The street itself is called Maqueda, and runs from Porta Maqueda, at the north, to Porta S. Antonino, at the south. At the Quattro Cantoni is the family residence of Marquis Rudini, the Sindaco or mayor of the city, and within a few yards of it are the Town-hall, the University, the Post-office, and two or three of the great city churches.

In the Toledo, not far from the sea, stands the Palace of the Finanze, a huge block of building, containing the Bank and public Treasury, and facing an irregular square, called Piazza Marina.

On a promontory jutting into the sea, at the north-east angle of the city, is the Castellamare, an old Spanish fortress, partially dismantled by the. popular rage in 1860. Beyond this to the north, a straggling 'longshore suburb (the Borgo) leads first to the Vicaria or Great Gaol, a group of buildings on the radiating system, enclosed in a polygonal wall with parapets and bastions, and further on to the shipping port and Mole.

The points which it was essential to keep out of insurgent bands were thus numerous and scattered. The castle contained a considerable store of small-arms and ammunition; the Finanze held some 1,360,0001. sterling in bullion; the Palace was the headquarters of authority, actual and symbolical, with considerable facilities for defence; the Town-hall and Quattro Cantoni were points to hold, not only on account of the importance of the former as the centre of urban authority and a depository of archives, but as constituting with the buildings about them a position of the greatest military weight in the command of the town. As long as this was properly held, the communication of the palace with the sea and the castle could scarcely be cut off. But the security of the gaol was perhaps the most important of all, containing as it did on the 16th September some 2500 criminals, accused or convicted, who on its fall would bave been let loose like wild beasts upon the city. For the first two or three days of the insurrection, the fall of the gaol was the most serious ground of apprehension to reasonable people.

The whole number of troops in the province of Palermo was about 3000, of whom more than two-thirds were in and about the city. Of these the main body, amounting to some 1600, ((*) was at or immediately after the outbreak concentrated at the Royal Palace and square; two companies were at the gaol, with as many more at a barrack beyond it, a like number at the castle, and some thirty-five men only at the Finanze. Besides these troops, which were nearly all, as we have said, raw levies, there were some 400 or 500 polite of sorts, including a number of carabineers (i. e. gendarmes).

About an hour after midnight musketry had been heard in the direction of Monreale, four miles west of the city, and somewhat later towards Porazzi, a suburb lying south-west of the Palace; but the great majority of the citizens knew nothing of this. Towards dawn, however, shots echoed from various parts of the city itself, whilst guards arrived in haste at the Town-hall, reporting the entrance of armed bands, by whom their detachments had been overpowered or driven away. Prefect Torelli might have compared himself to the King of Babylon—' One post did run to meet another, and one messenger to meet another, to show him that his city was taken at one

These bands, by the most trustworthy accounts, did not muster more than 400 men in all; but they were at once joined by others who issued armed from buildings in the city, especially in the north-west quarter, between Via Maqueda and the Carini Gate. Here are several great monasteries, massive structures towering above the other buildings of the city, whilst the streets in that quarter form a vast network of narrow and crooked alleys, peculiarly adapted to defence. The possession of these monasteries was one of the first objects of the bands, if it were not indeed true, as the enemies of the monks and nuns assert, that some of them were already in armed occupation overnight Four of them especially, the Madonna degli Stigmati, close to Porta Maqueda, San Vito, San Giuliano, and the Spirito Santo, formed a sort of rebel Quadrilateral, from which it would have been hard work to dislodge an insurrection better based than this.

The bands as they entered carried red fiags, some of which bore Viva la Repubblica, and some in addition, it is said, a figure of Santa Rosalia, the local diva of Palermo. Some of the men wore red scarves and red nightcaps, and they scattered copies of a proclamation on red paper, containing vague and bombastical denunciations of the monarchy.

There were a few of the National Guard at the headquarters, and a post of the corps at Sta. Anna, near the British consulate. The commandant now ordered the generale (for the assembly of the whole corps) to be beaten from those two points, but very few indeed answered the summons. Along with those few and a small body of miscellaneous armed police, a handful of spirited citizens had by daylight gathered round Marquis Rudini and Camozzi at the Town-hall.

The rebels had meanwhile mastered several detached stations of carabineers and police in different quarters of the city, appropriating the weapons and burning all the documents found in them, and had plundered a large store of second-hand arms in the Via Lattarini. ((*) They speedily appeared at the Town-hall, and commenced a desultory attack upon it, overpowering the small guard at the Post-office, and taking possession of that building. A spirited return to their fire was made from the Town-hall, and for a time the attempt on it was given up.

The Prefect Torelli now joined the defenders, and after procuring half a company of soldiers from the Royal Palace, it was decided to make a sally through the town, with the view of intimidating the insurgents, encouraging the alarmed citizens, and giving the National Guardsmen a new chance of joining their colours, which by this time in many parts of the town would have been scarcely practicable for single individuals in uniform. The Sindaco and Prefect led the party, and they patrolled a considerable part of the city, dispersing small parties of the rebels, and making some prisoners. On approaching the great convent of the Stigmati, however,—a building some ninety feet high, crowned, like many other Palermitan nunneries, by a projecting latticed balcony running round under the cornice,—they were received with a heavy discharge of musketry from this kind of machicoulis, which, though it did no great damage, seems m have been too much for the young soldiers who formed the hulk of the patrol, and the party had to retire. As they did so, passing along a part of the Toledo, the Italian flag was exhibited at every house, and the balconies were crowded with applauding citizens and their families. Not a man, however, was added to the nucleus of the National Guard I Again the poor Prefect might have quoted the words of the prophet:—' The mighty men of Babylon have forborne to fight; they have remained in their holds; their might hath failed; they are become as women ((*)

Still the momentary effect of the sortie was good, and if the military authorities had followed it up by the rapid movement of a column of 500 or 600 men, we believe they might then, or even a few hours later, have hipped the outbreak. They had probably no confidence in their men; but the detached and desultory attempts at action which alone were made were not calculated to give raw soldiers confidence in themselves.

The National Guard of Palermo had never, as a body, been in any tolerable state of organisation or discipline; and, except in the case of the officers and handful of men belonging to it, who accompanied the Sindaco and Prefect on their expedition through the streets, and aided afterwards in the defence of the Town-hall, the National Guard uniform never appeared again till the royal troops were in full possession on the following Saturday. The Commandant and those officers who had done their duty then showed their feeling of the conduct of their brethren, by resigning their commissions, a step which the King's Commissioner immediately followed up by disbanding the corps.

After the return of the sortie it was decided to transfer the municipal headquarters to the Royal Palace, leaving the Townhall in charge of Camozzi with a company of the line and a small force of National Guardo, civil troops of sorts, and a few resolute gentlemen of the city. The Generals in command at Palermo did not show any capacity to deal with such a crisis; and in nothing, we venture to think, was this more clear than in the indifference with which they seem to have regarded the tenure of the Town-hall and the Quattro Cantoni. The position presented considerable facilities for conversion into a strong post, and its importance was immense. Barricading, however, seemed to be regarded as a revolutionary characteristic, and was left, at least till it was too late, to the enemy. That the rebels throughout Sunday were not in any overpowering force, and had by no means thorough command of the town, is shown by the fast that about four in the afternoon a detachment from the Palace was able to relieve an officer of polite, who with a small party had maintained his ground till then at the chief police-station, not far from the Quattro Cantoni. On being relieved the party not only took with them carts carrying several hundred muskets and a quantity of ammunition, but also conveyed to the Palace all the prisoners in charge, thirty-three in number. About noon on Sunday, a traveller visiting the Quattro Cantoni from the side of Porta Felice found it occupied by a small party of soldiers engaged in exchanging occasional shots with the rebels, who were posted in the Maqueda. The Toledo itself, usually almost as full of life as its namesake at Naples, was absolutely bare and deserted from end to end. In other parts of the town the insurgents were seen in frequent squads or straggling parties, moving this way and that in a desultory manner, but nowhere visible in great numbers. To the north a skirmish was witnessed outside the Porta Maqueda, the end of a sharp affair in which a party of soldiers and carabineers had attacked the rebels posted in a terraced garden, called the Villa Filippina, but had to retire with a loss of fifteen killed and wounded.

On Sunday night the tumult grew. Firing from various parts of the city was almost incessant, and from the rendezvous of the rebels at the extramural convent of S. Francesco di Paola, as well as from the churches within the adjoining walls, they kept up a hideous shouting, blowing of horns, and jangling of bells. This ringing of the tocsin, or stormo as they call it, the quick irregular bing—bing—bing—bang, on the bells of a dozen churches at once, and accompanied by constant and prolonged yells, was the most detestable of all the revolutionary noises in that noisy week. Nothing seemed so to realise bell broke loose; it always made the English hearer think of the Big Drum of Diabolus in John Bunyan.

On Monday morning (17th) a steamer arrived from Messina with a battalion of 400 men, but these also conscripts. Instead of reinforcing the gaol, which was now an object of persistent attack, they were marched to the Palace (strange to say without opposition), and so ceased to be of any moment in the suppression of the revolt.

In the suburb of St. Oliva, north of the Maqueda Gate, there is an establishment called the Istituto Militare Garibaldi, from its having been founded by that hero during his Dictatorship in Sicily, and since maintained by the Italian Government as a school for youths aspiring to the non-commissioned ranks. During the Tight the day before, the staff of the Institution had sallied with some of the elder boys to cover the retreat of the soldiers. This had given dire offence to the insurgents, and on Monday forenoon they carne in great numbers to attack the building. These assailants were generally ill-looking fellows in corduroy and velveteen, some of them mere boys, with a mixture of city loafers in shooting-jackets and wideawakes, and one or two apparent leaders of better appearance. A great mass of those who now joined the movement were the same who had risen in 1860 in support of Garibaldi; but it would seem only on the principle that Government in general was a fair target, and Revolution in the abstract a lark that every good fellow was bound to take part in. There was no attempt now to associate Garibaldi's honoured name with the movement. From the enraged crowd that surged about the Istituto and tried to force the gates, there even rose cries of Morte a Garibaldi! provoked doubtless by the title inscribed on the facade. But the like spirit was shown next morning in the sack of the Town-hall, when a fine portrait of the Dictator was torn to rags. The Institute was unprovided with food for its inmates, consisting, besides the staff, of 130 boys, and the Director's feeling of heavy responsibility for the lives of these boys compelled him to parley with the insurgents, who swarmed in constantly increasing numbers, and this resulted in surrender—a bitter moment for the high-spirited officer at the head of the establishment. The whole party were marched off prisoners to the Spirito Santo, whilst a general sack of the building commenced at once. Joining the armed mob which had been active in the assault, flocked, as if dropt from the sky, swarms of human vultures, male and female, to the welcome quarry. The armoury was first pillaged; then clothing stores, beds, mattresses, kitchen-utensils, pictures, looking-glasses, marble slabs, sofas, bureaux, were carried forth in greedy triumph, even to the leaden gaspipes which were excavated from the walls. The only articles left within the bare walls were the school-benches and desks, which remained intact, as if by some just instinct these harpies had judged the School a thing unsafe for them to come irto too dose contact with.

This sack whetted the appetite for plunder, which as yet had not been indulged. The Military Hospital was next attacked. Those who were too late for the spolia opima of the cash-box and stores fell upon the sick-wards, where the beds and mattresses were torn from below the patients. The chapel of the Hospital too was robbed of its silver vessels, the scoundrels who did it not failing to kiss the images and mutter what they called a prayer before leaving.

The same day occurred one of the saddest episodes of the week, but which we have no space to tell at length. A detachment of two companies, summoned by telegraph from Partinico, fell finto a rebel ambuscade as they entered the labyrinth of walled gardens to the north of the city. Knowing nothing of what had occurred, they kept drum and bugles constantly sounding, in the vain hope of attracting aid, which only served to bring the rabble faster to the scene. They fought on gallantly towards the city, but after their brave young leader, Captain Oldani, and nearly two-thirds of the number, had been shot down, the survivors had to surrender.

On Monday afternoon, after capturing the barrack of the city firemen, and in their mad rage destroying a number of valuable fire-engines and other apparatus, the rebels succeeded in gaining the Quattro Cantoni and vented their wrath on the palace of the Marquis Rudini, which was completely sacked and gutted. His wife, a young and beautiful lady of Turin, escaped by a window with a child in her arms. She sought shelter from a neighbour and acquaintance; but the bold Baron would not ' compromise himself' by receiving such a guest, and shut the fiate in her face. She fared better at a much humbler door. ((*)

The Town-hall still held out; but its little garrison were without food since the beginning of the fray, their ammunition was all but spent, and the water had been cut off. About four in the afternoon, too, Captain Bruni, of the Grenadiers, who had been the soul of the defence, whilst in the act of taking aim at a rebel, was killed by a shot from the Post-office. At night the attack slackened for a time, and the party succeeded in making good their retreat to the Palace, Camozzi, good man, carrying with him all the National Guard colours, which he at least had done his best to keep unstained. The insurgents soon took possession and treated the Town-hall as they had treated Rudini's palace, destroying the bulk of the public records—a process which they had been in haste to perform at all the police-offices which fell into their hands, for obvious reasons. The so-called Republican Committee, which had hitherto held its headquarters at the convent of Spirito Santo, now transferred its sittings to the Town-hall.

On Monday also the attacks on the gaol were constantly renewed, and there was great fear that the small garrison there might be overpowered, and a frightful element thus added to the storm. That morning early, in fact, the prisoners were found all dressed and ready to break out, looking for their deliverance as immediate. But though the attacks continued all next day, the arrival of the Tancredi war-steamer from Naples, with a small reinforcement, on Tuesday morning, had rendered the position of the prison greatly more secure. Her arrival also secured the castle, which had been in actual treaty with the insurgents, owing to the want of food, not only for its garrison but for a large number of military prisoners confined in it. All this time nothing was known as to when relief might be expected. It had been supposed that, as a matter of course, the rebels would, like the Pandies in India, have prefaced their entry into the city by the destruction of the telegraph, and it could not, therefore, be calculated when the news of the revolt would have reached the Italian Government. As it proved, the rebels knew their trade but ili. They had cut the wire, indeed, but providentially that was all. A telegraph patrol returning along the line found the wire cut, and tied it. Hence the Prefect was able to communicate with the Government throughout Sunday, and to receive promises of aid. It was not till night that communication ceased and the telegraph was eradicated.

Another doubt, cut off as the residents were from all communication with the outer world, could not but rise sometimes to shake their confidence in speedy relief. Was this movement general in Sicily? Was it not likely to be accompanied by similar movements in Naples, Leghorn, Genoa, Milan? Without such concert how could the maddest fanaticism have looked for success or permanent result?

The numbers of the insurgents continued visibly to swell, especially after Monday, and certainly the increase in numbers improved the average aspect. The convict type of countenance was no longer largely prominent among them, a great proportion being apparently the ordinary bassa gente of the city, workmen, coachmen, facchini, and the like, with a sprinkling of a higher class. Foreigners and persons in plain clothes generally, unless known and obnoxious, circulated freely through the town, at their own risk, of course, from a flying bullet near actual conflict, but otherwise exposed to neither harm nor insult.

On Tuesday forenoon a party of fifty volunteers from the Palace garrison was despatched to communicate with the 'Tancredi,' and endeavoured to make their way by Olivuzza and other suburbs north of the city. The expedition ended in the capture of the whole detachment after a gallant resistance. A converse movement by a body of some 200 infantry from the port, later in the day, met with no better success. On approaching the Piazza of S. Francesco di Paola, in the northern suburb, they carne under a heavy concentrated fire, and were forced after a prolonged contest to retire.

This Piazza was one of the strongest points in the rebel tactics for the resistance of the various attempts at communication between the port and the Palace. The convent of S. Francesco, a large and lofty building, was habitually occupied by the rebels, as well as the terraces of the Villa Filippina in front of it. Six roads met in the Piazza between these, and three of these roads were enfiladed from the Stigmati and other lofty buildings on the city walls. All these buildings and every nook of cover in the converging roads were manned by the rebel musketeers when any attempt on the part of the troops was expected, and as soon as the latter debouched on the Piazza they found themselves exposed to a concentrated hailstorm of musketry from enemies almost invisible.

Such was the case especially on Wednesday. That morning the eyes of all good citizens were gladdened by the sight of a number of new sail in the harbour. These were the wooden frigates of the Italian navy, arrived from Taranto under Rear-Admiral Ribotty in the ironclad ‘Re di Portogallo,' with which he did such good service at Lissa. In the course of the forenoon a force was landed, consisting of 1000 men of the marines and navy, with six little howitzers drawn by hand, to which was added the 24th battalion of Bersaglieri, which had arrived the evening before, the whole being put under the command of Captain Emeric Acton, of the Navy, a member of the well-known Anglo-Neapolitan family of that name.

About 2 P.M. it became evident from the stir among the squadre (as the rebel parties are called by a term of happy impartiality), that something of more than usual moment was brewing. They swarmed like flies, or rather like ants on the destruction of an anthill, running hither and thither after their manner, with shouts of Avanti! Avanti! but gravitating towards the approach from the port, and speedily opening fire in that direction. Soon bugles were heard, and the gravitation of the squadre took the opposite direction, towards their favourite battleground of S. Francesco di Paola. Presently the Bersaglieri appeared, stepping lightly along, followed by the little sailors with their wheelbarrow howitzers. Such material had a very different aspect from that of the poor conscripts who had hitherto been the chief representatives of loyalty, and a speedy decision of the day was expected. Presently, as the troops debouched before the Convent of S. Francesco, and faced that concentrated fire of which we have spoken, the musketry became very heavy—'la musica cominciò ad esser solenne,' as an officer of the Bersaglieri described it—and the bass of the howitzers soon joined in. This went on for half an hour or more, but the fire continued stationary, which was ominous for the attacking party. Their ammunition, it was said, was expended; anyhow, before long they passed in full retreat, and the squadre swarmed forward again after their manner. The troops on this occasion lost some fifty in killed and wounded. It was also, we believe, in the early part of this advance from the port that Salvatore Miceli of Monreale, one of the most prominent and trusted(,) leaders of the squadre, was mortally wounded. He had beert active in a like position on the revolutionary side in 1848; but after that event the Bourbon Government, in accordance with its usual principles, whilst excluding from amnesty men like Settimo and Stabile, who would have been an honour to any country, pardoned Miceli and other brigand leaders, making them Capitani d'arme; and since then he had been Bourbonist.

Since the arrival of the ' Tancredi ' shells had fallen at pretty-frequent intervals, for which the steeple of San Francesco appeared to be a favourite mark; and the gallant admiral's resentment for the rebuff of Wednesday seemed to express itself in to considerable augmentation of this kind of fire. The projectiles thrown were chiefly cylindro-conical howitzer shells of the. calibre of a quart bottle, quite sufficient to pierce ordinary walls and to kill a room-full of ordinary people. Not a few walls were pierced, but the houses that chiefly suffered were those of the captains and Scotch engineers of Florio's Steamboat Company, neither class being, we should suppose, violent sympathizers with the insurrection. We understand that the admiral had instructions to subject Palermo to regular bombardment, should(,) it prove that the city en masse participated in the revolt. If so, it was a happy circumstance for King Victor Emanuel as welt as for Palermo that there was no occasion to carry out such a' measure, one that, under the circumstances, would have been, utterly unjustifiable, as it could not have accelerated the suppression of the revolt by more than a day or two, whilst it would(,) have rendered the return of loyal feeling for generations impossible, and would have dragged the name of the Re Galantuomo down almost to a level with that of the Bombas whom he has superseded.

The mere arrival of the fleet had already made the rebel leaders quake, and that morning two of them, Minecci and Nobile, had prevailed upon the Marquis Torrearsa and Prince Monteleone tv accompany them to the French Consul, and to seek his mediation with the authorities for terms. On the ground on which this proposal was put by the two nobles, the desire to save the city, on the one hand from general sack, on the other from: general bombardment, the Consul after some hesitation agreed to write a letter to the authorities in the Palace asking for an interview. But the success of the rebels in beating off the troops,the same afternoon probably raised their spirits, and for some clays they made no attempt to use this letter.

On Thursday the shelling continued, but otherwise no movement was made by either party, except a successful one from the fleet to provision and strengthen the little party which had held out at the Finanze in sore difficulties for food. Water they had got by digging a well in one of the courts. The attacks on the Finanze had never been vigorous, insomuch that an idea prevailed that the rebel leaders did not desire to gain that point too soon. A promiscuous sack of the bank might have altogether, disorganised their followers, and would in any case have deprived the leaders of a great fumi for the execution of their Revolutionary programme,—if programme there were.

Not only the main streets, but all the alleys and byways had by this time been barricaded at intervals with the huge cutstone 'blocks which form the pavement of Palermo. The Maqueda, being since the fall of the Quattro Cantoni in complete possession of the rebels, was now thronged with people, but no shops vere open except at very rare intervals a petty fruit shop or an extemporised butcher's stall. The Toledo alone remained solitary. and deserted, being swept by the field-pieces of the Palace garrison, who had now erected a barricade at the head of the street. Rebel barricades traversed the street at intervals where byways debouched, in order to give safe passage across this line of fire. The Convent of Spirito Santo, in which were confined the mass of the prisoners taken by the rebels could be freely visited. The number was large, consisting of soldiers and gendarmes, as well as the boys of the Istituto and their officers. The porter's lodge of the convent was occupied by a ragamuffin guard, and large numbers of the squadre were flocking in and out, and swarmed in the street before the gate. But there was no hindrance or search at entrance or exit; necessaries fbr friends were freely carried in and letters from them carried out. At the Porta Maqueda was to be seen a migration en masse of the inhabitants of the northern suburb, carrying on their backs their household goods, chiefly mattresses and maccaroni, to seek shelter 'within the walls from such military attentions as had been experienced the day before; and the St. Oliva hotel was crammed with decent neighbours of various degrees, six or eight in a room, besides unlimited numbers in kitchen and outhouses, who fancied themselves safer there than in their own dwellings. The chief source of their alarm was the soldiery; apprehensions derived from memories of the acts of the Neapolitan troops, when at any time in former outbreaks they had the upper hand. By Friday morning a substantial force had at length arrived under General Angioletti. Rumours of this had reached the Palermitans, who from an early hour expected to see the troops advance by the old line. The matter, however, was better managed. The first essential continued to be the relief of the

Palace garrison, which was believed to be in great strait, and which in fact had been obliged to slaughter horses for food. The bulk of the new force, consisting of the 31st Bersaglieri, three battalions of the line, and a section of light marine artillery, under the command of Major-general Masi, a bright and versatile soldier of revolutionary experience, started on this expedition at daybreak, making a judicious circuit far to the north of the town, and so avoiding the dangerous passages in the vicinity of S. Francesco di Paola, and the city walls and convents. The rebels, however, were by no means asleep, and for half the way nearly every step had to be contested. In fact, the advance over a distance of about four miles occupied five hours. It was, however, thoroughly well conducted by General Masi, with somewhat less loss than the unsuccessful attempt of Captain Acton's brigade on Wednesday had cost. By eleven o'clock he entered the Porta Nuova at the west end of the city, and was welcomed as a deliverer by the beleaguered inmates of the Palace. And as the whole of his line of march had been occupied by detachments from the brigade, convoys were immediately despatched to bring up provisions. Meanwhile the senior officer, Genera/ Angioletti, had been distracting the attention of the rebels by desultory attacks towards the Porta Maqueda, and by noon succeeded in occupying the Convent of S. Francesco. One of the attacks on the Maqueda barricades, led by the brave Major Brunetta d'Usseaux of the 24th Bersaglieri, was made in such gallant style, that with a small following of some sixty of his men—who had not heard (or chosen to hear) the halt sounded from behind—be swept the Maqueda and Toledo with their numerous barricades, and reached the Palace about two hours after Masi had entered from the opposite quarter. The rebel squadre, however, closed in upon his rear, and reoccupied the barricades of the Maqueda where they held their ground till nightfall. Masi was not the man to content himself with the day's success already won. The same evening he put himself at the head of two companies of Bersaglieri, and made a dash down the Toledo, destroying a wooden barricade at the Quattro Cantoni, and a great curtain of church draperies which had been stretched across the street to intercept the view between the Palace and the Harbour, and recapturing the Town-hall.

Their unexpected appearance in that quarter scattered a procession of the insurgent sympathisers seeking the intervention of the loyal saints.

Though Masi was not in force enough to bold the Town-hall, and thus Friday night found no positions held by the troops within the city, which had not been held all through the week, the final blow had really been struck. The rebel chiefs now bethought themselves of the French Consul's letter, and sent it in by one of the captured officers. The result was that the Consul was roused in the middle of the night with an invitation to betake himself to the Palace, and after running some considerable risk at the hands of the loyal vedettes, and with difficulty overcoming the inappropriate proposals of their officers that he should be blindfolded as a rebel parlementaire, he did have an interview with the generals, but of course it led to nothing. The Insurrection was now at the mercy of the generals, and its leaders had nothing to offer. The greater part of the squadre absconded before morning, or hid their arms, and put on such aspect of innocents as was practicable.

Next morning there was some desultory fighting, but the troops from the Palace and the large additional forces that had been dropping in since Friday morning speedily occupied the town. Between ten and eleven was circulated the welcome news La Pace.1 the restraint which the troops had since the preceding morning put upon every one's movements ceased, and the city could be freely viewed. The demolition of barricades had already commenced; troops were at every corner; Italian flags at every window; banda marched playing down the Toledo, and were applauded from the balconies with Viva l'Italia and clapping of hands. National Guards—now!—were turning out in their bravery, and some wearing epaulettes in that body were pointed out as having taken part in the insurrection. Nevertheless there could be no mistake as to the general sense of relief and satisfaction. Whatever discontent existed, few indeed of the better class of citizens could have rejoiced in such days as these six that had been gone through. At the British Consulate the fiate was still closed and barred, in ignorance of the turn that events had taken; and the welcome intelligence had to be imparted, not only to our venerable Consul, but to some two hundred persons who had taken refuge in his court and on his staircase. The latter was so crowded with families, who seemed to have spent the night there,, that it was difficult to pass. One aged and helpless gentleman had been carried in on his mattress—like the Paralytic in the Gospel—and laid upon the landing. When it was announced that the disorder was over and that all might safely go home, the old man seized the speaker's hand and showered benedictions on his head as if he had wrought the change; asking if he were not the Ammiraglio Inglese!

We are not sure that the old man did not think a British fleet had arrived to extinguish the civil strife by a declaration of Sicilian independence. There is no doubt that many of the rebels had a vague expectation of some such interference, derived from old experience of British sympathies in former revolutionary movements; the mass of them entertaining, as we have said, no notion of any distinction in principle or circumstances between the late movement and those of Bourbon days. When the Italian squadron appeared in the offing on Wednesday morning the general belief was that the British fleet had really come. Oddly enough, almost simultaneously with the announcement over Europe of the Palermo revolt was published a telegram mentioning the departure of the British fleet from Patras for Palermo; an announcement speedily converted by part of the French press into an assertion that the British fleet had been present before and throughout the émeute, on which assumption towers of falsehood were built as to the complicity of ‘perfide Albion’ in the plot. Under these circumstances perhaps it is as well, with a view to clearing the minds of the Italian people from absurd suspicions of a country that never has shown anything but hearty goodwill to their cause, that the assumption should have admitted of total and flat refutation. Still, some thought it rather hard during the week that there was no Ammiraglio Inglese, nor even a British gunboat, to give some protection to British subjects in case things had run to worse extremes.

The announcement to the good folks on the consular staircase was a little premature, for on passing towards the Gancia convent some dropping shots were heard in front, and a few of the heroes in velveteen, musket in hand, were seen peeping round corners in the old fashion. The shots carne from some desperadoes who had taken up a position on the roof of the Gancia, and killed and wounded four men in the Piazza Marina. They were the last shots fired in the city. And so ended the Week's Republic. General Raphael Cadorna had arrived with full powers civil and military, as Commander of the Forces in Sicily and Royal Commissioner for the province of Palermo. Martial law was proclaimed next day; some executions took place immediately; no statement on the subject has ever been published, but we believe they were not numerous; and soon afterwards three standing courts martial were instituted.

We have seen that the number of insurgents who originally entered the city on the morning of the 16th did not exceed four hundred. How many they found in armed readiness to welcome them it is impossible to say, but by next morning the number had probably swollen to five thousand or six thousand, and by Thursday (when their force was at a maximum) to three times as many. The loss on the rebel side has never been estimated; we suspect it was considerably less than that on the side of law. Among the regular troops engaged at Palermo, including carabineers, but not including other polite, private citizens, or detachments of the army away from the city, the loss was three hundred and thirty-two in killed and wounded. No return has been made of the other losses, but the Prefect estimates the total of casualties of all classes on the loyal side at about six hundred, of whom half were killed.

Little can be said for the leadership on either side. The rebels never showed any dash in attack, though they seemed to have a good deal of instinctive skill and persistence in the use of such positions for defence as that of S. Francesco di Paola. They appeared to have no one leader in whom they had confidence, and to whom they looked up. One of their, great objects in attacking the gaol was the release of Badia, the ringleader of a movement in the preceding year, whom they destined for their captain. Such chiefs as they had were men of little note and less character—Miceli of Monreale, Nobile and Bonafede, the one a dealer in cards, the other an avvocato, professing republicanism, and two brothers of the name of Minecci, hotheaded young men of some pretension to education, whose family had suffered by the fall of the Bourbons.

On the other side, the two Generals, as in some parallel instances in the Indian mutiny, though men of fair military reputation, who probably would have conducted themselves more creditably in a regular campaign, certainly showed no more capacity to deal with such an outbreak than if it had been' a crater that had burst out in the Piazza Reale. Even in the defence and provisioning of the Palace nearly every initiative and indication of energy appears to have come from the Prefect Torelli or other civilians it is moreover distinctly asserted by Marquis Rudini that the Generals entertained the idea of possible surrender, whilst the Prefect would not hear such a thing named. ((*)

Torelli was greatly to blame in his refusal to listen to warnings of the coming calamity, but after it had broken out he, as well as Rudini, behaved admirably.

The insurgent leaders, sensible of their own want of weight, sought the association of more influential names. Five proclamations were issued by them during the week, but from no one of these could the slightest indication of the bearing and object of the revolt be gathered. The last of these, issued on the morning of the 21st, purported to bear the signature of the Prince Linguagrossa as president, and also those of the Princes Monteleone, Niscemi, Rammacca, Galati, San Vicenzo, of the Barons Riso and Sutera, of Monsignor Bellavia, Dr. di Benedetto and Francesco Bonafede, as members of the provisional committee of government. All these last except Bonafede wrote to deny the genuineness of the signatures. There is no doubt that they were conducted to the Town-hall on the 19th instant bon gré mal gré, and compelled to sit there a while as the ostensible committee of the revolutionary government. It is stated that Marquis Torrearsa, Senator of the kingdom, was also carried to the place of meeting, but he told the rebels his view of their proceedings with such great plainness of speech that they thought better of it and sent him home again. These nobles were left unmolested fill the middle of November, when an order arrived from Florence for their arrest and trial. Till the latter take place we cannot say whether grounds exist for supposing any of them to have been voluntarily implicated in the affair.

Beyond Palermo the only towns or villages which were mastered by the outlaws were Monreale, Misilmeri, ((*) Parco, and Campo Felice. Some ruthless massacres of police and other loyal persons took place in several of these places, whilst horrible stories have been related of quasi-cannibal savagery committed by the insurgents in Monreale and Misilmeri, which General Cadorna made haste to authenticate, so far as he could, by repeating them in oflicial reports. It is evident from Torelli's calmer narrative that he was not prepared to accept them, and till evidence be adduced we must be glad to doubt, or at least to suspend belief in the truth of these stories, knowing how fertile in fictitious horrors such a time of excitement is. Aimless and unjustifiable revolt, such as this was, of course involves many crimes; but it is only fair to say that there was surprisingly little in the conduct of the insurgents in the city that could fairly be called atrocity. Well informed people heard there of no slaughter of men not engaged in armed contest with the rebels.

As to what might have been—must have been—had the rabble been two days longer in secure possession of the city, we need not speculate; but as a matter of fact, pillage was confined to certain public establishments and to the houses of two or three obnoxious individuals, besides those of the Sindaco.

There were also, it is said, some cases of componends or extortion of sums for exemption from maltreatment. But the captured officers and soldiers were generally treated with decency, and even with civility; and so also, more surprising to relate, were the captured police and municipal guards, the instruments of the hated dazio. These very facts go far to prove that whatever popular discontent existed, however skilfully the agents of mischief had irritated the popular grievances, reasonable and unreasonable, and whatever violence of language they succeeded in exciting, there was really no such deep and bitter feeling of hatred to the Government and its agents as had rankled in other days.

The Government through its representative, General Cadorna, hastened to accuse the monks and nuns as a body of being the chief promoters and active accomplices of the movement. It is not to be supposed that the convents entertained any great loyalty to the Government which had just decreed their abolition, but the haste with which the charge was brought, the flimsy nature of several of the grounds on which it was based, the unbecoming style in which the Commissioner addressed the aged and failing Archbishop on the subject, and the handle made of the charge in precipitating the execution of the Act for the Suppression of the Convents, made a painful impression on the public mind, and tended to produce a strong feeling that all this was the result of a foregone conclusion gladly turned to a convenient purpose, rather than a solemn judgment on the facts. A number of the people, in fact, took up the notion that the émeute had been left to take its course in order that the Government might in this way be able to give the convents the coup de grdce. We have no intention bere of expressing a judgment, for no evidence one way or the other has yet been published. We cannot consider as such General Cadorna's repeated insistence that the convents were the chief fortresses of the insurrection, since the motive for so occupying the largest, strongest, and most commanding buildings in the city is self-evident. But we must give a few examples of his other statements. He says ((*) that the White Benedictines on the morning of the 21st were seen from the Palace firing on the troops.

Torelli, the Prefect, who was in the Palace at the time, only ventures to say that from the observatory [on the top of the Palace a very clear view could be had even at great distances, and from thence was semi, in a houseful of insurgents, a White Benedictine in the midst of them, and egging them on.

Cadorna declares that the monks of San Antonino cast a dying man; a mortally wounded carabineer, upon a blazing pile. The Amico del Popolo, one of the democratic journals most hostile to the monks, states, in a full narrative of the case, that it was a body which had been lying dead for two days at their door, and which was becoming desperately offensive, that the monks burned, after the squadre had prevented their burying it. General Cadorna says again, 'The nuns of Santa Maria Nuova, opposite the Archbishop's Palace, carne out accompanied by hordes of ruffians, and were escorted to San Vito safe and sound.' Probably; and we know also that the pupils of the Military Institute with their officers carne out accompanied by hordes of ruffians, and were escorted to Spirito Santo safe and sound.' Were they also in league with the squadre therefore?

We care nothing about monkery, or about monks and nuns, except as men and women; but we do care about truth and justice and the good name of the Italian Government. If the charges were true, the course of wisdom, dignity and statesmanship would have been, not to rush to hasty denunciations as General Cadorna did, in the style of a partisan newspaper writer, but solemnly to establish the facts in the face of Europe, and bring home the guilt to Rome and her brood in damning evidence.

As yet, little, progress has been made in laying the foundations of order in this unhappy province, which since the insurrection has been ravaged also by cholera. There are 25,000 troops or more within its bounds; thousands of arrests have been made, and indeed the arrested have flocked in faster than the patient courts martial could dispose of cases; but malandrinaggio still holds up its front unabashed in almost daily outrage. And so little has confidence entered the public mind that for two assigned Sundays since the outbreak (27th October and 4th November) the old warning rumours have spread, and the bassa gente have flocked to the markets in the face of the astonished continental generals, to lay in stores against the expected renewal of the Week of Saturnalia; whilst some good people were to be seen bearing their household goods from the country to seek safety in the city, and others from the city went out to pass the night on the stony lap of Monte Pellegrino.

Before proceeding, with the aid indicated near the beginning M this article, to illustrate the causes which paved the way for such an event as the Week's Anarchy of Palermo, we ought briefly to characterize the various parties which exist in the province.

The chief of these are four, viz., the Avanzati, or party of action, republican more or less decidedly in its principles, and to which belong not only the Trades Unions, but a large proportion also of the educated or half educated youth of the city; the Autonomists, whose symbol is the independence of Sicily under whatever form of government; the Bourbonists, Clericale and Reactionaries, colours of opinion by no means always identified in Sicily, but which now can scarcely be separated; and the Moderati, or steady supporters of the Italian Government, to which all the others are in practical hostility. But again, somewhere between the Moderates and the Autonomists we must place the Regioniets, a party including doubtless some scarcely distinguishable from Autonomists, but also others, thoughtful and patriotic men, as strongly attached as any to the Italian monarchy, but who think large scope should be given to local peculiarities in determining the forms of administration for different regions of Italy. Bourbonism, which had scarcely any disinterested followers in Sicily, may be conceived as generally trying to find a key to the hearts of the Sicilians in the profession of Autonomism, Further, the party of action has of late years been subject to a schism, in which one section of it, rabid for active mischief, has joined hands with Bourbonists and brigands, whilst the other and more reputable section, though almost always busy in agitation and abuse of the Government except when in alarm at the outrages of the ultras, continues to repudiate physical force and to profess adherence, at least for the present, to the monarchy—

The very geographical position of Sicily has promoted the growth of a revolutionary tendency which its rulers should never forget… The independence of the island has always been the cherished desire of her people, and the ambition of her most eminent sons; yet it is an object that has never been attainable. The whole history of Bourbon ride is that of a struggle between a people resolved at all costa to have a government of their own, and a dynasty which regarded the island merely as a family appanage. The sentiment of independence carne to a climax in 1848; when the Sicilian parliament declared the forfeiture of the Bourbons, and it seemed to find an Euthanasia in 1860, when Sicily fell cordially into the grand march of the Italian revolution, which claimed to absorb and end all those petty and partial movements, incapable of vital and durable results. Yet the new rulers, like the old, but with less excuse, have gone on their way blindfold, and have never taken the trouble to study Sicily, to guide the process of transition, or to impart the new sentiment of Italian nationality in place of the old one of Sicilian independence. And thus the old revolutionary spirit has never died out.—Anarchia di Palermo, &c.

Though some have called the September outbreak a mere piece of brigandage, there can be no question that the intention of the promoters was revolutionary. Their error did not lie in the fashion of the conspiracy nor in the means they used, but in imagining that the mighty machine of revolution could be set a-going at their pleasure, and that the ili humour diffused by the mistakes and necessities of the Government had power enough to work it. The means which they employed however were the same that have been adopted in all the Sicilian Revolutionary movements. None such have ever been carried through without the participation of the Malandrino or brigand. This was the old instrument; and in September there were the old incidents, except that one of the appearance of the British squadron, for which the insurgents looked in vain. But as of old, there was destruction of courthouses and judicial records; sack of public establishments, attacks on the palate, the town-hall, the bank, the prisons, occupation of the great convents, participation, to whatever extent, of monks and nuns, processions of images of saints mixed up with, all sorts of blasphemy and profanation; in the first stages abstinence from promiscuous robbery, and slaughter only of some representatives of obnoxious authority, but to be succeeded in all probability by general pillage and vindictive assassinations; and amidst all this some sembiance of a Provisional Government set up:—

In such cases, if the political element concerned has any noble moral basis, the brigand element becomes in some measure ennobled too, and its acta of violence kept within narrow bounds, or they are forgotten in the magnitude of the results, and we hear only of the majesty of the popular movement. But if the political element be a false or fantastic one, the attempt has no solid foundation, and the result is mere anarchy. The Malandrino element remains pur et simple, with nothing to restrain or ennoble it. We have no longer Ruggiero Settimo the patriot statesman, or Garibaldi the patriot hero "wielding at will the fierce democracy " of Palermo, but in their place Miceli or Badia, ringleader of ruffians. The very people of 1820, or of 1848, or of 1860, is no longer worthy of the name of a people; it is a mob, "a rabble of wild beasts whom humanity blushes to own," to use the words of local newspaper writers, who have never yet blushed for the daily ribaldry with which for years they have deliberately set themselves to corrupt all political morality in the conscience of that people.—Anarchia di Palermo, &c.

Assuming then that the movement had a political aim, what was its political character?

With cries of Viva la Repubblica the insurgents paraded the real flag as the symbol before which the kingdom of Italy was to fail like the walls of Jericho before the trumpets of Joshua. But round that symbol were twined the Bourbon lilies and the name of Francesco II., and about it were gathered Clericale, 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 staff. 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 lifelong 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 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 t 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 religione orders' (it is a Catholic who speaks, a sincere but liberal one), ' have roots deeply entwined in the strutture of Catholic society as it exists in Italy, but more particularly in Sicily; and whilst Italy remains Catholic, the clergy must always continue te 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 morta disorganisation...

The powers that be have treated the clergy as enemies; 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, &e.

Bourbonism was a chief element in the movement; for as on one 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 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 well-being 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 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 who]e 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 letter to Ricasoli (October 11(th)):

“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 beat 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 pardon 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 their government. Every occasion, however trifling, was seized as an occasion for agitation; all the greedy passione 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 ali 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 encumbrance 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 dose 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 carne to be looked on as a stratagem of Italian aggrandisement.’—Anarchia di Palermo, &e.

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 imposes, Antonomist and Republican, the ruling spirit of the Liberal presa and the Liberal associations, whilst the small part of the presa which professed to maintain the United Monarchy was paltry, vacillating, and without popularity or influence. The National Guard was deeply tainted with the same characteristics. The seditious spirit of the Press spread to the masses, especially in Palermo; the operatives there became chiefly disciples of the Republicans, whilst the peasantry held more by the monastic orders, which are always Autonomist. On the one hand the Press strove hard to inoculate the people with virulent hatred of everything that represented religion, whilst on the other, the basest vulgar superstitions were fostered in preference to that faith which purifies the heart:—Ibid. ((*)

Such were the fruits of the pro-dictatorship which should have prepared the soil in Sicily for the reception of the King's Government. When it came to an end the ground was left rank not only with the numberless weeds which the old rule had bequeathed, but also with those which the pro-dictatorship had planted or revived; and the Italian Government had the eradication of both crops to take in hand. The time that should have been seized to deal with this task, one that needed no small amount of sagacity, vigour, and pertinacity, was lost in endless changes of the form and personnel of the local government; and none of these forms or persons sped better than the pro-dictatorship in resolving the pressing questions of practical administration.

The primary one of public security had been solved under the Bourbons by the notorious Manescalchi, after a fashion indeed characteristic of the dynasty, but still with such effect that life and property were in great measure protected; whilst under Italian Government, in its various phases, the degree of protection they have enjoyed has been something too deplorable to dwell on. Things had come to such a pitch that in the season preceding the outbreak it was often said in Palermo, Better Manescalchi back again than these bunglers. The revolution, to be sure, was not made for the sake of better public security. But, as surely, it was not expected that the first fruits of that great event would be the entire privation of such security.

“The fact is that the Italian Government, whilst accepting the Revolution, and owing its position to the Revolution, has never attempted to guide that movement in its course and necessary consequences, but in shrinking from such a task has left it in the hands of the enemies, or false friends, of the United Monarchy, or has allowed individual caprices to make child splay of the internal administration, and has subjected itself to be drawn hither and thither like a ship without a rudder…

Though the States which the Revolution united were all Italian, they were made up of communities whose nature, temper, necessities, and institutions varied greatly. No serious attempt has been made to study these varying necessities, institutions, and habits, to guide the introduction of the new institutions among them, or to consider the manner in which these new institutions would affect them. All that has been done has been to pour out these last upon their heads, more like a deluge of wrath than like a benignant dew:—

To this add constant changes in all the departments of administration, often violent and contradictory, and in matters of no pressing moment, suggested by individual theories, not by political urgency. Naturally most of these changes worked badly, and so of course new changes followed.

This kind of action has applied more or less to all the provinces of Italy, but above all to Sicily. The province which perhaps presented most peculiarities and required most study has had the least, and thus has continued to be the most difficult to rule, the most incorrigible, the most dangerous, the headquarters of dissatisfaction and disaffection.

No proof of ignorance could be more flagrant than the state in which the Government left the island before the outbreak of September.

A good deal has since been written about the malandrinaggio of the province, and about the National Guard of Palermo. But if the Government knew the state of these matters how could it dare to leave the province stript of troops as it did? Three or four battalions of effettive soldiers would have made all the difference; one such, in fact, would have sufficed to cut short the outbreak the first day.

If the Government did not know these things, what did it know about governing the island? They must needs wait for a flagrant outbreak, and then indeed there was hurry-skurry, despatch of armies, ironclads, bombshells, and martial law. Could anything indicate administrative incapacity more seriously than that a great city of the kingdom of Italy should have been brought to need such deplorable extremities?

It is nonsense to lay all this load of incapacity on the shoulders of Torelli and Pinna. Both of these were personally men of respectable capacity, but in their day carne to a climax that administrative inaptitude which had become systematic throughout the whole direction of affairs in Sicily…

If ever, by good luck, a man carne to Sicily who had a special faculty for understanding it, and gradually bringing back its affections to the King's Government, by some ill luck before long he was aure to be hurried away again as if he had been a public scourge.

Thus, for example, when the Marquis Gualterio had just entered on his difficult task with rare promise and sagacity, the hopes excited were cut short by his removal, which seemed to be ordered on the part of Government with no more seruple than if they had been changing an office copyist.

A country so peculiar as Sicily can never be understood or rationally governed under this constant change of rulers. How is it possible even to enter on a task so full of thorns, with the constant expectation of removal hanging over one's head? Howe is it possible that the political training which Sicily needs so sorely can advance under such a system? —Ibid.

The general result of what has been said is, that it is a mistake to attribute the week's anarchy at Palermo to such matters as Bourbonism, Clericalism, Republicanism, and so forth, as causes. The fact that these elements possessed any force to dispute with one another the preference of the people, and the small display of active loyalty in resisting them, only show that the King's Government had lost the popular confidence and respect: the result, in great part, of enduring mismanagement in the administration.

The writer whom we have so largely quoted concludes by making certain suggestions towards the reform of that Inettitudine Governativa which has to answer for so much mischief in Sicily. With some of these, touching the defects of the Parliament itself, we need not meddle.

But, he aptly observes, what might not the eight and forty Sicilian representatives effect for the island, if they were to lay aside their party dissensions and individual crotchets and act in combination on all questions affecting the island, bringing to bear on them that practical knowledge which they possess, or ought to possess? What they do now, Heaven knows! but it is anything but this.

A main cause, however, of the absence of intelligent, consistent, and apt administration in Sicily appears to have been the introduction of ari exaggerated system of centralised rule after the French pattern, which could nowhere be more completely out of place than in its application to Italy as a whole, at least for the next half century, probably for all time.

The capital of Italy will soon, we trust, be a closed question but whether that capital be Rome: or Florence, it is never likely to
grow to monstrous proportions, or to become the one dominant centre and influence, the heart and brain of the country, such as Paris is to France. Italy, it is probable, and it is to be hoped, will always possess a plurality of nervous centres, and find her strength and peculiar life in so doing.

The misapplication of the centralising system, with its tendency to mechanical uniformity, to the constant shifting of officials, to continual change of rules which have scarcely time to be known before they are superseded, and to the obliteration of local institutions without any ground in economy or use, but only in a passion for barren uniformity, not only keeps up a constant irritation, but leaves everything undone for the development of local life and activity, which Sicily so much needs, and of which it has such vast capabilities.

Manufactures are insignificant; agriculture, for which the island was once so famous, is in its rudest state; commerce is scanty, considering the capacity of the island; there is little growth in proportion to what is taking place elsewhere; and the present course of administration does scarcely anything to develope these. Nothing would so much stimulate life in the island as the completion of three or four lines of railway. One, indeed, is on the point of being opened between Messina and Catania; but on the Palermo side the only result of five years' work is an easy section of twenty-four miles, the further prosecution of which has been suspended since the war began.

Such backwardness could scarcely have occurred had the province been administered by men who had had time as well as capacity to know and understand the necessities of their charge, and, from their knowledge, weight to carry its requirements to accomplishment.

A Government is wanted with a power of initiative which the present system will never afford.

It needs not only men of capacity, but that they should hold office for a term of years and have considerable discretionary powers. Service in Sicily, no doubt, is distasteful, from causes obvious enough to those who have read this paper, as well as from others; but inducements must be found, from interest or ambition, to overcome this distaste. We believe we should indicate the sort of government that Sicily wants tolerably well to Englishmen who know anything of India, by saying that it should be treated in great measure as a non-regulation province.

Rudini, the gallant and outspoken Sindaco, in his letter to Baron Ricasoli of 11th October, after saying that the local administration itself must not be omitted from among the causes of the insurrection, proceeds: And I must say frankly, that many grave and respectable people begin to doubt if there has ever been anything deserving to be called a local Government in Palermo at all.

I cannot charge my memory with all the names of those who have successively administered the province in the course of six years; these perpetual changes have stamped the Government with a character of weakness and inconstancy.

We have endeavoured to ascertain accurately the number of changes which the Sindaco's memory failed to carry. Between the assumption of the Dictatorship by Garibaldi in May, 1860, and the entrance of Cadorna as Royal Commissioner in September, 1866, the province of Palermo has had just seventeen chief rulers, so that the average duration of rule has been less than four months and a half.

Is it needful to say any more—we might almost ask, Was it needful to say anything but this—ta account for the disorganisation of the province? (*)

NOTE

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