'Bientôt la dépense des ministères fut commandée sous la désignation de budgets, avec les annotations propres à éclairer l'emploi des déniers publics. . . . Le roi soutenait (chose dont il y a bien des témoins) avec une sagacité merveilleuse les réformes les plus raisonnables, comme si les finances avaient été l'études de sa jeunesse. Avec les vrais principes de la matière, il fit bientôt que les dépenses ne dépassassent jamais les moyens, et surtout qu'ils ne fussent employés à des futiles dissipations.' (P. 72.)

6

Now here budgets' is a blunder, and an absurdity applied to 'la dépense' only; 'denier' has no accent; 'l'études' is a discordance, and des futiles' is an error, instead of de. We mark only such errors as no French printer would commit. • Les 'annotations' and the soutenait' are both Italianisms, and not French, in the sense here used. In the next page we find in two lines agravant' instead of aggravant,' 'privilége' instead of privilège,' and 'rabaissa le tariff,' which is not a French but a purely Italian phrase. It is still more amusing to see Lord Minto repeatedly called Sa Grace,' as are also Lord Palmerston and Lord Mount-Edgecumbe, who is sometimes designated as Lord Mounth-Edgecumbe, and sometimes as Lord Edgecumbe; the Duke of Wellington per contrà being only Lord Wellington. Sir H. Bulwer and Admiral Parker are both Lords; the Whigs' are Wighs;' Lord Lansdowne is repeatedly Landsdowne;' and so on. The following passage is decisive on the point of Irish authorship. O'Raredon, speaking of the sulphur question, informs us, that Notre Attorney and Sollicitor-General lui-même se prononça pour le roi des deux Siciles.' (P. 236.) The authors of this wretched performance are a M. Cantalupo and one Peter Ulloa. Peter, we are told, is a judge; nothing more likely, that being the body of men which seems to have at Naples an inexhaustible stock of taletellers and forgerers. The original contriver of all this has been, we are informed, the famous, or infamous Peccheneda, Director of Police, than whom no man, even at Naples, has invented more falsehoods to deceive his king, and torment and ruin his fellow-subjects.

The gigantic trial of the innocent persons accused of belonging to the Society l'Unità Italiana is but one of many by which it is intended to sacrifice to party spirit and to foul passions the lives of the élite of the nation, mixing with them some persons of less note. Thus very recently some persons of inferior station, whose crime was that of having shouted, towards the end of 1848, Long live the Constitution' have been tried. We don't know the particulars; we only know that twentysix persons have been condemned to various punishments.

1851.

The Royal Oath and Amnesty.

521

the mildest of which was TWENTY-FOUR years' imprisonment in irons. And let it be observed, that all those found guilty, whether present or en contumace, are condemned in solidum to pay the expenses and damages; under which head comes, for instance, the injury done to property by the king's troops; so that under this pretext the property of a man so condemned is seized by the Government. At times, however, the Government plunders capriciously without any pretext. A few days ago a Neapolitan gentleman of fortune, formerly a Member of Parliament, and now an exile, came over to see the Exhibition. On his return to Paris, where he has taken up his abode, he found letters informing him that the Government had seized his property. He is thus reduced to absolute want, without the slightest intimation of the reasons which have induced the Government to commit this new spoliation. Acts like this are of daily occurrence.

One of the monster trials now, we believe, in progress, is that of persons accused of having taken part in the affair of the 15th of May, 1848, when a long and sanguinary fight took place in the streets of Naples, which terminated in the complete victory of the King's troops over the people. Naples was treated by the brutal soldiery, as it was formerly the custom to treat a place taken by assault. How that deplorable collision began, and by whom it was brought about, is fiercely disputed; for us it is enough to know how it ended. Nine days afterwards on the 24th of the same month of May the King, of his own accord, and without any Minister's signature, published a proclamation, in which he not only assured the Neapolitans of his determination to carry out the Constitution, but he called on them to trust to his honour, to his religion, and to his oath, assuring them that he was only bent on effacing, as far as possible, even the remembrance of the fatal 15th of May.* On the 17th of May more than six hundred persons, arrested with arms in their hands, had been released. About one year after that royal proclamation and this act, several persons, among them some of those set at liberty on the 17th, were arrested again; and now, nearly three years and a half

The words are most solemn: Fidatevi con effusione di animo della nostra lealtà, della nostra religione e del nostro sacro e spontaneo giuramento, e vivete nella pienissima certezza che la più incessante preoccupazione dell' animo nostro è di abolire al più presto, insieme allo stato eccezionale, e passaggero in cui ci troviamo, anche, per quanto sarà possibile, la memoria della funesta sventura che ci ha colpiti.

VOL. XCIV. NO. CXCII.

M M

after the imputed crime has been so solemnly forgiven -after that most ample act of oblivion on the part of the King-these persons are to be tried.

We cannot believe that this is done with the King's knowledge. No individual, however lost to shame and to honour, would allow himself to be held up to everlasting infamy by even the appearance of consenting to so barefaced a violation of his pledged word. This is, however, what the Neapolitan Government do with respect to their King; than whom no man has had more reason to pray to be preserved from his friends.

6

Among these dangerous friends Mr. Baillie Cochrane has forced himself. In his Young Italy,' this gentleman has done his best to represent His Sicilian Majesty as capable, not only of dissembling his real feelings for the purpose of imposing on simple folk, but of the gross and vulgar deception of gaining credit to himself by gratuitously promising to act one way-and then acting just the contrary. The facts, as related by Mr. Baillie Cochrane, are these. On one of those cold, harsh, bitter morn❝ings, not uncommon at Naples,' and which we presume to be one of the many causes why Englishmen in particular, who neither rise early nor travel to misinform themselves, prefer the soft, genial, and refreshing London fogs to the Neapolitan climate— on one of those mornings Mr. Baillie Cochrane walked out to keep himself warm, and called upon the King at Caserta for the purpose of giving him a little wholesome advice. His Majesty being at home, was most graciously pleased to listen to the lecture on statecraft, which the M. P. for Bridport was generous enough to volunteer, to deliver to him. The eloquence, elegance, and power of reasoning which, abroad, distinguish the honourable member, produced their effect on the King, who kept awake nevertheless, and who promised to follow the advice gratuitously tendered, namely, that the political prisoners should be kept separate from other offenders; and that the Government should not, promote petitions against the Constitution. His Majesty threw in, of his own accord, strong hopes that a partial amnesty might be soon conceded. Mr. Cochrane apparently had not the courage to suggest such an act of justice rather than mercy. So far, so well,' as he phrases it. Now mark, gentle reader, the result of this interview:

To my very deep regret,' says Mr. Cochrane, 'I have heard from Naples that the political prisoners have been only removed to a much worse place; that their communications with their families have been still more restricted; that the few who were released were men quite unimportant and would have been discharged at any rate; and what gives countenance to several other reports is, that within the last few

1851.

Mr. Cochrane and His Sicilian Majesty.

523

weeks, I see by the papers that the Constitution has been virtually abolished.' (P. 277.)

There must be some mistake here. We have a better opinion of Mr. Baillie Cochrane than to suppose that he would proclaim how he was stultified and yet give no sign of that manly indignation which a gentleman so treated, by no matter whom, must feel. Mr. Cochrane, we know, is not incapable of indignation: he gives vent to it in most unmeasured terms against the unfortunate, the fallen, and the oppressed, whom he misrepresents and insults. On the other hand, even he must be aware that no one has painted His Sicilian Majesty's character in blacker colours than he has done. According to his version of the interview, the King not only deceives but does it from habitwilfully and deliberately, and when, as on this occasion, he might, with more dignity and less trouble, avoid committing himself in so indecent a manner.

Mr. Cochrane's imagination outweighing both his memory and his judgment together, nothing can be conceived more fanciful than his historical narratives-not even his poetry and his novels; and this may induce His Sicilian Majesty, and his real friends, to forgive Mr. Cochrane for his version of a conversation, which, if correct, would be most disgraceful to that Sovereign. Of Mr. Cochrane's inventive powers, we might multiply instances. Mr. Cochrane describes Garibaldi at Rome, as if he had taken his picture, although he never saw him; he places before us the scene of the meeting at which Rossi's murder was decided upon, as if he had attended it; and yet he invents meeting, actors, and every other circumstance which he relates. Of Rossi himself he writes as if he had been his most intimate friend or rather better. For, although it is evident that he has read the biography of Rossi, to which he never once refers, written by one who was his friend, M. Mignet, yet his imagination prevails against M. Mignet and facts. Much of it may be owing to the slight acquaintance of Mr. Cochrane with M. Mignet's language, which is French. A gentleman who does not know that l'Académie de Génève means the University of that place, and who tells us something very absurd about the ordres des jour' of Napoleon, is not likely to have understood M. Mignet on those points on which he contradicts him point blank. But however slight his knowledge of French, Mr. Cochrane knows much less of Italian, as may be seen from his quotations. These facts being undoubted and had we space we might produce conclusive and ludicrous proofs of them we have only to remark, that were it not for his matchless imaginative faculty it would be difficult

to comprehend how Mr. Cochrane could collect all the absurdities of which he has made a book, and how he could hold conversations, not only with the King, but with the mountaineers of Italy, who, we suspect, understand English no better than Mr. Cochrane does any other language.

There are some statements in Mr. Cochrane's book respecting Lord Minto, worthy of notice not only as being poetical, but as having been pointed out as such to Mr. Cochrane before he published them, and he having, nevertheless, persisted in giving them circulation as facts. Mr. Cochrane states (p. 75.), that it was not long after his arrival at Rome, before Lord Minto became intimately acquainted with Masi (whose name, as usual, Mr. Cochrane misspells, calling him Massi), Prince Canino, and M. Sterbini. Now this statement is unfounded. Lord Minto received, with the courtesy due to his birth and rank, the Prince of Canino, whenever he was honoured with a visit from him-which was seldom; but he had no intimacy either with the Prince or with M. Sterbini, from whom he received but one visit. With respect to M. Masi, we distinctly aver that Mr. Cochrane was positively and especially told, before he published it, that his story was untrue. Dr. Pantaleoni of Rome, whom Mr. Cochrane consulted respecting his publication, and to whom he submitted some of his notes, told him, and wrote to him, for fear of mistake, that not only was it not the fact that Lord Minto had any intimacy with M. Masi, but that Dr. Pantaleoni himself having asked Lord Minto's permission to present M. Masi to his Lordship, Lord Minto declined to receive that gentleman on account of his extreme political opinions. Dr. Pantaleoni, who has just left England, has repeatedly related this anecdote in our presence, and we challenge Mr. Cochrane to gainsay its correctness. When a writer is capable of such mistakes, his statements sink so low that it is too much to expect that matter-of-fact persons will stoop, we will not say to contradict, but even to notice them. To prove, however, that we are not too severe with Mr. Cochrane, we shall inquire into some more of his tales about Lord Minto.

Mr. Cochrane writes, "On the 15th of November, about a fortnight after Lord Minto's arrival, the Council of State was nominated; and to celebrate this event there was a procession to the Quirinal of all that was most democratic, to which the representatives of the Great Powers were anonymously in⚫vited to attend. In the evening a grand banquet was given at the Théâtre d'Apollon, at which the Ministers, the Council of State, and, most important of all, Lord Minto, were pre