"The effect of all this is a total inversion of all the moral and social
ideas. Law, instead of being respected, is odious. Force and not
affection is the foundation of government. There is no association, but
a violent antagonism between the idea of freedom and that of order. The
governing power, which teaches of itself that it is the image of God
upon earth, is clothed in the view of the overwhelming majority of the
thinking public with all the vices for its attributes. I have seen and
heard the strong expression used, 'This is the negation of God erected
into a system of Government.'"
It was not merely the large numbers imprisoned unjustly, to which public
attention was directed, that called for righteous indignation and made
Mr. Gladstone's words create such a sensation in Europe, but the mode of
procedure was arbitrary in the extreme. The law of Naples required that
personal liberty should be inviolable, except under warrant from a court
of justice. Yet in utter disregard of this law the authorities watched
the people, paid domiciliary visits, ransacked houses, seized papers and
effects, and tore up floors at pleasure under pretense of searching for
arms, imprisoned men by the score, by the hundred, by the thousand
without any warrant whatever, sometimes without even any written
authority whatever, or anything beyond the word of a policeman,
constantly without any statement whatever of the nature of the offense.
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