Charges were fabricated to get rid of inconvenient persons. Perjury and
forgery were resorted to in order to establish charges, and the whole
mode of conducting trials was a burlesque of justice.
He thus describes the dungeons of Naples, in which some of the prisoners
were confined for their political opinions: "The prisons of Naples, as
is well known, are another name for the extreme of filth and horror. I
have really seen something of them, but not the worst. This I have seen,
my Lord: the official doctors not going to the sick prisoners, but the
sick prisoners, men almost with death on their faces, toiling up stairs
to them at that charnel-house of the Vicaria, because the lower regions
of such a palace of darkness are too foul and loathsome to allow it to
be expected that professional men should consent to earn bread by
entering them." Of some of those sufferers Mr. Gladstone speaks
particularly. He names Pironte, formerly a judge, Baron Porcari, and
Carlo Poerio, a distinguished patriot. The latter he specially speaks of
as a refined and accomplished gentleman, a copious and elegant speaker,
a respected and blameless character, yet he had been arrested and
condemned for treason. Mr. Gladstone says: "The condemnation of such a
man for treason is a proceeding just as conformable to the laws of
truth, justice, decency, and fair play, and to the common sense of the
community--in fact, just as great and gross an outrage on them all--as
would be a like condemnation in this country of any of our best known
public men--Lord John Russell, or Lord Lansdowne, or Sir James Graham,
or yourself.
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