Gladstone against the Neapolitan
Government. He wrote: "The scandalous trials for high treason still
continue at Naples; accusers, examiners, judges, false witnesses, all
are bought; the prisons, those tombs of the living, are full; two
thousand citizens of all ranks and conditions are already condemned to
the dungeons, as many to confinement, double that number to exile; the
majority guilty of no crime but that of having believed in the oaths
made by Ferdinand II. But, in truth, nothing more was needed to press
home the indictment."
At the period of Mr. Gladstone's visit to Naples there was a growing
sentiment throughout Italy for Italian independence and union. The
infamous measures adopted by the King of Naples to repress in his own
dominions every aspiration after freedom, only succeeded in making the
people more determined and the liberty for which they sighed surer in
the end. His system of misgovernment went on for a few years longer and
was the promoting cause of the revolutionary movements which continually
disturbed the whole Italian peninsula. A conference was held in Paris
upon the Italian question, which failed to accomplish anything, against
which failure Count Cavour addressed a protest to the French and British
Governments in April, 1856.
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