No. 174.
Mr. Marsh
to Mr. Evarts.
Rome, April 23, 1877. (Received May 14.)
Sir: The newspaper notices of the seditious outbreak recently suppressed in Central and Southern Italy will not have escaped your attention. The true character, scope, and extent of the movement is not yet fully known to the public, but it is certain that a band of twenty-five or more persons, of whom some were foreigners, and nearly all strangers to the province, after committing many violent excesses in the neighborhood of Benevento, were dispersed, and finally arrested by the police and the military, and that about twenty others, apparently confederates of the above mentioned, among whom was but a single Roman, were intercepted near this city on their way to a rendezvous in the mountains. Many arrests of individuals known or suspected to be in communication with these disturbers of the peace have taken place at Bologna and elsewhere, and there is reason to suppose that the association to which they belong is, though not apparently formidable in numbers, somewhat widely diffused. This attempt at insurrection does not appear to be due to any local or special cause. It did not assume alarming proportions as an actual revolt against the government, nor do I think that even as a political symptom it has the importance which some persons both in and out of Italy are disposed to ascribe to it.
The parties arrested are said to belong chiefly to Eastern Lombardy and other provinces of the old Pontifical States, which, as well as those of the Neapolitan territory, have long been conspicuous for the depraved character of the population and the misery to which those dependent on agricultural and mechanical industry have been reduced [Page 324] The insurgents, however, do not appear to belong to the lowest ranks of society, and the fact that they were able to avail themselves of railway conveyance to so great a distance, and were not ill-provided with clothing and other necessaries, shows that they were not impelled by the pressure of immediate want, or that, if themselves without pecuniary means, they were instigated and encouraged by persons commanding a certain amount of resources. Papers of the most incendiary character were found upon them, including a compromising correspondence; and it is said that a portable printing apparatus has been seized as a part of their equipment. The prisoners, it is reported, do not hesitate to avow their purpose to be not only the overthrow of the existing government but the destruction of all established civil, social, and religions institutions, and the triumph of universal anarchy.
There have for some time existed in various parts of Italy numerous International clubs, circles, or lodges, but this is, so far as I know, the first organized aggressive manifestation of what is called the International spirit in Italy, though many individuals have long been known or believed to be meditating formal action upon subversive principles. The International clubs to which I have alluded have now been suppressed by the government, but I do not know that evidence has been found to connect any of them with the insurgents, or, upon any extensive scale, with each other, in any definite plan of action. They appear to be generally mere cliques, consisting of a very few individual malcontents, and sometimes only of a nominal organization without real active members. It has been even said that the police sometimes gets up professed International clubs, which put themselves in relation with those of a more serious character, and serve to make known to the government the real aims and action of these associations and their managers.
The views and purposes avowed by the insurgents lately arrested, have not heretofore characterized the illegal action of the most ignorant, the most depressed, or the most depraved classes of Italians. Their most frequent offenses are murders or assaults in the accomplishment of private vengeance or robbery. Crimes accompanied with violence seem to have a special attraction for them, for although rural proprietors complain much of predial thefts, yet among the civic population stealing is certainly not more, I think even less, common than in some other countries, while assassinations, highway robberies, carrying off of persons to extort a ransom, and the frequent use of dangerous weapons in ordinary quarrels, are frightfully frequent, so frequent, in fact, as to excite comparatively little attention among the general public. The minister of grace and justice reports that in the year 1876 there were reported 1,949 murders, 1,581 assaults with intent to kill,-6,288 aggravated assaults and batteries, 2,299 highway robberies, and 657 forcible extortions and ransoms. There is reason to believe that many murders have escaped detection, and the system of terrorism kept up by malefactors prevents great numbers of persons robbed or maliciously injured in their persons from making any complaint to the legal authorities. The actual amount of crime of this general character in Italy, is, therefore, very considerably greater than appears from these statistics.
This lawlessness of the people is in but a small degree to be ascribed to a feeling which is so universal and so repulsive a feature of the society of certain other European countries—-the envy and hatred of the poor toward the rich—and the outrages of the populace against law are not often of a strictly political character. Their enmity to their rulers or superiors is not against institutions, although long centuries of arbitrary and oppressive [Page 325] rule have taught all classes of Italians habitually to regard all government as a hostile power. But it has been felt to be a power above the reach of a people politically disunited, and, in the want of a public press, without organ of expression of any common opinion or feeling; and popular hatred and popular violence were directed not against inaccessible rulers but against officers regarded as their ministers and representatives. Bailiffs, policemen, ail officers of justice, in fact, have always been objects of popular scorn and detestation in Italy. In all questions between the authorities and individuals, the people have presumed the latter to be in the right, and an accused or condemned malefactor is regarded as a victim to persecution. In case of resistance to a bailiff by an arrested person, nearly the whole population will, at this day, without even inquiring into the circumstances, take part with the prisoner, and if they do not forcibly rescue him, at least favor his escape.
The modern freedom and facility of personal communication, the circulation of journals, and the diffusion of instruction have raised the government in popular estimation, but the habitual, one may almost say instinctive, feeling of dislike toward the ministers of justice is by no means eradicated, and they can rarely count upon any assistance from the people in the execution of their special duties.
The greater freedom of which I have spoken has produced a more unrestricted intercourse between the people of different provinces and different positions, and disorganizing agitators have now ready access to those over whom their influence is most to be dreaded, and who too often prove willing listeners to their seductions, and at the same time ignorant enough to be open to arguments and persuasions of the most incongruous character. “Long live Pius IX!” was shouted by the Internationalists at Benevento in the same breath with their cries of sedition, and I once heard au ultra-republican orator denounce the existing government before an audience of railway-laborers in Tuscany, because it put up no images of the Virgin and the Saints in the stations, as would be done if the people were “free,” and conclude his harangue with a “Hurrah for Garibaldi!” in which he was joined by his hearers.
The number of persons prepared to lend a ready ear to the promptings of International emissaries, already large, is, I fear, increasing in consequence of a variety of circumstances.
The establishment of the kingdom of Italy and the consolidation of the Italian states awakened a new national life. Under its reformed administration there has been a general improvement in the condition of landed proprietors, and but for the frequent and heavy losses sustained by rural industry in its great staples from frost, hail, drought, floods, and the diseases of the grape and silk-worm, the fertility of the soil and better methods of husbandry would have secured to agriculture a prosperity which could not but have been shared by the lowest as well as the highest ranks. But unfortunately these severe drawbacks, and perhaps in a still higher degree the heavy taxation to which the state has been compelled to resort in consequence of the wars of 1859 and 1866, of the removals of the seat of the government, and of numerous public improvements, have diminished the resources and increased the burdens of the laboring poor to such a degree that nothing but exceptional industry, health, and economy can enable them to sustain life in reasonable comfort. Their energies are depressed by the consciousness that they cannot depend on their own unaided efforts to better their condition, still less hope to improve the lot of their children, and most of them expect no favorable change in their circumstances except from private gambling or a lucky turn of the government lottery wheel. Many of [Page 326] the taxes, such as those on salt and on the macinato, or grist, are particularly oppressive to the poor, the former for reasons of health, the latter because his food is composed almost exclusively of ground cereals and chestnuts, the more nutritious aliments which enter largely into the diet of the rich, very seldom appearing at his board. The excise and other forms of taxation on lands and mechanical industry, and on their products are such that the agriculturist and the manufacturer cannot keep up their capital and pay their operatives wages on which they can subsist. This has been lately strikingly shown by Senator Rossi, the proprietor of some of the largest, best equipped, and best conducted factories in Italy, if not in Europe.
Mr. Rossi states that one-half of the cotton spun and woven in the most eastern provinces of Italy in 1876 still remains in the hands of the manufacturers, and that the price of the raw material is falling; jute-factories cannot be sustained; one-third of the spindles in the woolen and hemp factories are stopped, a great amount of last year’s product is unsold, and the proprietors are preparing to reduce their operations still further; the very important woolen-works in the district of Biella are in “a state of crisis,” partly stopped and partly reduced in activity; the woolen-factories in the districts of Cosentino, the Liris, and Salerno, where the wages have been brought down to a minimum, are suspending, and other establishments of the same sort have failed and are offered for sale; two-fifths of the silk-factories are closed, four hundred looms having stopped at Como, and those working running at a loss; the paper-mills have a great surplus of their products, which are little in demand, and are discharging their hands; the potteries are depressed; the iron-works have gradually failed, and even the great establishments at Pietra Santa, Sanpierdarena, and Leghorn are embarrassed. The remarkable woolen-factory at Schio pays 2 per cent, dividend on its capital, and more than $35,000 taxes on its operations. The woolen and hemp industry of Italy, which made no dividend on last year’s operations, paid on the same year $19,000 taxes on its stock or capital; the Cantoni cotton-factory, which divided 1 per cent., paid $20,000 taxes on its stock and industry in 1876; and Senator Rossi himself lost $20,000 on the operations of a match-factory, occupying two hundred and fifty girls, undertaken solely in the hope of helping them to earn their bread.
I may notice, in passing, that facts like these are modifying the opinions of Italian industrials on the question of protection to domestic manufactures; but it is more to my present purpose to observe that the misery of the Italian poor and their weight as a dangerous element in society must soon become intolerably aggravated unless a remedy for this state of things, of which there is no present prospect, be provided, and that a failure of the crops of breadstuff’s and other staples like that of last year will produce an amount of physical suffering and discontent which will be attended with very serious consequences to the public welfare.
The political aspect of the situation is certainly grave, and when we take into account the embarrassments created to the action of the government by the hostility of the clerical party to all the existing civil institutions of Italy, and the general want of security for life and property against lawless violence, a point in which there is no serious improvement, it becomes evident that in many supposable contingencies Italy may be the theater of convulsions, to resist which will demand the most strenuous efforts of wise rulers and the most self-sacrificing patriotism on the part of her governing classes.
I have, &c.,