The
Hard-Working Man May Well Envy Their Lot, For They Recuve Free Lodging
From The Government, A Daily Allowance
Of money, and two new suits of
clothes a year - they are not asked to do a stroke of work
In return, but
may lie in bed all day long, if so disposed. The law-abiding citizen,
meanwhile, pays for the upkeep of this horde of malefactors, as well as
for the army of officials who are deputed to attend to their wants. This
institution of domicilio coatto is one of those things which would be
incredible, were it not actually in existence. It is a school, a
State-fostered school, for the promotion of criminality.
But what shall be expected? Where judges sob like children, and jurors
swoon away with emotionalism; where floods of bombast - go to the courts,
and listen! - take the place of cross-examination and duly-sworn
affidavits; where perjury is a humanly venial and almost praiseworthy
failing - how shall the code, defective as it is, be administered?
Rhetoric, and rhetoric alone, sways the decision of the courts. Scholars
are only now beginning to realize to what an extent the ancient sense of
veracity was tainted with this vice - how deeply all classical history is
permeated with elegant partisan non-truth. And this evil legacy from
Greco-Roman days has been augmented by the more recent teachings of
Jesuitry and the Catholic theory of "peccato veniale." Rhetoric alone
counts; rhetoric alone is "art." The rest is mere facts; and your
"penalista" has a constitutional horror of a bald fact, because there
it is, and there is nothing to be done with it. It is too crude a thing
for cultured men to handle. If a local barrister were forced to state in
court a plain fact, without varnish, he would die of cerebral
congestion; the judge, of boredom.
In early times, these provinces had a rough-and-ready cowboy justice
which answered simple needs, and when, in Bourbon days, things became
more centralized, there was still a never-failing expedient: each judge
having a fixed and publicly acknowledged tariff, the village elders, in
deserving cases, subscribed the requisite sum and released their
prisoner. But Italy is now paying the penalty of ambition. With one foot
in the ferocity of her past, and the other on a quicksand of
dream-nurtured idealism, she contrives to combine the disadvantages of
both. She, who was the light o' love of all Europe for long ages, and in
her poverty denied nothing to her clientele, has now laid aside a little
money, repenting of her frivolous and mercenary deeds (they sometimes
do), and becoming puritanically zealous of good works in her old
age - all this, however, as might have been expected from her antecedent
career, without much discrimination.
It is certainly remarkable that a race of men who have been such ardent
opponents of many forms of tyranny in the past, should still endure a
system of criminal procedure worthy of Torquemada. High and low cry out
against it, but - pazienza! Where shall grievances be ventilated? In
Parliament? A good joke, that! In the press? Better still! Italian
newspapers nowise reflect the opinions of civilized Italy; they are mere
cheese-wrappers; in the whole kingdom there are only three
self-respecting dailies. The people have learnt to despair of their
rulers - to regard them with cynical suspicion. Public opinion has been
crushed out of the country. What goes by that name is the gossip of the
town-concierge, or obscure village cabals and schemings.
I am quite aware that the law-abiding spirit is the slow growth of ages,
and that a serious mischief like this cannot be repaired in a short
generation. I know that even now the Italian code of criminal procedure,
that tragic farce, is under revision. I know, moreover, that there are
stipendiary magistrates in south Italy whose discernment and integrity
would do honour to our British courts. But - take the case out of their
hands into a higher tribunal, and you may put your trust in God, or in
your purse. Justice hereabouts is in the same condition as it was in
Egypt at the time of Lord Dufferin's report: a mockery.
It may be said that it does not concern aliens to make such criticism. A
fatuous observation! Everything concerns everybody. The foreigner in
Italy, if he is wise, will familiarize himself not only with the
cathedrals to be visited, but also, and primarily, with the technique of
legal bribery and subterfuge - with the methods locally employed for
escaping out of the meshes of the law. Otherwise he may find unpleasant
surprises in store for him. Had Mr. Mercer made it his business to
acquire some rudiments of this useful knowledge, he would never have
undergone that outrageous official ill-treatment which has become a
byword in the annals of international amenities. And if these strictures
be considered too severe, let us see what Italians themselves have to
say. In 1900 was published a book called "La Quistione Meridionale"
(What's Wrong with the South), that throws a flood of light upon local
conditions. It contains the views of twenty-seven of the most prominent
men in the country as to how south Italian problems should be faced and
solved. Nearly all of them deplore the lack of justice. Says Professor
Colajanni: "To heal the south, we require an honest, intelligent and
sagacious government, which we have not got." And Lombroso: "In the
south it is necessary to introduce justice, which does not exist, save
in favour of certain classes."
I am tempted to linger on this subject, not without reason. These people
and their attitude towards life will remain an enigma to the traveller,
until he has acquainted himself with the law of the land and seen with
his own eyes something of the atrocious misery which its administration
involves. A murderer like Musolino, crowned with an aureole of
saintliness, would be an anomaly in England.
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