It Is Hardly Surprising If, Under Such Conditions, Rich And Poor Alike
Are Ready To Hide A Picturesque Fugitive From Justice.
A sad state of
affairs, but - as an unsavoury Italian proverb correctly says - il pesce
puzza dal capo.
For the fault lies not only in the fundamental perversity of all Roman
Law. It lies also in the local administration of that law, which is
inefficient and marked by that elaborate brutality characteristic of all
"philosophic" and tender-hearted nations. One thinks of the Byzantines.
. . . That justices should be well-salaried gentlemen, cognizant of
their duties to society; that carbineers and other police-functionaries
should be civilly responsible for outrages upon the public; that a
so-called "habeas-corpus" Act might be as useful here as among certain
savages of the north; that the Baghdad system of delays leads to
corruption of underpaid officials and witnesses alike (not to speak of
judges) - in a word, that the method pursued hereabouts is calculated to
create rather than to repress crime: these are truths of too elementary
a nature to find their way into the brains of the megalomaniac
rhetoricians who control their country's fate. They will never endorse
that saying of Stendhal's: "In Italy, with the exception of Milan, the
death-penalty is the preface of all civilization." (To this day, the
proportion of murders is still 13 per cent higher in Palermo than in
Milan.)
Speak to the wisest judges of the horrors of cellular confinement such
as Musolino was enduring up to a short time ago, as opposed to capital
punishment, and you will learn that they invoke the humanitarian
Beccaria in justification of it.
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