Corpun file 16391

The Times, London, 11 June 1851

Rome, May 31.

(extracts)

General Gemeau's panic has been momentarily calmed by arresting, bastinadoing, and sending to the galleys, or in exile, some scores of Romans, [...]

[...]

[...] fear has now taken the place of love in the hearts of his subjects. This feeling is justified by the merciless severity just now shown by the pontifical authorities. Beside Signor Politi, a member of the Roman Assembly, another member of the republican government, Colonel Calandrelli, who occupied the post of triumvir for two or three days after the resignation of Mazzini, Saffi, and Armellini, and has been ever since in confinement, has just been condemned to death, but it is hoped that the sentence will not be carried into effect.

The comparative cruelty of the Austrians and the priests may be judged of by the difference of their sentences for the same offences. For instance, at Ancona, an individual was recently condemned by the Austrian authorities to fifty blows of the stick, for preventing another from smoking, but as he was weakly, and unable to bear corporal punishment, it was commuted to two months' imprisonment, with bread and water three times a week; whilst for the same offence, not half so clearly proved, the ecclesiastical authorities here sentenced that unfortunate Ercoli to twenty years of the gallies [sic], besides which the sbirri gave him a bastinadoing fully equal to the fifty blows which formed the whole condemnation of the Austrians. The liberals still abstain from smoking, but the demonstration will doubtless die a natural death ere long, and so Prince Torlonia will return into the pecuniary benefits of his monopoly.

[...]