In the cafés where men sit at chess and dominoes, the Camorrist appears, and with his well-known whisper demands his toll. In vain to declare that the play is not for money; it is for the privilege to play at all that his demand is now made. The newly appointed clerk in a public office, the secretary to the minister, it is said, have been applied to, and have not dared to dispute a claim which would be settled otherwise by the knife. Recognised by the old police of Naples, tolerated and even employed to track out the crimes of those who did not belong to the order, the Camorrists acquired all the force and consideration of an institution. Men felt no shame at yielding to a terror so widespread; nor would it have been always safe to speak disparagingly of a sect whose followers sometimes lounged in royal antechambers as well as sought shelter under the portico of a church. It has been more than once asserted that Ferdinand II. was a sworn member of the order, and that he contributed largely to its funds. Certain it is the Camorra in his reign performed all the functions of a secret police, and was the terror of all whose Liberalism made them suspected by the Government. To the Camorra, too, were always intrusted those displays of popular enthusiasm by which the King was wont to reply to the angry remonstrances of French or English envoys. The Camorra could at a moment’s notice organise a demonstration in honour of royalty which would make the monarch appear as the loved and cherished father of his people. It was, however, by the Liberals themselves the Camorra was first introduced into political life, and Liberio Romano intrusted the defence of the capital to these men as the surest safeguard against the depredations of the disbanded soldiers of the King; and, strange to say, the hazardous experiment was a perfect success, and for several weeks Naples had no other protectors than the members of a league who combined the atrocities of Thuggee with the shameless rapine of the highwayman. The stern discipline of Piedmont would not, however, condescend to deal with such agents; and Lamarmora has waged a war, open and avowed, against the whole system of the Camorra. Hundreds of arrests have been made, and the jails are crowded with Camorrists; but men declare that all these measures are in vain—that the magistracy itself is not free from the taint: and certain it is that the system prevails largely in the army and navy, and has its followers in what is called the world of fashion and society. The Mezzo Galantuomo is the most terrible ingredient in the constitution of a people. The man who is too bad for society but a little too good for the gallows, is a large element in this land, and it will require something more than mere statecraft to deal with him.