The effect of the Spy System on the national character is exceedingly demoralising. There is no country in Europe where the low, secret vices, as opposed to those of a bolder, opener, and more ferocious character, exist so strongly as in the South of Italy. There, the result of that timidity and want of faith in what is good, and just, and true, which has been engendered by intrigue, is practised in its most comprehensive sense. The Secret Police system is one of the very many causes of this. To appreciate this thoroughly, you must regard it as being not merely a political institution, but as having now become national; people have followed the example which has been set them, and have all become spies--spies on each other’s actions, words, and thoughts. Sometimes this habit is pursued to the extent only of simple curiosity, watching, investigating, and reporting the commonest trifles. Sometimes it is a little more malignant, and engages, almost as a pastime, in embroiling individuals or families. Sometimes it pushes further, and furnishes denunciations to the Priest, the Bishop, the Intendente, or the Minister. I have seen it under all its phases, and the effect has been to produce a want of faith in all that is high, generous and noble, and to form a low national character. It is more ridiculous and annoying than can well be imagined, to get behind the scenes of Italian life, and listen to the daily gossip:--How such an one “_ha fatto un’ ricorso_” against this or that person. How Don So and So has written certain letters to the Intendente, containing charges against another Don, and has forged two signatures. How So and So has been to the bishop and laid a long list of crimes at the door of some luckless priest. Then watch the tempest of official papers which fly through the air; some contain inquiries into the truth of the statements, addressed to the judge or the syndic; some are orders to a dozen unfortunate wights to present themselves at the Intendenza; while others contain ghostly reproofs from the bishop, or orders to suspend a priest at his reverence’s will and pleasure, and rusticate him in some monastery. Every denunciation is received and inquired into. I remember an instance of two men who kept a whole district in inquietude during one winter. Both had received some private offence, and straightway each shrank into a corner and wove his envenomed meshes; charges were devised and letters written to the Intendente, accusing some score of their friends of Carbonarism or constitutionalism; then came the usual dispatches to the judge and other authorities to inquire into the truth of the statements. The judge, it happened, was friendly with the unfortunate denounced, and drew up therefore a favourable report, but had he been less honest or less amicable, these poor fellows might have swelled the number of those who now pine in the prisons of the Vicaria.