“I am grieved, my Lord, more than I can express, at the praises your Lordship bestows on the Government of his Sicilian Majesty. I am grieved, because the countenance of such a Government by so high an authority as your Lordship’s encourages tyranny and despotism, to which two abominations all the miseries of mankind are to be attributed. I say _all_ advisedly; for all the follies, the wickedness, the crimes of the extreme Republicans, whom I detest as cordially as the Neapolitan Government can do, are _all_ owing to the detestable Governments under which people live, and by which they are driven to madness. Nations are, to a very great extent (I am almost inclined to say altogether) what their spiritual and temporal rulers make them; and in the same manner that we attribute much of the unfortunate state of Ireland to the English misgovernment of old, we must be just and attribute the miseries of Sicily, her dissatisfaction, her rebellious spirit, her crimes, and her cruelties to misgovernment. It is misgovernment that makes repealers, socialists, red republicans, &c. I wish I could say that things have improved of late in the Neapolitan Government; but, my Lord, Europe has heard with horror of the iniquitous, cruel, and worse than heathenish trials and condemnations that have lately taken place against men whose innocence is as well known and clear as daylight. I should not speak so positively were it not that Mr. Gladstone, the member for the Oxford University, whose talents, whose honesty, and whose sober political principles need no praise, has just come from Naples in such a state of indignation against the Government as I should never have expected to see in such a man. He has made it his business to enquire into the truth of the charges, into the proofs brought forward to support them, into the character of the accusers, witnesses, and judges, into the conduct of the Government, into the treatment of the accused, both before and after condemnation, and he has come to the conclusion, which he has expressed to me and to others in these precise words, deliberately weighed and then repeated, _the Government of Naples is the Government of Hell upon earth_. These expressions from an English gentleman, uttered in English, with the accent of deep religious conviction, need no comment. Mr. Gladstone has shown me documents in support of his conviction, and they bear him out most abundantly. As a strong Conservative, and because he is a Conservative, as a Christian and as a gentleman, Mr. Gladstone (I use his own words) feels himself bound in conscience to expose iniquities which I am horrified in thinking of. He will do so in the House of Commons, as far as he can, but the details are so horrible, so revolting, so indecent that he will not be able to tell before an assembly of gentlemen the whole truth. But what he will and can say