"the Oopectator," juip 26th, 1851
MIL GLADSTONE'S PAMPHLET ON NAPLES OF all the events of this year, at home or abroad, one of the most striking is the publication of Mr. Gladstone's pamphlet on the State Prosecutions of Naples... . In this country it will create sentiments of surprise and horror. Although the general character of the statements is not new, they come before the world with an aspect wholly novel. From this pamphlet the cautious Englishman will learn with amazement that the charges of the Italian Patriots against the Government of Naples are not only true, but even fall short of the reality ; that the case stated with every conceivable precaution, not by a Pepe. or a Mazzini, but by a Gladstone—a leader of our own Conserva- tive party, a man only too scrupulous and fastidiously exact— is stronger than they ever conceived it to be. . .
General belief calculates that the political prisoners in the kingdom of the Two Sicilies are in number between fifteen or twenty and thirty thousand: the Government seems to confess to two thousand, but the reader of Mr. Gladstone's pamphlet will not believe the Neapolitan Government ; facts and figures stated by Mr. Gladstone, official but not possible to be con- cealed, show that the estimate of two thousand is unreasonable. Amongst the persons imprisoned or exiled was the whole " Opposition" in the Chamber -of Deputies elected under the
Constitution. .
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