What was meant by being an inmate of a Neapolitan prison was told by Mr Gladstone in his two ‘Letters to the Earl of Aberdeen,’ which the latter sent to Prince Schwarzenberg, the Austrian Prime Minister, with a strong appeal to him to make known their contents to the King of the Two Sicilies, and to use his influence in procuring a mitigation of the abuses complained of.  Prince Schwarzenberg did nothing, and it was then that the ‘Letters’ were published.  The impression created on public opinion was almost without a parallel.  The celebrated phrase, ‘The negation of God erected into a system of government,’ passing into currency as a short history of Bourbon rule at Naples, kept alive the wrathful feelings which the ‘Letters’ aroused, even when these ceased to be read.  Some small errors of fact (such as that of stating that all the prisoners were chained, whereas an exception was made of those undergoing life sentences) were magnified by the partisans of Ferdinand II.; but the truth of the picture as a whole was amply confirmed from independent sources.  Baron Carlo Poerio (condemned to nineteen years’ imprisonment) was chained to a common malefactor, the chain never being undone, and producing in the end a disease of the bone from which he never recovered.  His case was that of all the political prisoners in the same category with himself.  Luigi Settembrini and the others on whom sentence of death had been passed, but commuted into one of life imprisonment, were not chained, but they were put to associate with the worst thieves and assassins, while their material surroundings accorded with the moral atmosphere they were forced to breathe.

The Neapolitan prisoners did more than suffer for freedom; they delivered the name of their country from being a reproach among the nations.  They showed what men the South of Italy can produce.  Those who wish to know what types of probity, honour and ideal patriotism may grow out of that soil, which is sometimes charged with yielding only the rank weeds planted by despotism, may read the letters and memoirs of the noble Poerios, of Settembrini, gentlest but most fearless of human souls, of the Calabrian Morellis, all patriots and martyrs; of the Duke of Castromediano, who lately, in his old age, has set down a few recollections of the years he spent at the Neapolitan galleys.  He records in these notes what he calls the most perilous moment in his life.  It was when he was summoned, with six fellow-prisoners who had asked for and obtained freedom, to hear, as he feared, his own pardon pronounced.  For pardon was equivalent to dishonour; it was granted either in consequence of real submission and retraction, or in order to be able to blacken the character of the pardoned man by falsely asserting that such submission had been made.  His fear was groundless.  He had been led out, perhaps, in the hope that the example of the others would prove contagious.  He was not pardoned.  As he returned to his prison, he thanked Divine Providence for the chains which left him pure.