CRIME IN ITALY UNDER EMANUEL'S RULE.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume III, Issue 145, 11 February 1876, Page 8

CRIME IN ITALY UNDER EMANUEL'S RULE.

Murders are sadly on the increase in Italy : the number of these crimes against life may be said to increase every day ; and this is doubtless owing chiefly to the want of religious instruction and of the discipline which alone can moderate the fierce passions of this naturally-excitable race. When a deed of violence happened in the former times it used to be said that evil government was the caxise of everything bad. Even English Protestant papers must allow that now everything is worse, so that the new-fashioned Government is more culpable (we say less effective) than the old. They corn^. ment on a teariul tragedy perpetrated lately in Florence, in wnich a man killed his young wile, who would shortly become a mother, and an infant she held in her arms. It was all done in a fit of jealous passion to which he could not have given way if he had been in the habit of frequenting his religious duties. He hid himself in a well to escape the indignation of his neighbors, who would have torn him in pieces if they could have laid hold of him then ; for when ho yielded himself to the police for protection, the officers of justice had to be reinforced and used the flat of their swords to drive away the mob from their prisoner. By the time the wretch is brought to his trial these same men will have cooled down, and could a jury of them sit upon him, would find some excuse for him, so that the probability is that, like almost all other murderers under the new state ot things, he will get off with, a short imprison. ment. In Rome itself things are even worse than in other parts of Italy, and everywhere they are bad enough. So frequently are violent robberies, assassinations, murders, and murderous assaults chronicled, that the printers of the daily papers might keep a paragraph of typo ready set up, and merely change the names as occasions and circumstances required. — * N. Y. Tablet.'