April 21st, 1830
Dined with Keppel Craven yesterday; Acton, Morier, Duchesse d’Eboli, and some other people.
The day was so disagreeable yesterday I could not go out—not cold, but a hurricane and clouds of dust. The principal topic of conversation at dinner was the trial, which goes on every day, has already lasted a month, and is likely to last two or three more. The Code Napoléon is in force here, so that there may probably be something like a certain and equal administration of justice between man and man; but this is a Government prosecution, and therefore exempted from ordinary rules. The history of this trial exemplifies the state of both the law and the Government of this country. The accused are five in number; the principal of them, Matteis, was an intendente, or governor, of a province; 2nd, the advocate-general of the province; 3rd, Matteis’s secretary; and 4th and 5th, two spies. These men united in a conspiracy to destroy various persons who were obnoxious to them in the province, some of them actuated by political motives, and others in order to get possession of the property of their victims. The bugbear of the Court is Carbonarism, and Matteis pretended that there was a Carbonari plot on MATTEIS’S TRIAL foot, in which several persons were implicated. He employed the spies to seduce the victims into some imprudence of language or conduct, and then to inform against them; in this way he apprehended various individuals, some of whom were tortured, some imprisoned or sent to the galleys, and some put to death. These transactions took place eight or nine years ago, and such was the despotism of this man and the terror he inspired, that no resistance was made to his proceedings, or any appeal against them ever sent to Naples. At last one of his own secretaries made some disclosures to Government, and the case appeared so atrocious that it was thought necessary to institute an immediate enquiry. The intendente was ordered to Naples, and commissioners were sent to obtain evidence in the province and sift the matter to the bottom. After much delay they made a report confirming the first accusations and designating these five men as the criminals. As soon as the matter was thus taken up, the public indignation burst forth, and a host of witnesses who had been deterred by fear from opening their lips came forward to depose against Matteis and his associates. They were arrested in the year 1825 and thrown into prison, but owing to the difficulties and delay which they contrived by their influence to interpose, and to the anomalous character of the prosecution, five years elapsed before the proceedings began. At length a royal order constituted a Court of Justice, composed of all the judges of the Court of Cassation (about twenty), the highest tribunal in the kingdom, and they have just been enjoined not to separate till the final adjudication of the case. Although the offences with which the criminals are charged are very different in degree, they are all arraigned together; a host of witnesses are examined, each of whom tells a story or makes a speech, and the evidence is accordingly very confused, now affecting one and now another of them. They have counsel and the right of addressing the Court themselves, which the intendente avails himself of with such insolence that they are obliged to begin the proceedings of each day by reading an order to the prisoners to behave themselves decently to the Court. Their counsel are assigned by the Court, and it is not one of the least extraordinary parts of this case that the advocate of Matteis is his personal enemy, and a man whom he displaced from an office he once held in the province. They say, however, that he defends him very fairly and zealously. The day I was there the proceedings were uninteresting, but yesterday they were very important. An officer was examined who had been imprisoned and ill-treated in prison, and who deposed to various acts of cruelty. They on their part hardly deny the facts, but attempt to justify them by proving that the sufferers really were Carbonari, that other governors had done the same thing, and that they were doing a service to the Government by these pretended plots and consequent executions. Though their guilt is clear, it is by no means so clear that they will be condemned, or at least all of them. The public indignation is so great that they must sacrifice some of them, and the spies, it is said, will certainly be hanged. Matteis has interest in the Court, but, as a majority of votes will decide his fate, it is most likely he will be condemned.