Part 18

The whole subject is of course shrouded in mystery. There are important points connected with it on which it is impossible to obtain trustworthy information, as all who have any real knowledge of the facts have the strongest personal reasons for concealing them. Still, the organization of the lower ranks of the society is well known to the police, and it is by no means impossible to form a clear conception of its real character and aims, though it is necessary to sift every statement made about them with unusual care, as the inquirer must be on his guard not only against the romance and exaggeration of popular fancy, but also against a desire to mislead. It is only by inadvertence that any correct information is likely to be given, and as soon as the stranger exhibits an interest in the subject, he is supplied with a splendid stock of pure inventions. He must look and listen, and refrain from questioning as much as possible, unless he has the good fortune to meet an intelligent official connected with the police, or still better one who served the deposed dynasty. Before entering on the subject itself, however, a digression will be necessary in order to explain to English readers how such an association could be formed, and what were the circumstances that favored its growth and have hitherto secured its existence.

With respect to Sicily, Dr. Franchetti tells us that, whenever several men combine to support their own interests in opposition to those of their neighbors, that is Mafia. Where the condition of society is favorable, such combinations become exceedingly powerful. The strongest, the most enterprising, and the most violent inhabitants unite together. The will of each member is law in as far as the outside world is concerned; in executing it his companions will shrink neither from force nor fraud, and all they expect is that he should be ready to render similar services in his turn. When such a body has been formed in a district where the law is not powerful enough to hold it in check, the other members of the community must either tamely submit to its oppressions, put themselves under its protection, or form a new Mafia of their own. Now the Camorra is only a fully-developed and highly-organized Mafia.

It owes its long existence and its great influence chiefly to two circumstances. Family feeling in Naples is much stronger than in the North. Not only do parents and children, brothers and sisters cling together through life, but even distant cousins are recognized as relations whose interests must be guarded and advanced. If your cook's uncle happens to have a friend who is a butcher, nothing will induce him to buy your meat at any other shop; if your boy is sent to fetch a cab, he will waste half an hour looking for some distant acquaintance of his aunt's. As soon as you take a servant your custom becomes the property of his family connections. If you attempt to prevent this, you only embitter your life with a vain endeavor to thwart petty intrigues. If you dismiss your man, you only change your set of tradesmen; if you submit good humoredly, you soon begin to be regarded as a patron of the whole family, and will therefore be treated with all fitting consideration and esteem. The single members will serve you honestly, and even go out of their way to please you. It is clear that a society so clannish is excellently suited for a Mafia.

On the other hand, the uncertainty of the law under the old dynasty might well serve as an excuse for a good deal of self-assertion and self-defence. The tyranny of the Bourbons, it is true, was chiefly exercised upon the educated members of the middle class, whom they suspected, not unjustly, of designs against their rule. For the poor and the uneducated they did a good deal, often in a rather unwise way, and they never seem intentionally to have oppressed them. But the police are generally said to have been corrupt, the influence of the man of birth and wealth was great, and it was doubtless at times capriciously exercised. Against this the individual was powerless; when a large number were bound together by secret pledges, they could ensure respect and consideration.

It must not, however, be thought that there was anything heroic even in the old Camorra. It was not a league of justice and freedom, but simply an association which was pledged to advance the interests of its members, to right their wrongs, and to protect them to the utmost against every external power, including that of the law. And it has always maintained this character. Though it has occasionally done acts of justice and mercy, these are by no means its chief, or even an important, object; though many of its members belong to the criminal classes, it is not a society for the furtherance of crime. It pays no respect to the law except from prudential motives, and, as it has often dirty work to do, it makes use of dirty hands; but many men in all classes who are otherwise perfectly honest and respectable belong to it, and find their advantage in doing so.

To a certain extent, however, the aims of the Camorra have grown with the growth of its power. In the face of so powerful an association, it became necessary for those who did not belong to it to take steps to guard their own interests, and most of them did so by seeking its protection. This could be obtained by the payment of a tribute which consisted either of a fixed tax or of a percentage on profits. Thus the association claims, and has long claimed, a right to levy an impost on all meat, fish, fruit, and vegetables exposed for sale in the markets, on all goods sold in the streets, on the winnings in all games of chance played in public, and on all cab hire. Very stringent laws have been enacted against this practice, and the Government has from time to time made energetic efforts to suppress it, but without success. The peasants and fishermen are eager to pay the illegal tax. The threat not to accept it will awe the most refractory among them into obedience to the other regulations of the Association, for they know that if the countenance of the Society is withdrawn, it will soon become impossible for them to visit the market. For a week or two they may thrive under the exceptional care of the police, but as soon as the attention of the authorities relaxes, customers will be crowded away from their stalls, their goods will be pilfered, and their boats or carts, as the case may be, either seriously injured or put vexatiously out of gear. The mere fact that the Camorra has ceased to favor So-and-so is enough to expose him to the violence and the wiles of half the roughs and thieves of the district, as well as to the tricks and torments of the most impish crowd of street boys that any European town can show.

The Camorra dues are, therefore, an insurance against theft and annoyance. Those who pay them are not members of the fraternity, they for the most part know nothing of its constitution, and they can make no claim upon it, except for protection, on their way from the gates of the town to the market-place, and during their stay there. This, however, is highly valuable, and it is honestly exercised. Some years ago a party of fishermen brought a rather unusual supply to market, and left their wares standing at the accustomed place while they went into a neighboring coffee-house to breakfast. They were stolen, and the men applied to the official representative of the Camorra as naturally an Englishman would to the police. He asked some questions, took a few notes, and then bid them leave the market for a time, and come back at a certain hour. They did so, and on their return found their fish standing where they had originally left it, “not a sardine was missing.” Such events are constantly occurring.

The almost unlimited influence which the association exercises over the criminal classes is due less to the fact that many of them are enrolled among its members than to the extraordinary information it can command as to any detail of city life. In every district it has a body of highly-trained agents, as to whose education and organization we may perhaps have an opportunity of saying something in a future number. These men are all eye and ear, and if a question is proposed to them by their superiors as to the private life of any one who resides in their district, it will go hard if they are not able to supply a trustworthy answer in a few days. Hence it would be almost impossible for a criminal to escape the officers of justice if the Camorra sincerely desired his arrest. It never interferes in such matters, however, except when one of its members or tributaries has been wronged, and compensation is refused. This rarely happens; but when it does it is said that its vengeance is swift and implacable, while it takes the perfectly legal form of a judicial sentence. Nor does the victim escape from its power when the prison gates close upon him. Some members of the association are almost sure to be confined within the same gloomy precincts, and they spare no pains to render the life of the foe of their society intolerable by a thousand petty vexations which the gaolers could not prevent, even if they cared to incur the personal danger of endeavoring to do so. As a rule, they prefer to stand on a good footing with the Camorrists, and to employ their influence in keeping the other prisoners in order.

When a dispute arises, either in the streets or market-places, between persons who have purchased the protection of the association, it is usually referred to one of its agents whose decision is regarded as final, and so great is the reputation of many of these men for justice and fair play, that they are frequently requested to arbitrate on matters with which they have officially no concern whatever. On such occasions it is usual to make a present to the amateur judge, proportionate in worth to the matter he has settled, or at least to invite him to a sumptuous dinner. In a similar way these Camorrists form the court of honor of the lazzaroni. All questions of vendetta which have their origin in a sense of honor rather than personal hatred are submitted to them, and it is only just to recognize that they almost invariably do their best to bring about a reconciliation, though they themselves are notoriously ready to use their knives. In a word, whatever the ultimate purposes of the Camorra may be—they are doubtless always lawless, and not unfrequently criminal—its influence over the poorer classes is not an unmixed evil. It is unscrupulous both in forming and executing its designs, but when its own interests are not involved, it can be both just and merciful. There are honest and well-to-do tradesmen in Naples who would never have risen from the gutter, if, in their boyhood, the Camorra had not given them a fair start and something more.—_Saturday Review._

THE DECAY OF IRISH HUMOR.

The above heading was suggested to us by a friend as the subject of a paper some months back, but it was not until much time had elapsed, and not a little reflection had been devoted to the matter, that we felt ourselves constrained to admit its unwelcome truth. For to acknowledge that Irish humor is on the wane is a serious admission at the present day, when we are suffering from an undoubted dearth of that commodity on this side of the Channel; when laughter has been effectually quenched at St. Stephen's; when our interest in the best comic paper is almost entirely centred in the illustrations, and not the text; and when we have grown to be strangely dependent upon America for light reading of all sorts. This year—an exceptionally uninteresting year for the reader—has, it is true, been marked by a new departure or a reaction in the direction of startling sensation and melodramatic plots—engendered perhaps by a desire to escape from the unromantic common placeness of our daily surroundings, culminating in Mr. Stevenson's tale, “The Bodysnatcher,” in the Christmas number of the _Pall Mall Gazette_, which literally reeks of the charnel-house. But this movement, apart from its general literary or constructive merit, is from its very nature opposed to sunshine and mirth. The advent of a new humorist was hailed by some critics on the appearance of “Vice Versâ,” but his second considerable contribution to fiction, “The Giant's Robe,” is anything but a cheerful book. Lastly, at least two conscious and elaborate attempts have been made during the last six months to transplant the squalid anatomical photography of Zola into the realm of English fiction. Where, then, in these latter days are we to look for native humorists? Not in the ranks of Irish politicians surely, for the Irish political fanatic is anything but a comic personage, and the whole course of the Nationalist agitation has been unredeemed by any humorous passage. There are no Boyle Roches, or O'Connells, or Dowses, or even O'Gormans, to be found amongst the followers of Mr. Parnell. The cold, impassive address of their leader, utterly un-Irish in its character, and, perhaps, only the more effective on that account, has infected them all. Mr. O'Donnell has now and then let fly a sardonic shaft; but Mr. Justin McCarthy reserves his graceful pleasantry for the pages of his novels, save no one occasion when Mr. Gladstone pounced down on a “bull” of preternatural magnitude. Acrimony, virulence, and powers of invective, these are abundantly displayed by Messrs. Sexton, Healy, and O'Brien; but as for humor, there is none of it. For otherwise would they not have seen the logical outcome of their decision (we speak of the Nationalists as a whole) to rename the Dublin streets,—we mean the corollary that they should in many cases divest themselves also of their indubitably Sassenach patronymics in favor of Celtic and national names? From their own point of view, Charles Stewart Parnell is an odious combination, and should give place, let us say, to Brian Boroihme O'Toole. If we turn from politics to literature, we shall find much the same state of things prevailing. Irishmen are remarkably successful as journalists, but the prizes of that profession draw them away from their own country; their lives are spent amid other surroundings, less favorable to the development of their characteristic humor, which encourage their facile wits to waste themselves in mere over-production. Some of the very best specimens of recent Irish verse are to be found in the pages of _Kottabos_, a magazine supported by the members of Trinity College, Dublin. But although it is hardly a good sign that the best work of this kind should flourish under Academic patronage, we have been sincerely grieved to learn that _Kottabos_ is no more, and the goodly company of _Kottabistæ_ finally disbanded.

If we descend to the other end of the social scale, we shall find that a variety of causes have conspired to diminish or even destroy the sense of humor with the possession of which tradition has credited the Irish peasant. It is only fair, however, to premise that much of what strikes an appreciative visitor as humorous in the speech of an Irish peasant is wholly unconscious in the speaker, and arises from his casting his sentences in the diffuse form of his mother-tongue, or from his use of imposing phrases picked up from the books read during his school-time. The first of these causes probably accounts for many picturesque expressions, such as “to let a screech out of oneself;” where an Englishman would merely say, “to shout,” or “screech;” the second explains the use of words like “extricate,” “congratulate,” by bare-legged gossoons in remote mountain glens. Among the destructive agents alluded to above, the tourist occupies a prominent position. For when the native inhabitants at any favorite place of resort found that it paid them to amuse the visitors, they cultivated the faculty and spoilt it in the cultivation. If we are asked for an example, we have only to mention the Killarney guide, a creature who is to every true Irishman _anathema_,—a tedious retailer of stories concocted during the slack season. A more serious cause of decay of late years has been the emigration which is slowly draining certain districts of the South and West of the cream of their population. In some parts of Kerry it is well-nigh impossible to get young and vigorous laborers; and the national game of “hurly” has completely died out, in consequence of the dearth of able-bodied players. We regard this as a serious loss, for though matches between the teams of rival villages often led to subsequent “ructions,” the game was a fine one and a good outlet for the excitable side of the Celtic character, which now finds a far less healthy field for expansion. All attempts to teach the peasants cricket have failed. Though fine athletes and unsurpassed jumpers, they lacked the coolness, the patience, and faculty of co-operating so essential to success in cricket. From this absence of vigorous youth, there results a dearth of “play-boys”—_i.e._, jokers, merry fellows—which is not likely to be remedied in this generation. Even in former years, before the _entente cordiale_ between landlord and tenant had been so rudely severed, it struck us as a symptom of decadence—unless, may-be, it was a mere compliment to the “quality,”—that on all festive gatherings where gentle and simple met on a friendly footing, the singers as often as not chose for the delectation of their superiors some old popular music-hall song of six or seven seasons back, which had filtered down from London through the provinces to Dublin, and so slowly made its way into our remote district. Thus we have heard “The Grecian Bend” rendered with the richest brogue imaginable, which partly alleviated the Philistinism of the song. The Irish peasantry, it should be remarked, do not sing Moore's Irish melodies, with few exceptions, in spite of the charm of the airs to which the words are wedded, which is an adequate proof, if any were wanted, that he has no claim to be considered a national poet. Few readers realise that by far his finest work is in the domain of satire, on which his title to immortality is far more securely based than on his erotic dactyls. Nor do the peasants, as a rule, know much of Lover, whose amusing ballads have a great and well-merited popularity in the middle and upper classes of Irish society. The reason of this is, perhaps, to be found in the character of the music, generally Lover's own, which is a sort of compromise between an Irish melody of the flowing type and the modern drawing-room ballad. Genuine Irish music is a barbarous thing enough—a wild, nasal chant, freely embellished with trills and turns—and to this setting the peasantry in the outlying districts still sing a good many songs in Irish or in English, in the latter case generally translations. To this must be added a certain number of ballads which trace their source to the events of the last few years. Nothing can be gained from an attempt to write down the Land League from a literary point of view, and we are very far from harboring such an intention. But these songs are, in the main, dreary and abusive, as one might naturally expect, for the events of recent years have not been conducive to mirth in Ireland. Here is a fragment from one on the landlords of Ireland:—

“The bare, barren mountains and bog, I must state, The poor Irish farmer he must cultivate; Whilst the land-shark is watching His chance underhand, To gobble his labor, his house, and his land. But the Devil is fishing, and he'll soon get a pull, Of those bad landlords and agents His net is near full.... Then hurrah! for the Land League, And Parnell so brave; Each bad landlord, my boys, We'll muzzle him tight. May the banner of freedom And green laurels wave O'er the men of the Land League, And Parnell so brave.”

Irish humor is not dead yet, but it is decaying or dormant; and if ever, in spite of the malign influence of the Gulf Stream, and the Nationalist Party, and a sense of their past wrongs, and race-hatred, and half-a-dozen other drawbacks, Ireland should recover her sanity and grow prosperous and contented, then, and not till then, may we expect to see her sons grow merry as well as wise,—unless, indeed, their sense of humor is entirely improved out of them in the process. Judging from the character of the men of Antrim, this is not impossible. But valuable as is the gift of humor, the harmony of Great Britain would not be too dearly bought by its sacrifice.—_The Spectator._

PRINCE BISMARCK'S CHARACTER.

The late general election in Germany showed results which have signally verified Prince Bismarck's calculations on the tendencies of modern democracy.

The Liberalists, who represent the opinions of the Manchester school, lost a great number of seats—no less than forty-four; while signal victories were won by the Conservatives, the Catholics, and the Socialists. The doctrines of the Liberals were treated with unequivocal contempt in the large cities, and several members of the party retained their seats only through the support grudgingly given to them by Socialist electors at the second ballot. At the first ballot the Socialists testified to their absolute hatred of the Liberals by voting for Conservative or Catholic candidates in constituencies where they were not strong enough to carry candidates of their own; but at the second ballot they dictated terms to the sorely mortified party whose overthrow they had caused, and agreed to assist Liberals who promised to vote for a repeal of the law against Socialists. The Liberals swallowed the leek and made the promise, though throughout the electoral campaign they had denounced the Socialists as the worst enemies of human progress. The Socialists, on their side, went to the polls as if obeying the injunction which Ferdinand Lassalle laid upon working-men eighteen months before his death[27]: “I have always been a Republican, but, promise me, my friends, that if ever a struggle should take place between the Divine Right Monarchy and the miserable Liberal middle-class, you will fight on the King's side against the _bourgeois_.”