Peccorini's article in the 'Forum' for
January, 1911, on the tuberculosis that soon develops among
Italians who abroad were accustomed to live in the country but
here are forced to exist in tenements.
Now, for historic reasons, these south Italians hate and
distrust all governmental control and despise any appeal to
the ordinary tribunals of justice to assert a right or to
remedy a wrong. It has been justly said by a celebrated
Italian writer that, in effect, there is some instinct for
civil war in the heart of every Italian. The insufferable
tyranny of the Bourbon dynasty made every outlaw dear to the
hearts of the oppressed people of the Kingdom of the Two
Sicilies. Even if he robbed them, they felt that he was the
lesser of two evils, and sheltered him from the authorities.
Out of this feeling grew the "Omerta," which paralyzes the arm
of justice both in Naples and Sicily. The late Marion
Crawford thus summed up the Sicilian code of honor:
According to this code, a man who appeals to the law against
his fellow man is not only a fool but a coward, and he who
cannot take care of himself without the protection of the
police is both .
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