“ WILD JUSTICE.” LACK OF LAW.—CORSICA. 425

government of foreigners, which, as in the cases ofGreece , Spanish America, Ireland, &c., has created a partyor faction in the community, with interests and feelingsperpetually at variance with, and hostile to, the general weal.Corsica, an Italian island, at times “ belonging” to theFrench, then to the Genoese, then the English , then againback to the French ; has always been governed or mis-governed like a colony, while it is in reality cpiite extensiveand populous enough to govern itself.

For lack of law, people when injured must have recourseto that expedient, somewhere by Bacon called “ wildjustice,”—and better is it to be able to procure for oneselfeven that “wild justice,” than to be so swaddled andhampered by bad laws and police regulations, as to getneither that, nor legal justice of any kind. Hence, inCorsica, a species of relationship, or clanship for redress ofgrievances apd of retribution, has been, for generationspast, the almost only retributive law of the land, and entirefamilies have dwindled to nothing through successivecombats, and assassinations between them: one murderrevenging a preceding one.

General Cataneo, a Corsican , full of the vicious feelingsthat had been instilled into the society of which he was amember, had recourse to four Corsican officers in theNeapolitan service, to become the executors of his revenge.During the day which succeeded the affray with Rambaud,two of these officers, one of them named Carabelli, acaptain in the guards, requested an interview with Ram-baud’s mother and brother, and reckoning, to work uponthe maternal feelings of the former, assured her thatunless she would wish to see her son a corpse, she mustinduce him to remove from Naples within three days, andpending even those three days, cause him to abstain fromshewing himself in public. I had purposely waited during