check the influence by counter-terrors,—equally awful?
Fearful deeds were the result of the laws of the society; the individuals that composed it, knowing themselves to be supported by numerous companions, and sheltered from detection by the secrecy that veiled their name, lost their moral sense. The act, commanded by a power to which they had sworn obedience, ceased to be a crime, and assassination was no longer looked on as a murder, but as an execution; numbers of Carbonari, suspected or really guilty of treason to their oaths, were assassinated all over Italy, especially during the latter days of the society; and volumes might be filled with the history of these tragedies. If any man to whom the lot fell to execute the sentence of the rest, shrunk from his task, he was considered a traitor, and condemned to death.[1] Such was Carbonarism, at the time when it shook kings on their thrones, and made the sovereigns of Italy tremble. Calabria
- ↑ A young aspirant was asked, during the progress of his initiation, whether, if commanded by the society, he would put his own father to death. He answered, “Yes.” He was taken to a room where, by some contrivance it seemed to him that he saw his father sitting at a table shading his eyes with his hand. A dagger was given him: “Your father is a traitor to the sect,” he was told, “strike!” The weapon fell from the youth’s hand; in an instant he was blindfolded—hurried away—set free in some distant spot—rejected from the sect, as incapable of that devotion to the cause which was demanded of its members.
