Well might M. le Préfet observe, in his address at the opening of the session of 1851: “_La situation du département à cet égard est sans doute profondément triste. Le nombre des crimes n'a pas diminué sensiblement_.” So low, however, is the moral sense in Corsica with regard to the sanctity of human life, that these atrocities excite no horror, and the sympathies of vast numbers of the population are with the bandits. They are the heroes of the popular tales and _canzoni_; one hears of them from one end of the island to the other, round the watchfires of the shepherds on the mountains, in the remote _paése_, by the roadside. They are the tales of the nursery,—the Corsican child learns, with his Ave Maria, that it is rightful and glorious to take the life of any one who injures or offends him.
To a passionate and imaginative people, these tales of daring courage and wild adventure have an inconceivable charm; though stained with blood, they are full of poetry and romance. Such stories have been eagerly seized upon by writers on Corsica,—they make excellent literary capital. Unfortunately, _banditisme_ forms so striking a feature in Corsican history, that it must necessarily occupy a conspicuous place in a faithful review of the genius and manners of the people. There are doubtless traits of a heroism worthy a better cause, and sometimes of a redeeming humanity, in the lives of the banditti; but one regrets to find, though happily not in the works of the English travellers who have given accounts of Corsica, a tendency to palliate so atrocious a system as blood-revenge. _Vendetta_, the name given it, has a romantic sound; and it is treated as a sort of national institution, originating in high and laudable feelings, the injured sense of right, and the love of family; so that, with the glory shed around it by a false heroism, it is almost raised to the rank of a virtue.
To take blood for blood, not by the hand of public justice, but by the kinsmen of the slain, was, we are reminded, a primitive custom, sanctioned by the usages of many nations, and even by the laws of Moses. We know, however, that among our Anglo-Saxon ancestors the laws humanely commuted this right of revenge for fines commensurate with the rank of the murdered person. But while the Mosaic law forbad the acceptance of any pecuniary compensation for the crime of manslaughter, and expressly recognised the right of the “avenger of blood” to exact summary vengeance, it provided for even the murderer's security until he were brought to a fair trial. But Corsica, alas! has had no “Cities of Refuge,” and examples drawn from remote and barbarous times can afford no apology for the inveterate cruelties of a people enjoying the light of modern civilisation and professing the religion of the New Testament.