Eustace, John Cretwode: A classical tour through Italy An. MDCCCII (Vol. 3): 3. ed., rev. and enl (London: J. Mawman, 1815)

Ch. IV.

THROUGH ITALY.

119

queen. But the Neapolitans are by no means an
ill-humored or discontented race, and till the late
French invasion, they seem to have been strangers
to complaint and faction. Nor indeed, as far as
the King’s conduct was concerned, was there
much room for either.
The kingdom of Naples had for ages labored
under the accumulated weight of the feudal sys-
tem, and of vice-regal administration. The for-
mer chained and enslaved nine-tenths of its popu-
lation ; while the latter, the most pernicious
mode of government ever experienced, subjected
the whole nation to systematic plunder, and ruled
the country, with a view, not to its own interests,
but to the interests of a foreign court, in its very
nature, proud, suspicious, and vindictive. From
the last of these evils the accession of Ferdinand
IV. delivered the Neapolitans. King of the Two
Sicilies only, he had no distant realms to look to
as a more brilliant and engaging inheritance.
Naples was not to him a step to a more elevated
situation; it was his home, and his and its inte-
rests became too closely interwoven in his mind
and feelings to be ever separable. The feudal
system was an evil that had taken deeper root,
and entwined itself with so many institutions, ci-
vil and ecclesiastical, that to disentangle them
without danger required time and delicacy^