GARIBALDI'S EMBARRASSMENTS.

Globe, Volume II, Issue 193, 21 January 1875, Page 3

GARIBALDI'S EMBARRASSMENTS.

M. Erdan, writing from Rome to the Temps, says:—"The entire Italian press, and especially the Moderate and Ministerial papers, are deeply moved by the revelations just made respecting Garibaldi's financial embarrassments. The hero's poverty was well known. It has been steadily growing, especially since 1870, when presents in kind from England, the United states, &c, began to get insignificant. Nearly all the Italian Prime Ministers since 1860 have wished to relieve this honourable poverty, and various means have been tried of inducing him to accept assistance, one p'an being to treat him as a general on half-pay. Members of the Advanced party, personal friends of Garibaldi, were commissioned to make overtures; but everything was rejected with a kind of anger. The only thing to be donp—a Parliamentary and National Act—waß not thought of, or was little thought of, either by the Right or the Left. In September last, Garibaldi, reduced to an extremity, intimated at Genoa that he wished to sell the yacht given him by the Duke of Sutherland, which was lying in that port. No purchaser presented himself except an envoy from the Royal household, who asked Garibaldi's agent the price, and agreed at once, it is said, to pay the 80,000 f demanded. To whom should the sum be paid? Garibaldi ordered it to be paid, not to a bank—such precautions, alas! are unknown to the hero—but to this good friend, thiß agent who had concluded the bargain. The Royal envoy, acting under his instructions, paid the money. The good friend took to his heels, and is, it is said, in America. But on this point there are only stories which have a legendary air, and fuller information must be awaited. Garibaldi's secretary that good, stout man called General or Colonel Bassi — writes that, perhaps, the whole sum will not be lost. Id the midst of the

troubles, the New York Tribune was informed of the hero's embarassments. The Tribune under (he title of "A Second Belisarius," published a letter by Garibaldi to a Dr Ross, in which he acknowledged his distress, and said that if the offers of help made to him from the United (States were to be realised, the best plan would be to send a draft on an Italian banker or merchant. The Tribune added that a Mr Anderson had settled on Garibaldi 5000 f. a year. The Opinione was (he first paper to publish an extract from the Tribune. It added that if Garibal li was so embarraaed it could not be imputed to the king, the Government, or the nation, and that in any case Italy itself by an Act of Parliament must assist the national hero, whose resolute political adversary people might be without forgetting what the country owes him. That is how the matter now stands." A telegram from Rome says :—" The directors of several Italian newspapers have held a meeting at which it was proposed to raise a sum of money, which would yield an annual income of 50,000 francs, to be presented to General Garibaldi as a nationa offering."