§ MR. DARBY GRIFFITHsaid, he would beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury, Whether the Government has received accounts that 30,000 muskets, which had been taken by the French authorities from Neapolitan troops escaping into the Roman territory from before Gaeta, during the siege of that place, have been allowed by the French to be made use of in arming the bands of Brigands and Bourbonists which have been organized within the Papal territory for invasion of the Southern Provinces of Italy?
§ VISCOUNT PALMERSTONreplied that when the Neapolitan troops retired from the siege at Gaeta into the Papal territory they were disarmed by the French, in accordance with the usual course taken when troops entered a neutral territory. The arms had been handed over to the Papal Government, as the Government of the country in which the disarmament took place. Any subsequent distribution of such arms, therefore, must have been by the Papal and not by the French Government. If the hon. Member asked his (Viscount Palmerston's) belief on the matter he had no objection to saying that it was his opinion that a large quantity of those arms had been given to persons sent into the Neapolitan territory for the purpose of creating a disturbance and committing atrocities, but that that had anything to do with the French authorities was entirely out of the question.