No resident in London, no visitor to London, need be told of the organ nuisance. Some of the organs, it is true, are really of excellent tone, and play good music; but they become a pest in this way--that the men, taking note of the houses whence they have obtained money, stop in front of those houses more and more frequently, in the hope of being paid, if not for playing, at least for going away. Some of these organ-men have been organ-boys who came over with _padroni_.
And now for the diplomatic correspondence relating to this subject.
In 1874 the Chevalier Cadorna, Italian Minister at the Court of St James's, addressed a communication to the Earl of Derby relating to these wretched and ill-used children. He stated that a law had been passed in Italy, the success of which would depend largely on the co-operation of other governments. It had been ascertained that in many provinces of that country parents lease or lend their children for money; boys and girls under eight years of age, who are taken by vile speculators to foreign lands, there to be employed as musicians, tumblers, dancers, exhibitors of white mice, beggars, &c. It is a white slave-trade, in which the unfeeling parents participate. London is especially noted for the presence of these unfortunates; the _padroni_ or masters find that a good harvest may be made out of the injudicious because indiscriminate charity of the metropolis. 'Miserable it is for the children,' says M. Cadorna, 'if they fail any day to obtain the sum which their tyrants require from them! This is the reason why we often see them wandering about till late at night, exhausted by fatigue and hunger, rather than return to the lodgings where they dread ill-treatment of various kinds from their pitiless masters.' The police magistrates of London are frequently occupied in listening to the complaints of these poor creatures. But no: this is hardly the case; for the victims are generally afraid to make their sorrows known, lest they should suffer still worse from the vengeance of their taskmasters; sometimes, however, they are too ill from bad treatment to conceal their misery; while at other times they are taken up for begging. Who knows? perhaps the poor things receive better food and lodging during a few days' imprisonment--certainly better in a reformatory or a workhouse--than in the squalid rooms which their tyrants provide for them.