Maffia

Maffia, a secret society in Sicily, more powerful than the Camorra (q.v.) of Naples, which has organised lawlessness, and made itself more feared than the law. Its code of honour (the onertà) binds the members to seek no redress from the courts, nor ever to give evidence before them; its object is to override the law, and to rule the island. In an organised form, however, the Maffia survives only in isolated localities; as it exists in the island as a whole, it rather expresses an idea than indicates a society with regular chiefs and councillors. It represents the survival among the people of a preference for owing the securing of their persons and property rather to their own strength and influence than to those of the law and its officers. Therefore a distinction is drawn between the high and the low Maffia, the latter embracing the great mass of members who, themselves not active in the matter, are afraid to set themselves against the Maffia, and are content to accept the protection of this shadowy league, which in them inspires more awe than do the courts of justice. Indeed, much of the Maffia's strength and vitality is directly due to this looseness of organisation, and to the fact that it is an ingrained mode of thought, an idea, and not an organised society, that the government has to root out. Direct robbery and violence are resorted to only for vengeance; for practical purposes the employment of isolation—in fact, the system of boycotting carried to the extreme point—is sufficiently efficacious. From the landholders blackmail is levied in return for protection, and they must employ maffiosi only on their farms; and the vendetta follows those who denounce or in any way injure a member of the fraternity. The Maffia controls elections, protects its members against the officers of justice, assists smugglers, directs strikes, and even fixes the hire of workmen. The government's efforts have failed to stamp out the society; but numbers of its members have been driven abroad, and swelled the criminal classes of New York and New Orleans. See Alongi, La Maffia (Turin, 1887); Le Faure, La Maffia (Paris, 1892).