«Il Governo ci regala il vento dell’Africa» dalla illusione garibaldina a Lu Setti-e-menzu (Zenone di Elea - Dic. 2021)

The Quarterly Review

1849

(se vuoi, scarica il testo in formato ODT o PDF)

Revolutionized Italy

Art. VII.—1. A Glance at Revolutionized Italy: a visit to Messina, and a tour through the Kingdom of Naples, the States of the Church, Tuscany, Piedmont, Sfc., in the Summer of 1848. By Charles Mac Farlane, Author of "Constantinople in 1828," "Sports, Pastimes, and Recollections of the South of Italy," &c. 2 vols. post 8vo. 1849.

2. The Events of 1848, especially in their relation to Great Britain. A Letter to the Marquis of Lansdowne.By R. M. Milnes, M.P. 8vo. 1849.

It is too often the unwelcome duty of Reviewers to protest against the hastiness of travellers in recording their first crude impressions—their readiness to prefer their prejudices to their observation, and to attribute their own sentiments to the people by whom they are surrounded indeed, but with whom they have little means of communicating. On the present occasion it is our pleasanter office to invite attention to a tourist of a very different character.

Mr. Mac Farlane is thoroughly acquainted with Italy—he passed in it those youthful years when observation is keenest and memory most retentive. "I lived there," he tells us, "from January 1816, to May 1827, when I left it for the East; and at that time its language and literature were nearly as familiar to me as my own." He returns to it after an interval of twenty-one years, qualified by his long absence and his previous knowledge to mark and report the changes which time has wrought. On his route from Constantinople to England he resolves, after some hesitation, to pass through Italy, induced not more by curiosity than by a desire to revisit the haunts and friends of his youth—and we congratulate the public on his determination: these two amusing and unpretending volumes give more insight into the present state of the Italian peninsula than can be collected from all the voluminous speeches, pamphlets, reports, and letters with which the press has been inundated. Mr. Mac Farlane possesses in no ordinary degree those qualities which we value most in a traveller: he is curious and indefatigable in the pursuit of information; while his matured knowledge of the country and its language prevents his becoming the dupe to ciceroni, language-masters, laquais-de-place, from whom the ordinary (4) tourist " collects his information. We have no accounts of "intelligent friends " picked up at tables d"hote—(4) close observers " met at coffee-houses or in the (4) corners of streets," on whose authority we are asked to believe the most improbable assertions; neither does his acquaintance lie with that class of men which abounds in every Italian capital—needy, obtrusive, and greedy—the very parasites of Gil Blas— abbati without benefices—monsignori without employment—doctors without patients —lawyers without clients—nobles without lands or patents—and all without character: men who, shunned by their own countrymen, flock to the chambers of strangers, whose credulous ears they fill with abuse of the society that has banished them. The Italian gentleman shrinks with even an overstrained delicacy from accepting the hospitality he does not mean to return, and speaks with undisguised contempt of the native toad-cater who fawns on the foreigner and feeds at his expense.

We sympathise with Mr. MacFarlane in his admiration of Italy, and even in his affection for the Italian people. It is this sympathy that has made us raise our voices again and again (and we would fain hope not quite in vain) to warn our countrymen against the dangerous tendency of our Italian policy—a policy fatal not only to our own credit, but to the happiness of those whose welfare is the pretext for our interference. In contemplating the melancholy and disgraceful scenes which have been enacted in every part of Italy we would willingly exonerate the people from that reproach of cowardice and treachery which attaches itself to their seducers only—to the privy conspirators and the abettors of pillage and assassination —to the Guerrazzi, the Caninos, and the Montanelli.

In any cause which has engaged their hearts the Italians have generally shown themselves determined and enterprising; and if they now appear cold, selfish, and irresolute, the inference is clear. The revolution which is hateful to the noble and the priest is distasteful to the peasant and the artisan—it is popular only with the rabble of the capital, misled and deceived by interested adventurers—men soured into misanthropy by long obscurity and universal contempt. “Ah," said a disconsolate democrat of Naples to Mr. Mac Farlane, in discussing the events of the memorable 15th of May, “if we could only win over the troops and the common people and all the shopkeepers, then we would drive away the tyrant, and carry out the doctrines of the Sovereignty of the People, and make a true democratic republic—ma la malora è, but the mischief of it is, all the people are against us!”—(i. p. 106.)

Mr. Mac Farlane was at Constantinople when the reforms of Pope Pius had just begun to raise the hopes of the revolutionists, but before they had excited serious alarm in the prudent. The population of the Christian suburb of Pera is composed of refugees from every state, traders and artisans from every climate, for the most part too clumsy or too ill-conducted to succeed at home: men of all tongues and creeds— those who have no creeds and 'whose tongues are unintelligible patois; a very Babel of confusion—French, Germans, Spanish, and English, Arminians and Greeks—Islanders, Albanians, Sclavonians—and, above all, Italians—the worst specimens, perhaps, that their respective nations could furnish, and affording by their conduct a living justification for the obstinacy of the Turk in his rejection of the faith of the Giaour. It was a sight of no good augury to 'witness the joy with which the measures of the reforming Pope were hailed by these spirits of mischief. One of some note amongst them, an Italian in the Turkish service, opened himself w ith much frankness to our author: — “The Pope," he said, (4) is an old woman, and teaches a religion fit only for old w omen. We men of liberal principles are neither Roman Catholics, nor of any other religion. The world is too enlightened for that. But Pius IX. has played our cards for us; and we will let him play on a little longer, until we shall have no further need of him, and then we will cut off the old fool's head."—(i. p. 17.) It is remarkable that these were exactly the sentiments which we ourselves heard uttered, before the French revolution had rendered their realization probable, with only a very little more decency of expression, by one of the principal agitators for "Italian independence." If we forbear to name him, it is from no regard to him—he glories in what we deem his delinquencies—but from respect to the place and the society in which we met him.

By the colonists of Pera the triumphs of the French and Austrian revolutions were celebrated with all the malice and brutality of which depraved human nature is capable. M. de Bourqueney, the French Ambassador, was subjected to the most insulting treatment—his house invaded and sacked, and his wife and family saved only by concealment till the means of flight could be procured. The Austrian internuncio was protected from similar treatment by the presence of Turkish soldiers bivouacking in his garden, and perhaps still more by some stout Sclavonians whom he took into his pay to garrison the official residence. This show of resistance effectually damped the ard our of his assailants, whose exuberant zeal found a safer vent in patriotic dinners, blasphemous hymns, and mutual pledges to exterminate tyrants and to spread the blessings of liberty, equality, and fraternity, at the dagger's point. For a full and very lively account of this savage buffoonery we refer our readers to the first chapter of Mr. Mac Farlane's book.

At Malta, where our author performs his quarantine, exposed to the exactions, impertinences, and petty persecutions of the native officials of the lazaretto, he does not, like Mr. Cobden, find the fleet lying idle and inactive—we wish he had: on the contrary, that fleet was absent and busily employed in the ignoble task of insulting a friendly sovereign in his own capital, and encouraging the rebellion of his subjects. Neither does Mr. Mac Farlane's account of this important island correspond in other respects with that which Nir. Cobden published for the benefit of his liberal testimonialists; on the contrary, he complains of the bad effect of the injudicious reform sand sordid economy introduced by the Government in the vain hope of conciliating that class of politicians who feel our national Skry like a wound, and whom nothing less than the destruction of our ancient supremacy would satisfy. "The establishments," he says (i. p. 30), "are shamefully reduced, and the state of the island such as to be badly prepared to resist a sudden and formidable coup-de-main.""

He proceeds to Sicily, and lands at Messina at the moment the "popolo divino " (for such is the style in which their adulators address them) are preparing, amidst the wildest excesses of political excitement, to resist an attack which, after all, the captain of the National Guard (p. 52) assured our author it w as the general belief that the French and English fleets would not allow the King to make. His account of the popular fury and of the confusion is characteristic of the country and people. He visits the arsenal, and from thence goes on to the town-hall, in which the council of war and the committee of public safety, and various other "boards " and commissions, were sitting. He was struck with the number of priests and women in attendance:—

“All were talking at the tops of their voices, and all were, or seemed to be, in a passion. There was no order, or any attempt to maintain order. The scene presented the very" counterpart of the French Jacobin or Cordelier Club of 1792. Stacks of pikes, dirty flags and banners suspended from some of the ceilings, and printed manifestos and proclamations to the sovereign people, completed the resemblance. In the principal streets all the door posts, and nearly all the lower part of every house, church, or convent, were covered with placards, some printed, some manuscript. I read some scores of them, shuddering as I read. I had fancied that the French republicans had carried the flattery of the mob and the heroes of the barricades to its utmost limits, but I found that they were exceeded by the demagogues of Messina and the leaders of this Sicilian revolution, who out-Herod Herod and out Frenchify the French.”

Most of these papers were in a strain of the most pompous exultation:

“Others, however, were written in a less confident tone—betraying doubts, misgivings, and dark suspicions: all calculated to excite in other men's minds the perilous passion of suspicion— that passion and rage to which the ^Sicilians, like all the people of the South, are so naturally and habitually inclined. One fellow, who gave a fictitious and a classical name, called upon the sovereign people to keep their eyes open—to be watchful by night and by day, as it was a wellknown fact that there are many spies and partisans of the tyrant in the city. Another intimated that the rich were not making sacrifices enough for the cause of liberty and independence. One opined that the revolution was irot going fast enough: that the Parliament at Palermo was too aristocratic, and ought to be unseated; that the son of Charles-Albert would not accept the Sicilian crown which was offered to him; and that another form of government should be thought of. A very Trinculo of a demagogue proclaimed that the sovereign people, being sovereign and divine, ought to govern themselves by themselves—without either king or parliament; that the Sicilians did not yet sufficiently understand the signification of the words democracy, liberty, equality, and fraternity."—i. p. 57.

Various patriots put forth addresses on their own particular score, and were justly anxious to exonerate themselves from the charge of being spies—an imputation which an Italian always makes when he wishes to inflict a mortal injury, and which in this case was a sure recommendation to the assassin's knife.

"Another patriot proposed a new “conquer or die” oath, as necessary to be taken by the whole Sicilian nation, with instant death to those who would not take it. They were constantly changing the members of their local government. No sooner was a man in office than he excited envy, and saw a faction formed against him…………. The English and other merchants had nearly all withdrawn into the country or had quilted the island. Of the better class of Sicilian gentry and nobility, who had been accustomed in former times to make Messina their residence, I could see or hear nothing."—i. p. 59.

The state of things as described by Mr. Mac Farlane presents the most gloomy prospect. Indeed it must be confessed that Sicily, the richest and most beautiful of the Mediterranean isles, has not met with a happy destiny. Having early acquired both freedom and civilization under its Greek colonizers, it has rarely since possessed an independent existence. Long a province of the Spanish monarchy, whose languor and decline it shared, it seemed destined to new life when, united to Naples, it became an integral part of an independent sovereignty. The kingdom of the Two Sicilies (for we cannot acknowledge their separation) was ultimately settled, at the conclusion of the long struggle for the Spanish succession, on a prince of the Spanish branch of the house of Bourbon, and at the close of the last century was slowly emerging from its previous state of sloth and poverty; and though its progress had been checked by the misrule of Ferdinand IV. and the revolutions that preceded and followed the French occupation of one country and that of the other by the English, there might still be traced a gradual improvement, which had rapidly increased under the fostering care of the reigning king. Mr. Mac Farlane bears ample testimony to this progress; tracts of country which in his earlier day he had known marshy and desolate (valuable only to the sportsman), he now sees reclaimed, drained, and planted; streets which he had left dirty, close, and unwholesome, appear widenea, cleaned, and ventilated; swamps converted into corn-fields, and forests of brushwood have become orchards and vineyards. In spite of the idleness and misery that political agitation had recently brought on Messina, even that town wore a far better aspect; and he owns himself very agreeably disappointed in finding the amount of damage occasioned by the civil war so small. The Fort Reale, besieged and taken from a weak garrison by the Messinese, had been destroyed in their patriotic zeal by the populace of the town, but in other places no signs of devastation were visible. ((1))

We are very far from asserting that the administration of the island was susceptible of no improvement A more popular form of government might have been gradually introduced. Sicilian vanity might fairly expect a larger share in the favours of government 5 but it is a mistake to suppose that the interests of the island or of its inhabitants were in any way postponed to those of Naples; and if a higher degree of material civilization was attained in the continental kingdom than in Sicily, the fault is to be attributed to the Sicilians themselves. The King complains that his measures for their benefit were constantly thwarted, that neither nobility nor clergy were disposed to second him, and that complaints of grievances invariably terminated in selfish demands for power and emolument. If the King hesitated to grant a constitution, it must be admitted that there was some reason in his plea: he urged that the constitutional experiment, when tried at Naples, had produced such results as might well excuse his reluctance to repeat it. The monstrous and fantastic constitution of 1820, short-lived as it was, had survived any small share of popularity it ever possessed. The revolutionary movement headed by Pepe, a man without parts to maintain himself on the giddy height to which his vanity had raised him, was principally assisted by a section of the military, amongst whom he had introduced what he terms "La Charbonnerie”—he himself having initiated them into these mysteries, the object of which, he coolly tells us, was to dethrone the Prince whose uniform they wore, and whose sworn and trusted servant he was. The tyranny of this traitorous coxcomb, and the excesses of the undisciplined soldiery whom he had perverted but durst not restrain, rendered the revolutionary party highly unpopular, and the loyalty of the people and even of the greater part of the army (who, though ready enough to bluster and dictate, were by no means prepared to assist in dethroning their sovereign) completed its destruction. The agitators of that day made the same complaint that Mr. Mac Farlane heard on his return to Naples after an interval of near thirty years; the people were hostile or luke-warm; all—said the agitators—were swayed by interest or by affection to oppose the glorious cause that was to render them happy against their wills. The shameful defeat of the Neapolitan army by the Austrians is mainly to be attributed to the small inclination it bore to the cause, and General Pepe, in his strange Memoirs, which leave the reader in perplexity whether most to wonder at his treachery in forming such schemes, or his folly in narrating them, is forced to confess that the difficulties and dangers which he afterwards met in effecting his escape, proceeded neither from the emissaries of the Crown nor from Austrian bayonets, but from the hostility of the country to his person and his cause. ((2)) The Austrians were hailed with open rejoicings by the people, and with illdissembled satisfaction by those even who were most anxious for the independence of their country, but who recognized in this foreign intervention their only chance of salvation from Pepe and the anarchists. In Sicily these foreigners were received with yet greater favor, but everywhere and to everybody the recollection of the constitution, its meddling lawyers, its greedy demagogues, and its military dictator, was equally odious. We refer our readers (if they are rich in patience) to the dull and tedious Memoirs to which we have just alluded.

The present discontents in Sicily, which were not manifested till some time after the accession of Pius IX., and which, as everywhere else, were carefully fomented by foreigners, ((3)) were by no means the result of pressing grievances, nor of offended vanity, nor yet of awakened nationality; they may be traced to that spirit of insubordination and to the vague and restless hopes which the measures and language of the rash Pontiff had so generally excited. They cannot be attributed to the pressure of poverty— never before had Sicily enjoyed so much prosperity; but the whole Italian peninsula was eager in the race of innovation—to lag behind would be a proof of inferior civilization—and the Liberals of Sicily were resolved to assert the full prerogative of insubordination, even before the French revolution gave their cause a chance of ultimate success, and the united support of France and England had encouraged them in their extravagant demands. The confusion at Naples seemed for a time to render success but too probable, and the active support of the French and English squadrons might have justified the calculations of less sanguine partisans.

Mr. Mac Farlane went from Malta to Sicily in a French steamer:

"The King of Naples," he says, “had not been allowed by France and England to declare or maintain a blockade at Messina, Palermo, or any other point of Sicily. He had been deprived of one of the rights of war by those who had all along encouraged the revolt of his Sicilian subjects. A French frigate and an English war steamer lay right in the port of Messina. The Neapolitan steamer in the straits did not dare challenge our French steamer; we had rebels to the King of Naples on board of us—men who had been leaders in the revolt—men who had been occupied for weeks, and some of them for months, in the island of Malta, in procuring the means wherewith to continue the contest—men who had threatened to murder if not to eat ((4)) every Neapolitan they met with; yet we were allowed to glide past the King's frigate without a word said or a signal exchanged, to come to anchor to the leeward of the French frigate, to communicate at once with the shore, and to land whomsoever and whatsoever we might think fit. Our French captain confessed he had never known such rents made in the law of nations as by his flag and ours in these Sicilian affairs: and that he had never seen a war carried on like the present. —vol. i. p. 48.

This conduct on the part of the English authorities is the more questionable, since the utmost rigor of the law had been enforced against the King. A Neapolitan steam-vessel, watching the proceedings of some Calabrian refugees in the Maltese seas, excited the observation of the English admiral, and the commander was asked in no very courteous terms why he frequented the waters of Malta? He replied, that he had never been within a league of the island, and that he was about to return home. "He went because he saw he should not be allowed to remain. —(vol. i. p. 31.) Th is is but one among the many instances cited by Mr. Mac Farlane, in which the English authorities protected the "Smith O" Briens" of “the United Kingdom of the Two Sicilies." In many other cases more important countenance and assistance were afforded, but not always with perfect impunity: even the weakest states have sometimes the means of retaliation.

"Malta had been, in fact, converted into a foyer of malice and sedition against our ally. Therefore I was not much surprised when recently the King of Naples, taking advantage of a blunder committed by the Maltese Board of Health, imposed a long quarantine upon all vessels arriving in his dominions from that island." —vol. i. p. 37.

Mr. Temple, the English minister, it is well known, was absent, nor can it be supposed that his absence during so long a period was accidental. The foreign policy of our country, however, was thoroughly well represented. Lord Napier, the young charge d'affaires, seems to have acquitted himself greatly to the satisfaction of his superiors, and, by acting the same part that was played with so much spirit by our Queen's representatives at Madrid and Athens, no doubt is entitled to a like reward.

"He openly rejoiced when the revolutionary ferment began at Naples, and prognosticated that nothing but good to the country could proceed from it. As the revolutionists grew bolder his admiration for them seemed to increase When the Sicilians rose in rebellion his sympathies were all with them. Unhappily, the society and advice of old age came in to the ail of his juvenile indiscretion: Lord Minto, in the course of his roving and (in part) illegal commission, arrived at Naples, after having fraternized with the Liberals all through Italy, and. metaphorically at least, hoisted the black flag in the front of well nigh every royal palace in the peninsula. But there is scarce any metaphor in saying that Lord Napier, the representative of Queen Victoria, “patted on the back” sundry ot the instigators of the desperadoes who made the barricades of the loth oi May, and whose success, had it been attainable or possible, must have ended in the death of King Ferdinand or in his precipitate flight with his whole family, in plunder, massacre, anarchy for the citv of Naples, and a long and bloody civil war for the kingdom! Lord Napier made his house a place oi rendezvous for all the fiery young men of the Neapolitan society, and himself the centre of a political faction; he collected all his intelligence from these sources: he would apply to no other; he avoided the men of the moderate party J he turned the cold shoulder on gentlemen with whom he had been intimate because they accepted office under the King—because they became constitutional ministers of the crown. If he did not himself indulge in an indecent licence of language against these ministers and the King, he allowed such language to be used in his presence. “La bestia”' (the beast) was about the mildest epithet applied to Ferdinand by Lord Napier's associates.—vol. i. p. 169.

The King of Naples, in the hope of conciliating the revolutionary party, and acting, as we think, most unwisely, consented to grant a constitution such as his experience must have assured him could have no durability, and such as its promoters never intended should endure. It was far, however, from satisfying the reformers, who perhaps were disappointed at the compliance with their demands, and who, mistaking the character of the King, or the extent ot his resources, or his willingness to make them available, proposed such a modification of this constitution, or rather such organic changes in it, as would have destroyed the monarchical principle entirely. Other concessions were also demanded, which would immediately have left the King at the mercy of the national guard. The army was to be reduced, the Swiss regiments disbanded, and the castles and forts of Naples given up to the guardianship of the civic soldiers. On the 14th of May, about eighty members of the new legislative; assembly met together at the Palazzo Gravina, and though they were not vet constituted, nor their powers legalized, they proceeded to deliberate on the state of affairs, I or, in other words, to assume an attitude of open defiance towards the King; and his cabinet. As the schemes of the bolder and more desperate of the number were developed, the prudent or timid retired, leaving a rabid minority to organize sedition and issue their-illegal manifestos.

In this difficulty the King sought the mediation of the popularly-elected peers, and tried to win back the dissenting deputies to reason. All his efforts were vain; he reiterated his promises to respect the constitution he had granted, and to guarantee all the concessions extorted; the truculent deputies refused even to listen to the proposals of the mediators— "Down with the peers, we will have no peers!" was the only reply they offered to the temperate remonstrances of the deputation. "The chambers are not yet assembled," said the ambassadors, "you are not yet a constituted body, and all your acts are illegal." These calm and undeniable representations were met with no reasonable answer, and the deputation retired amidst clamor and confusion. A more moderate section of the deputies assembled in another place, leaving the anarchical conciliabulum at the Palazzo Gravina, now reduced to no more than twenty members; what they wanted, however, in numerical force they made up in vehemence; they were warmly seconded, too, by their communistic friends in the city and in the provinces, and barricades (Ecce iterum) were eagerly constructed. We regret we cannot afford space to quote Mr. Mac Farlane's description of the formation of these defences. They were, he tells us, for the most part ill-constructed, excepting those superintended by foreign professors of the art; and thev were still worse defended. Early on the morning of the 15th of May, a day predestined by the party for striking a severe blow at civilization throughout Europe, the attack began; the mob was led by a burly priest, fierce and loud in his anathemas against those who refused to join in the work of regeneration. The principal object was to blockade the royal palace and secure the person of the King. The insurrection was permitted to proceed with little interruption, from the extreme anxiety of the King to avoid the effusion of blood; and it was at this period, and by the rebels themselves, that most damage was done to private property. The troops were so skilfully posted, and the communications were so well preserved between the forts and the castles, that, had the King desired to inflict on his capital and his subjects the injury of which he has been accused, he might easily have accomplished it.

The barricades were everywhere abandoned. Though the strength of the rebellion lav in the ranks of the National Guard, a portion of it was loyal, and either abandoned the contest or joined the royal forces; the remainder, thus diminished, and wholly deserted by the people, quitted the streets and opened a destructive fire on the soldiers from behind the strong walls of the lofty houses that line them. The King remained in his palace, agitated, shocked, and pained at the ingratitude of his subjects. Neapolitan officers of all grades and of every party repaired to the palace, and even General Florestano Pepe, brother to the notorious anarchist, but of a very different character, contrived, though attenuated by sickness, to reach the presence-chamber, where his advice might be useful, though the strength of his arm was withered. "Gentlemen," said the King, “how have I deserved this treatment from my subjects? I have granted them the constitution—I have performed my promise. I have tried to avoid the effusion of blood, and this is my reward—I am blockaded with my family in my own palace." A general officer soon after entered the room and reported the good disposition of the troops; he assured the King the insurrection should soon be quelled. "Sire, we will soon reduce this canaille to reason." The King interrupted him: "Do not call my people canaille; they are misguided men, it is true, but they are Neapolitans and my subjects; make prisoners, but do not kill—spare my misguided subjects.”

So strict were the royal orders, and so complete was the obedience of the officers in command, that the motive of their inaction was wholly misinterpreted, and the insurgents resolved to commence the attack they could not provoke. Two shots were fired (by accident, of course) on the royal troops—one officer was killed, and another badly wounded. The plot succeeded in forcing an engagement, but the result had not been anticipated. The bravery of the troops saved the kingdom of Naples from a worse state of anarchy than that into which Central Italy has fallen; and no resource was left the discomfited republicans but falsehood and calumny—weapons which, it cannot be denied, they use with superior dexterity and perseverance.

We regret to leave untouched various passages of vivid description, several interesting anecdotes and acute observations. We must observe, however, that many of the stories which filled the newspapers, invented by malice and greedily believed by the credulous, our author contradicts from personal knowledge. The romantic death of the Duke di Ripari, barbarously shot with his two young sons by the emissaries of the tyrant, related with so many circumstances of melo-dramatic interest, is wholly untrue: and probably, from the theatrical air of the fiction, the honor of the invention may be assigned to a Frenchman. "There was no such duke in the kingdom, nor any other nobleman bearing any such name: there was no execution at all." (vol. i. p. 146.) Neither were the reports more true of the executions in the ditch of the Castel Nuovo; there was not a man executed there or in any other place for the part taken in the events of this day. It is certain that the game of barricades cannot be played with perfect security; the soldiers, exasperated by the cruel and cowardly manner in which the war was conducted, in the hour of victory may possibly have committed some acts of severe retaliation; those who hazard rebellion must sometimes pay the penalty. Soldiers will not always afford their enemies a bloodless victory. In Paris, where little or no resistance was offered, the people were proclaimed the bravest of mankind; and other capitals aspired to enjoy the same reputation with no greater risk. At Naples the troops suffered severely; several scores of the insurgents were slain, however, and many more were disabled. Mr. Mac Farlane, on authority which has been confirmed by our own information, calculates the number of the slain at between four and five hundred, of whom more than half were soldiers of the line: a fearful slaughter, undoubtedly, though falling far short of the statements in the newspapers. The troops in every instance performed their duty with courage and moderation—the good discipline of the army was the salvation of the country, and that state of discipline is mainly to be attributed to the active superintendence of the King. Now mark—during the whole of this terrible day the French fleet lay in the Gulf of Naples, with broadsides turned on the palace; the principal agents of mischief were Frenchmen, the French tongue clamoured loudest in the confusion of the streets, and French vessels receive^ all under their protection who chose to seek it. Nor did French interference confine itself even within these limits: Admiral Baudin, incensed at the triumph of social order, had yet some means of revenge. While the kingdom was. still in an uneasy state and the capital was menaced by an invasion from the provinces—

“He made a pompous and menacing display of his force, and he called upon the Neapolitan Government to pay instantly a series of extravagant claims of compensation, which certain domiciled citizens of the Grand Republic sent to him. Those virtuous Republicans—some of whom were said to have been engineers of the two chief barricades of Toledo and 8. Brigida, and all of whom had been propagandists "-ore rotundo”—pretended to have suffered great loss and damage by King Ferdinand's cannon-balls, or at the hands of the troopers who had upset the barricades. No scrutiny of accounts, no examination of items was entered into by Admiral Baudin, nor was the Neapolitan Government allowed time or means for such processes. Whatever any Frenchman put down must be paid, and that on the nail.”

He instances a bankrupt hair-dresser, whose stock-in-trade was never richer than that of Romeo's apothecary, receiving 10,000 francs as an indemnification for his supposed losses. We regret to add that some of our own great men would not haTe been sorry to annoy the Government of their Queen's ally by a similar demand; but English integrity and English good-nature are stubborn and inconvenient qualities:—

“When the English merchants, shopkeepers, and other residents were applied to by some of our functionaries, who would not at all have disliked to give further embarrassment to King Ferdinand, and make a long account against him, they(7) honestly replied that they had suffered no loss; and that the slight injuries inflicted on the houses they inhabited would be repaired by their Neapolitan landlords. I was assured that not a franc or a carlino was claimed by an Englishman?—Vol. i. p. 148.

The amount of injury inflicted on the town on this memorable occasion has been greatly exaggerated. The fine palace of Gravina, where the revolutionary deputies had installed themselves, suffered severely; a master-piece of architecture, it is not likely to be restored to its former beauty; and in the loss of the roof and upper story the lovers of the fine arts have to deplore a serious misfortune. But even in the Strada Toledo and the surrounding streets, the principal scene of action, the damage was inconsiderable, and, for the most part, such as a trivial expense of labour and money may repair (p. 72). Alas! the deep and angry feelings which the conflict has left are not likely so soon to be healed. Fortunately the malign influence of foreigners is suspended, if not withdrawn; the capital is pacified; and the French and English fleets have found a more congenial scene for the propagation of mischief, and have moved nearly all their strength to Sicily. The clubs are suppressed, the national guard (that pest of modern society) diminished or re-organized; and even at tne time of Mr. Mac Farlane's last stay the Chambers had lost all their importance.

He gives us (vol. i. p. 73) an amusing account of his visit to the Legislative Chambers, the difficulty he had in discovering their locality, and the total apathy with which they were both alike regarded. Between the indolence of the members—calls of private business—and the interruption of numerous holidays, they rarely assembled at all, or only for a very short sitting; and the two Chambers never held their sittings on the same day. When, however, he did penetrate to them, he found no difficulty from the crowded state of the apartment in listening to the debates. The Chamber of Peers contained few of the illustrious names of Naples, or even of large landed proprietors; men of wealth and importance had declined accepting a post which brought certain trouble and danger, but could confer no honour. He describes their debates as dull and languid, and the speeches were received without any apparent emotion. Neither did the Chamber of Deputies present a more attractive spectacle; few members were present; their speeches, or rather their lectures, excited no more interest than those of the Peers; the gallery contained few spectators; and, though the orators were discussing the most popular themes, they were rewarded with little encouragement.

This is but another proof of what we should have thought required little demonstration—the indifference, we mean, if not the aversion, with which "the constitution" is regarded in Italy. During the transports which greeted the first reforms of Pope Pius, when the sympathies of all Englishmen were demanded for a people struggling for constitutional liberty, those even who knew the country less thoroughly than Mr. Mac Farlane were well aware how little such views had entered into the calculation of the agitators or were understood by the generality of those whom they influenced. The few who attached any definite meaning to the word constitution, intended by it a short road for themselves to wealth and influence; but the calm enjoyment of liberty and the fair participation of power were things undreamt of in the philosophy of the time. The infidel demagogues sought only to gratify the cravings of their vanity and their cupidity, and were incomparably more opposed to aristocratical and ecclesiastical influence than to the rule of a Prince. The former must exclude them from power, while through the latter they might hope to attain it. To these men a constitution framed on the model of England, or even of France previous to the late revolution, would be more distasteful than the despotism of a Czar. We are and ever have been of opinion that no constitution founded on any other basis than a nicely balanced proportion in the constituent parts can, in any country, have a chance of durability. In the French constitution of 1815 an attempt to create an aristocracy was made, without, however, securing to it by a change in the laws of succession that degree of wealth which alone can obtain for it a just and effective measure of authority. Had the aristocracy been more independent, it is possible the experiment of Charles X. would never have been made; be this as it may, we believe that France has never yet known so solid, so wholesome a state of prosperity, as she had attained at the period which immediately preceded that most unfortunate revolution. The modifications effected in the charter, subsequently to the elevation of Louis-Philippe, destroyed its efficiency; and would have more speedily produced a fresh revolution but for the personal talents of the king, his dexterity and administrative talent, which succeeded for a time in counterbalancing the evils of a defective constitution. Those evils, however, were glaring; the Chamber of Peers did not possess the influence intended to be exercised by it; the Deputies did not maintain the independence necessary to preserve the respect of the people; but the fault lay not with the King (who, we feel convinced, would have reigned constitutionally had he been permitted), but with the system; he found himself compelled to have recourse to those indirect means of influence without which the government could not have been conducted. On the same grounds the purest as well as the ablest of his Ministers was forced to acquiesce in methods which must have been entirely repulsive to every personal feeling. And all at last in vain! The small account in which the Chamber of Deputies was held is evident, since the Revolution that swept it away was made in direct opposition to the wishes of nearly all its members, few of whom openly espoused it, and still fewer—even of the worst among them—were benefited by it. It has been too much the fashion to attribute to mankind in the mass those virtues which, to the great majority of individuals, must be denied; but there is little wisdom in framing constitutions which, to work them, require greater sense and virtue than the page of history or modem experience justifies us in expecting to find. Has the democratic Chamber, elected by universal suffrage, proved itself abler or more independent than its discarded predecessor? Has it even proved itself the organ and the index of popular will? Does not the election of the President and his subsequent triumph over the majority of the Chamber (a virtual revolution) prove a direct condemnation of the body? What was the fate of that famous Constituent Assembly which met at Versailles in 1789, and upon which M. Lamartine bestowed but yesterday such sweeping encomiums?—"It was not only," says that grandiloquent artificer of phrases, in the florid compilation of mendacities which so largely helped on the new outbreak of February, 1848 — "It was not only the wisest and most august Assembly that was ever convoked in any country:—it was the ecumenical council of all the learning, genius, and wisdom that had ever been produced in any country since the creation of the world." Surely, such a synod must have commanded the esteem, at least, of the country in which it laboured, and which was the witness of its virtue! Different as our own opinion may be of that Assembly, we cannot but allow that, in comparison with those Which the democratic principles of the last year have called into life, it was indeed a synod of sages— men who might have saved a country less obstinately bent on destruction. Yet this Assembly, as we all know, and as even M. Lamartine, with all his unscrupulousness, is forced to admit, survived its favour and influence, and was obliged to withdraw itself from direct condemnation by a deliberate act of suicide.

Is the result of recent experience more favourable in Germany than in France: Have not the new so-called Parliaments of that vast continent made themselves ridiculous by their ignorance, and odious by their faction and their obstinacy? Is it not preposterous that the dearest interests of an empire ((5)) —involving its internal government, its foreign relations, its domestic institutions —should be regulated by a set of men, mean, ignorant, and obscure—men to whom a municipality would not abandon the petty cares of its roads and sewers?—an assembly composed largely and at best of such ingredients as that French synod, of which Mr. Burke has left us a description but little in accordance with that of M. Lamartine, just quoted—"of the inferior, unlearned, mechanical, and merely instrumental members of the profession of the law—of obscure provincial advocates, the ministers of subordinate oppression, the petty agents of chicane." Composed, we say, at best of such men—for, had Mr. Burke lived to witness the present revolutionary movement, he would have seen that the democrats of the nineteenth century exceed the extravagances of their predecessors. It was reserved for our day to be edified by the circular of a Minister of Public Instruction who calls on the electors to appoint deputies without education or liberal callings; and though it must be allowed that the French people (having had some experience in such things) were not so very foolish as their new official oracles desired them to be—that the Assembly now about to be dissolved included only one negro footman, and no very considerable proportion even of Simon the Millers—it is notorious that the case was worse in the contemporary elections of Germany, Out of the 1200 members sent to the French National Assembly of 1848, there were, according to M. Emile de Girardin, 700 lawyers. In Germany there was abundance of the same crop—but the Assemblies both of Vienna and of Berlin contained also scores upon scores of hard-handed and long-haired peasants and mechanics—barbarous in their attire and in their dialect—ignorant of the German language—and unintelligible even to each other!

These facts bear directly on the question of Italy, where the same experiment has been tried, and with a yet more signal failure. The Italian constitutions, even before the mask was thrown aside, were all constructed on a more democratic model than the French charter of 1830. Had they been destined to obtain a trial, the experiment must inevitably have failed. We fear any assembly, resting on no basis of greater strength than the talents and virtues it contains, would soon cease to command much general respect. Corrupted, suspicious man demands other pledges from those he invests with power; nor do we see, as long as pleasure and wealth are coveted on earth, how those who, for the first time, see their way to obtain them, should be supposed to be above their influence. It was not at Naples alone that the people were puzzled how to interpret the new political lessons that the demagogues taught them. Communistic doctrines they could all understand, the love of plunder they could soon acquire —that lore is "easier than lying" in most localities—but they could not comprehend the utility of paying an assembly of deputies; of waging war with the Austrians; nor of displacing the ministers, with whose names they were familiar, to instal others who had no claim on their confidence. While the Pope was at the head of the movement— nay, so long as he exercised even a nominal jurisdiction—the peasantry and mechanics were contented to unite the name of Pio Nono with that of Reform, and to applaud both together; but his flight and deposition have already worked a material change in public opinion, and must create a still further reaction, as the influence of terror subsides and as the pressure of poverty deepens. The moral effect, however, will not easily be neutralised, and the baleful influence of these bad men will be felt in the country long after they have received the punishment of their crimes, and their names even are buried in oblivion.

Mr. Mac Farlane thus reports some conversation with a magistrate in the Abruzzi, highly illustrative of the state of the country

"He was a constitutionalist himself, and though recently appointed to his post by the constitutional government, the Ultra-Liberals had declared war against him, and the Communists had given him great trouble and vexation. “These poor deluded men,” said he, “who were formerly so submissive Io law and authority, and so easy to manage, have been taught to believe that Constitution means a suspension or cessation of all law. Not only will they not pay taxes to government, but they will pay no rents to their landlords; nay, they hold themselves exempted, by the new order of things, from paying their private debts.”

"I mentioned, as a melancholy consequence of all this, that many of my friends at Naples had recently received hardly any rents from their estates. “And none will they get,” said the Judge, “unless a check be given to these doctrines. The King's government is too mild, and royal admonitions and proclamations are wholly without effect. In my district there are men who are breaking up the very foundations of society. The other day this happened:—A man owed another the sum of a hundred ducats. The money had been long owing, and the debtor was well able to pay it. At last the creditor had recourse to legal process. I sent an usciere (bailiff) to the house to exact payment. The debtor told my officer that we had gotten the constitution; that these were times of liberty and equality; that no man was such a fool as to think of paying debts now; and that if he did not instantly quit the house he would beat him soundly, if he aid not kill him. I was bound to procure assistance for the civil officer. Having no other force from which to choose, I sent one of our civic guard with the usciere, who returned to the house. Instead of submitting, the debtor fell upon the National Guardsman and wounded him severely. In all probability the poor man will die.” “And have you not been able to seize the assassin?”—“Not yet,” said the Judge, “the clubs are so powerful, the Communists are becoming so numerous, and our respectable people are so afraid of any collision.” "—i. 271.

Upon the same authority, confirmed by Mr. M.'s own observation, we have repeated proofs of the state of lawlessness and total demoralization to which these doctrines have reduced a peasantry once simple, industrious, and moral.

There can be no doubt that the King of the Sicilies was as well aware as every one must be who is acquainted with the country, that the constitution he had granted would neither secure the happiness of his subjects nor the prosperity of the state. It must be observed notwithstanding that neither in the moment of victory nor at any subsequent period has he made any attempt to withdraw the promised charter. Considering the radical absurdity of the whole new doctrine, the fair and honest conduct of the King, and the naturally good disposition of the vast majority of his subjects, there seems every reason to suppose that, but for intrusive influences, reform, practical reform, might have by and bye supplanted revolution. It is probable that in time the inefficiency of the constitution would have been discovered, and gradually a form of government substituted more fitted to the habits of the people and the circumstances of the times. The strength and loyalty of the army had been proved, and the insults of the Italian free press might have been endured; but the King unluckily found the most active enemies of social order in the agents of the two most powerful of his allies. The English policy towards him from the first was hostile; and this Prince, who, if report say true, had had but little reason to be satisfied with the conduct of his cousin and uncle the King of the French, was made to feel the aversion with which their common race and name were regarded. The attempt to foment the disturbances of Spain, and the insolence with which the Sovereign of that country was treated, have long been before the public, together with the ridiculous termination of that discreditable intrigue; but the King of Naples belonged to the same blood, and must also be made to feel the weight of the same indignation; and for fear the strength of England should be insufficient, republican France was invited to participate in the humiliation of another Bourbon.

Mr. Mac Farlane gives ample proof of the importance which the Italians attached to Lord Minto's language, demeanour, and proceedings generally during his mission; as to which and everything connected with it Lord Palmerston has as yet refused any clear and distinct explanation. What instructions the Lord Privy Seal had received from the Foreign Secretary can only be guessed from the results; but if he was charged to scatter jealousies and discontents around him, to foment them wherever they should appear, to create them where they did not exist, to encourage the revolutionary mood, to cherish the expectations of British assistance, and to inflict every possible mortification on the sovereigns whose territories he visited—if such were his orders, we think his worst enemies must allow that he performed his part with spirit, and was well entitled to the large allowances that were granted him in addition to his official appointments. Lord Palmerston assures us that the visit of his noble colleague to Naples was made at the instance of the King of Naples himself. The ministers of that Prince deny it. We think that this discrepancy can be reconciled. The King, alarmed at the interpretation which was given by the Liberals to the advent of an English Cabinet-minister, and anxious to avoid the impression of open hostility that his quitting Italy without having shown himself at Naples might create, seems, with the timid policy too familiar with the weak, to have hoped to propitiate a powerful enemy by the appearance of confidence, and invited discussions to which Lord Minto chose to assign, by the utmost latitude of interpretation, the weight of an intervention. The total want of success in that particular affair —a result caused no less by the insolence of the rebels than by the favour with which they knew themselves to be regarded both by the noble mediator and the cabinet of which he was a member—is too well known, and need not now be repeated. Mr. Mac Farlane bears witness throughout to the triumphant declarations of the rebels, that the countenance and aid of England would be afforded them. The procedure of Lord Minto, of whatever nature it may have( )been, having signally failed, the King, finding all his efforts at conciliation fruitless— | supported by the loyalty and discipline of his army—prepared to assert his just and legitimate rights over a rebellious province. It was now that the British policy appeared, more than ever, extraordinary. Never, we believe, was interference less justified by necessity or less warranted by policy, than that which arrested the triumphant progress of the King of Naples" Sicilian army. Had the expedition been altogether stopped by the French and English admirals, those officers might have ottered a fair explanation —they might have said distinctly, in the names of their several governments—"We have acknowledged the independence of Sicily—we have saluted the Sicilian flag with emulous alacrity—our vessels have carried the Sicilian Ambassadors to Genoa to offer one-half of the King of the Sicilies" dominions to another Prince—you shall not injure our ally." Such language would have been intelligible; and that it might not have seemed consonant with the heretofore received laws of international intercourse could have been no impediment to governments which, for months, had been acting in defiance of those laws. ((6)) But the course taken was different—the Neapolitan expedition was permitted to proceed, and to execute its mission in the presence of the foreign fleets whose assistance was expected by the rebels, and but for whose presence no determined resistance would have been offered.

The account of these transactions furnished by Lord Palmerston in the House of Commons on the opening of the present Session is in entire accordance with the rest of his conduct towards Her Majesty's ally the King of the Sicilies. Good taste, we feel sure, would prevent his so overcharging his censure of an enemy—it must have been some very peculiar feeling of unavowable origin that could give such bitterness to his language in speaking of an ally. "After the flag of the Sicilians had been hauled down," he asserted, "and the very idea of resistance had been given up, they (the Neapolitans) did for forty-eight hours continue a savage bombardment, destroying houses, palaces, churches, and public buildings. After that they sent a body of troops into the town to complete the destruction which the bombs, shells, and cannon had not effected. They laid waste three miles of suburbs, ((7)) burning, murdering, and plundering as they went." It is much to be regretted that Lord Palmerston should have thus given fresh currency to convicted calumnies, and re-embittered a quarrel in which he had throughout been the aggressor. How different was the temperate statement of Prince Satriano made some few days later in the Neapolitan Chamber of Peers! In Lord Palmerston's account all the mischief inseparable from a state of warfare is charged on the royal troops—no allusion is made to the monstrous cruelties perpetrated by the Messinese against their Swiss and Neapolitan prisoners—nor to the barbarous stratagem of a sham surrender, by which these mean and faithless dastards enticed a Neapolitan regiment on to a mine which was sprung beneath them; while every allegation that can throw odium on the royal cause is reproduced, and expanded and embellished with every artifice of malignant rhetoric—and the devastation of the suburb (a necessary operation) and the injury of the town (which injury Prince Satriano proves to have been caused rather by the reckless and perfidious gunnery ((8)) of the assailants themselves than by the operations of the royal force) are charged as outrages which imperiously demanded the interference of the sensitive allies.

It was in the name of humanity, then, that the admirals interfered. This cant of humanity, so familiar to those whose policy is most opposed to its dictates, is ever employed to interpose obstacles when rebellion is to be suppressed and law vindicated. In the name of humanity the admirals permit the bombardment of Messina, but interpose to prevent the submission and peace that must otherwise have inevitably followed. Their delicate feelings of humanity were not excited when Calabria was invaded by the Sicilians—nor when Neapolitan soldiers were roasted alive in the streets of Messina: their nerves could endure the massacre of the government officials at Palermo, though this was conducted with every circumstance of inventive cruelty: such scenes could be borne; the latent sparks of humanity were kindled only when the King of Naples was successful in reducing a rebellious city to obedience. Perhaps many of our readers may not be aware that the Prince of Satriano, the general to whose charge this expedition was confided, is an honourable and able man, of well-known liberal principles, educated in the camp of Murat, and who served with distinction in the Russian campaign with the armies of France. Indignant at the aspersions which were cast on his own conduct and that of the troops he commanded, he fearlessly appeals to Captain Robb, R.N., who was on the spot, for a testimony in his favour; and that officer affords it with the cordiality and good feeling with which one brave man would hasten to justify another. ((9)) The exigencies of war must always be looked on with pain and sorrow from the closet; and the hardest task of the soldier is the calmness with which he must learn to endure the sight of that which his humanity condemns. Admiral Baudin has probably had small experience of naval warfare; but to Sir W. Parker the sad necessity of a bombardment could hardly be a new idea; a gallant relation of his own acquitted himself with zeal and spirit in a similar undertaking—an enterprise, we admit, of urgent expediency, though not so obviously reducible within the strictest laws of international justice. The English admiral, we must presume, had received his instructions—he would never have acted as he did on his own authority. ((10)) His instructions, no doubt, obliged him to obey the orders of the French commander, as Lord Napier was probably instructed to shape his conduct in accordance with the directions of M."de Rayneval. This is the only explanation which conciliates the contradictory statements of our Ministers. Lord Palmerston tells us that the two admirals, shocked and astonished at the bloodshed which followed the encounter of the hostile armies, resolved to interpose their authority. Lord John Russell—who is obviously, like the rest of the Cabinet, but partially initiated into the secrets of the Foreign Office—informs us in the same debate that "the French admiral determined to interfere." "Shocked at the desolation of Sicily and the capture of Messina, he determined to take upon himself to put a stop to the farther progress of such a horrible warfare. After he had so determined, he communicated with Sir W. Parker." This officer, though embarrassed by the proposal, taking all the circumstances of the case into consideration, and, above all, that "the French admiral was about to act, and that it was important at this juncture that the two nations should act in concert, his determination was to give similar orders to those which had been given by the French admiral." This, we have little doubt, is the truth. The French admiral resolved to interfere when he found the royal cause had triumphed, and to prevent the pacification of the island that would have followed that event. He no doubt expected another issue, and the defeat of the royal forces would have served his purpose better than the check he gave to them afterwards; but the untoward result of the battle must be repaired, and he issued his orders accordingly. This supposition is not very flattering to our national pride,—but it alone, as we apprehend, can make matters at all intelligible.

Ministers of the Crown in both Houses of Parliament have not hesitated to justify the Sicilian rebellion, and to maintain our right of interference on the score both of former protection and of the alleged misgovernment of the King, which Lord Palmerston calls "the right divine to govern wrong;" and at the moment they profess a desire to maintain the union of the two Sicilian crowns ((11)) they sanction the rebellion, and advise the Queen to deny King Ferdinand his legal title. We are glad to learn from subsequent discussions in parliament that this is also an error of inadvertency — your relations with Naples are conducted with marvellous inattention, it must be confessed; — we should have thought, however, that in the speech with which her Majesty greets her high court of parliament, her ministers would have taken care that no faults of neglect or inadvertence should appear. Yet, offensive as the omission appears both to the King and to his Neapolitan subjects, we think it infinitely less insulting than the justification offered by Lord Palmerston, who rates the claims of the King of Naples to the allegiance of his Sicilian subjects no higher than those which used to be asserted by our princes to the title of King of France as part of their former style. ((12))

He cannot pretend to have forgotten that that title of the English sovereigns was retained in compliance only with ancient custom, in memory of past victories, and that it was neither recognized by the rest of Europe nor even desired to be so, while the title of King of the Two Sicilies, assumed by a prince in close alliance with ourselves, is confirmed in an article of the treaty of Vienna (which we presume our ministers do not intend to repudiate), and has been acknowledged by every potentate in Europe. Whatever the claims of the Sicilians may be on our protection, our ministers cannot pretend that they extend to any advantages not secured by the Constitution of 1812; ((13)) nor can they deny that the King, through the medium of the English negotiator, made a formal offer to the Sicilians of everything contained in that charter, nay, with even some additional concessions—and that these offers of the King were contemptuously rejected by the Sicilians. ((14)) Surely all pretence for interference was now at an end. These facts are notorious, and require no confirmation from the "documents"” ((15)) so long withheld. It is obvious that all claim to British protection had now been forfeited by the insurgent Sicilians. Yet it was now that they were more openly favoured—that arms were supplied to them from the royal stores, and their independence formally acknowledged by the British admiral. No cause is said to be so hopeless as that in which the accused himself undertakes the defence. By these irrevocable admissions and these unsustainable reasonings, the Ministers have made themselves responsible for all the damage committed during the civil war, and for every life that was lost.

The correspondence that ensued between the Neapolitan Ministers and the English authorities at Naples has long been before the public. For the tone of such documents, we presume, the writers are responsible; and of those on the English side we will venture to affirm that never, even during the dictation of Buonaparte on the continent, was there presented a more arrogant assumption of superiority—a more barefaced assertion of the right of the strongest. The remonstrances of Prince Cariati and Prince Satriano are polite and measured, while they are answered in a tone of recriminative insolence and undisguised hostility. And, after all, what is the result of this? It is but a sample of our present diplomacy, and so is its fate. Our foreign policy in every part of the world is doomed alike to failure. The extravagant terms proposed to the King of Naples, which could have no other result than perpetuating civil contest, will not be insisted on. Bullies are seldom obstinate: the French Government is said to have given way, and the King of Naples may have found allies who will not brook the dictation of our Foreign Secretary. The charter of 1812 has again been offered by the crown to the Sicilian insurgents, and for the sake of both parties we trust they will reject it. That charter, which neither secures the liberty of the subject nor the dignity of the crown, was first conceived during the existence of a powerful landed aristocracy, the strength of which being destroyed by the subsequent abolition of the feudal tenures, the attempt to restore it now can only perpetuate a war of classes, between whom the charter does not secure to the crown sufficient power to mediate. But whatever were the demerits of this constitution, it was abrogated by the Sicilians themselves, who, in 1820, took an oath to maintain the Spanish constitution adopted at Naples at the same time. We cannot conceive why an English minister should be so zealous to support a charter, not one of whose provisions, we are very sure, would find approval with any party in the House of Commons; and still less can we understand the conduct of the French negotiator in supporting a monarchical constitution, which has been abolished, we are told, by the unanimous desire of that great and enlightened people.

Mr. Mac Farlane proceeds from Naples to Ancona, and from thence to Rome and Florence; wherever he goes, at every halting-place we have the same accounts of riotous national guards and political clubs, with the same boisterous professions of universal liberty, and the same assertion of practical tyranny which permits no difference of sentiment from the dominant faction. At every turn the same complaints assail us: neglected agriculture, stagnant industry, general misery,—the same repinings of the rich and industrious at the duration of a state of things which, however, they will not, or dare not, make any exertion to correct. When he arrives at Rome, he finds the Pope still nominally at the head of Government, but, in fact, a prisoner in the Quirinal palace—a mere puppet in the hands of the ungrateful demagogues he had called to power—and deprived of every vestige of that popularity for which he had bartered his crown, his honour, and his order. The monuments of Rome,—its gorgeous churches, its ruined temples, its triumphal columns, its rich galleries, he found indeed; but how changed! Neglected, forlorn, and squalid with dirt:—the keepers dare not reprove the violence of the gross and mischievous visitors who alone frequent them. The commerce of the town is gone: the very children are vapouring about the streets with swords and cross-belts; nothing of former Rome remains but its sturdy beggars, its inveterate and mischievous idleness. That priestly decorum, which at least deprived vice of one of its worst concomitants—the influence of example—has everywhere' given way. The shops are filled with blasphemous and licentious publications (vol. ii. p. 29), and modesty is offended by the revolting exhibitions of the public theatres (p. 36). The Jesuits" College, once the habitation of quiet, learning, and science, now desecrated; its ample halls, its rich museums, and invaluable library degraded into the "prostibulum " of drunken soldiers and their profligate associates, and its roofs ringing with ribald merriment, disturbing the slumbers and shocking the ear of decency, (vol. ii. p. 23.)

Our readers, we feel sure, will thank us for transcribing our author's description of the unhappy Pope, as he saw him step into his carriage (in August, 1848), and hurry unhonoured and cheerless in his progress to church. Those even who regard this Pontiff as the architect of his own misfortunes, will feel all other sentiments absorbed in commiseration

"In a few seconds Pius IX. came slowly out of the palace, in the midst of a number of prelates, who hung close around him. On the upper step he raised his hand in sign of the usual benediction; but few indeed were those on whom the blessing fell. One of the old women knelt down, and presented a petition; this occasioned a brief stop, and the stopping caused an evident alarm among those who were in the rear or inside the hall. One of the secretaries took the paper, and the Pope made almost a rush into the carriage; the secretary and two other gentlemen got in after him, and presently and in mournful silence the procession slowly moved across the square; his Holiness being preceded by three carriages and followed by a like number. * * *

There was hardly a soul in the Piazza, which, a few months before, used to be crowded from morning till night by people eager to see the Pope, and to shout “Viva Pio Nono!” wherever he appeared. There was now no “Viva!"— none said “God bless him 1” Of the few present some sneered, the rest showed the most complete indifference—all but one old man, whose eyes moistened and lips quivered; he would have said Viva, but dared not do it.'

The carriages proceed with unusual haste, and, instead of the kneeling crowds imploring a benediction, between whose ranks the popes were wont to thread their passage, few of the spectators had even the grace to touch their hats as this fallen god of popular idolatry appeared amidst his sad and timid attendants.

The belief very generally received, that Cardinal Mastai was mainly indebted to Count Rossi, the French ambassador, for his elevation to the popedom, is erroneous. His election was due to more obvious causes. He was favourably known in Rome by his episcopal virtues, by his amiable and charitable character. He was a native of the Roman States (a necessary condition), his family were known to belong to the liberal party, —it was a noble family, and therefore its liberalism carried double weight; but above all, the Sacred College was in haste to name a sovereign. At all times indeed the interregnum is a period of difficulty and danger; but now it was well known that a plot had existed, which would not have been delayed had the existence of Gregory been prolonged, and which was destined to effect a revolution in Rome itself. It was consequently most urgent to accelerate the proceedings of the Conclave, and it was moreover of the utmost importance that the choice of the cardinals should fall on a popular candidate. Cardinal Lambruschini, the Secretary of State, might, under ordinary circumstances, have been elected, but he was peculiarly obnoxious to the liberal party; his straightforward and highly honourable character had nothing in common with the Italian republican, while the clearness of his views, his thorough knowledge of the country, and the firmness of his temperament were well understood by those who could only hope to profit by the ignorance and weakness of a new sovereign. Under these favouring circumstances the hasty election of Cardinal Mastai took place.

It is also believed, and with more truth, that his first projects of reform were concerted with the French ambassador; it is certain, however, that cautious minister soon perceived the dangers of too rapid an advance in this direction, while the incompetence of the Pope could not have escaped his penetration, nor the alarming tendency of his uncontrollable thirst for popularity. Well acquainted with the schemes of the liberal party, and familiar with the characters of its unprincipled chiefs, he could not recommend the indiscriminate amnesty, the formation of the national guard, nor the convocation of a "consulta " of laymen. It was and still is believed that he cautioned the Pope in secret against granting these concessions—and this belief it was which cost him his life. ((16))

We read some few days ago a paragraph in the "Pensiero," a newspaper of Florence, which boasted of the existence of a ide-spreading society for the purpose of assassinating the enemies of the people. "Let the murderers," it concluded, "of the virtuous Blum be assured, that the poignard of the patriots shall reach their hearts and avenge the blood of the martyr."

It was when the revolution had already proceeded to dangerous lengths, and all the. friends of order exhibited grave alarm—it was at the very moment when the liberal but experienced Rossi was urging caution, that the English government, or rather perhaps we should say the Foreign Secretary, openly espoused the cause of the Italian Republicans, recommended a further concession to popular demands, and despatched a cabinet-minister, the father-in-law of the Premier, to encourage the zeal of the faltering, and to assure the more resolute malcontents of the sympathy and good wishes of England. No other circumstance at this moment favoured the republican cause—the power of Austria seemed firmer than ever —the good understanding between that court and the French government was notorious; but for the interference of England the schemes of the anarchists must have been baffled, or at least delayed. The uncalled-for publication of Prince Metternich's despatch ((17)) (dated Vienna, August 2, 1847; Lord Palmerston's reply is dated Aug. 12: —the suppression of a part of the correspondence was not then suspected), and the hostility with which the cabinet of London seemed to regard the Austrian ministry, revived all their hopes, and certainly might be interpreted as a pledge of support. The revolutionary spirit which has existed in Italy during the whole of the present century, and which was checked by the dread of Austria alone, now broke forth with unqualified violence, and it is not improbable that it may not have been altogether without influence even on the destinies of France. The relaxation of the Austrian police after the events of March was the signal for revolt. The plan of the republicans was to drive the Austrians from Italy by the Piedmontese armies, assisted by such levies as Naples, Rome, and Tuscany could furnish, and when the "foreign enemy " was removed, to dethrone the princes by whose means he had been vanquished. The loyalty and good discipline of one army defeated this scheme in southern Italy, and the united fleet of the French and English had the mortification of seeing the King of the Two Sicilies triumph in spite of their formidable presence: the valour and skill of the Austrians achieved a triumph yet more signal; but the King of Sardinia, strong in the support of his ultra-montane allies, having incurred the risks of war, was saved from the penalty of defeat. Surely the protection thus once afforded is sufficient—it is not to be extended to all the future operations of this weak though artful prince I The contingents from Rome and Florence that joined the crusade covered themselves with shame by the contrast between their boastful language and their pusillanimous conduct, and the senates that supported them shared their disgrace; but deemjpg themselves safe under the wing of France and her obedient ally, they continued to clamour for war and menace the Austrians with a new invasion by their chickenhearted legions: for them we feel pity only or contempt: our indignation is reserved for their allies and supporters in the Socialist club-rooms of Paris and in the cabinet of Queen Victoria. It is this feverish state of excitement, however, or rather of intoxication, which the press sustains and orators encourage, and which will not be calmed till foreign protection shall have been wholly withdrawn, and clear proof given that aggressors are to be made responsible for their temerity.

In spite of appearances we long persisted in disbelieving that the King of Sardinia would insist on again marching against Austria. The hopes once held out to him by his allies and advisers we felt sure could no longer deceive him—he could no longer expect to share in the spoils of the vanquished Imperialists. He had, however, become a desperate man, and must have recourse to desperate measures. We think it very probable that he has been influenced by the expectation of deriving protection from his defeat and the military occupation of his country. By whatever motive he may have been impelled to pursue this dangerous policy, the incautious allies who had not exerted themselves effectually to check his presumption are alone responsible for the inevitable results, since their fallacious protection has protracted the termination of the quarrel. The recall of Mr. Abercombie, the English envoy at the court of Turin, has been recommended through the organs of public opinion as an earnest for our sincerity in the condemnation of the King of Sardinia—the same proceeding has been more legally and more constitutionally advocated by hereditary counsellors of the Crown in their own House of Assembly. We have little expectation that this prudent course will be pursued, but if it should, we feel certain that the interests of Sardinia would be more materially served than those even of Britain have been by Mr. Abercrombie's diplomacy. His correspondence with the Piedmontese cabinet is before the public, and our readers will agree with us that they have rarely seen a tissue of feebler or more Jesuitical arguments, falser reasoning, or more ruinous advice. The conduct of England was more inexcusable than that of France, and its interference has been attended with worse results. But for this interference it is certain that the treaty of peace would have been signed within three days after the capitulation of Milan, and we presume it is in the abused name of humanity that this prolonged state of anxiety and final warfare is to be justified. The King of Sardinia has denounced the armistice in a document unique in form, and remarkable for its falsehood even in Italian diplomacy! The alleged complaints against Austria are summed up in the single allegation that the Emperor's victorious troops did not evacuate his own dominions, and that he still presumes to exercise acts of sovereignty within them. ((18))

We know not what the personal qualities of the Polish general may be, but never did any general take the field under a less favourable aspect. The troops dispirited by defeat, and burning with indignation against their Lombard allies, who starved, deserted, and betrayed them, are the tools, and they know themselves to be so, of the Jacobin clubs who urge on the war—of men who desire the destruction of the army whose fidelity they dread, and who have nothing themselves to lose in the ruin of their country, but who, equally without scruples of honour and humanity, push on the army to a danger they are not to face. The success or defeat of the royal army would equally throw the power into the hands of the Red Republicans—a result justly regarded with horror by all lovers of order, and greatly feared by France herself, now beginning to resettle into a state of repose. The only thing that could prevent this would be a military occupation by Austria;—this of course would be viewed with jealousy at Paris;—but Louis Napoleon and his Ministers must be quite aware that a French march into Italy would be the signal for a treaty of alliance between Russia and Austria, which would place 300,000 men at the disposal of the latter, backed by the vast resources of her potent ally. Such is the dilemma in which the humane and pacific policy of our government has placed our allies, and indeed the continent of Europe. With regard, however, to the King of Sardinia—of him we entertain a very different opinion from that expressed hy Mr. Mac Farlane—we cannot, like our author, shut our eyes to the many and glaring inconsistencies of his career ((19))—but we cheerfully acquit him of treachery to the Italians of 1848; his treachery was towards his allies—towards that power to whom he owed the forgiveness of his offended relation and sovereign and his own succession to the throne. On the very morning on which his army crossed the Lombard frontier in 1848, he assured the Austrian envoy nt Turin of his pacific intentions, and renewed the often repeated protestations of loyalty and friendship. He hoped by these acts of perfidy, to extend his dominions at the expense of his former protector, and to engage the attention of his turbulent subjects; his calculation failed; he added to his former unpopularity, not because his aggression was unjust, but because it was unsuccessful. Is it reasonable, we would ask, that intermeddling diplomacy should seek to shield him from the penalty of his fault, and to secure to him even those advantages which his arms could not procure? The "philosophic historian" has dwelt at length on the evils that ambition and vanity in princes have entailed on the people. In the present case "the people" are more to blame than the prince, and should not be exempted from the penalty of their fault. If the well-disposed majority have submitted to the dictation of an interested minority, their timidity has exposed them to the same punishment. By whom should the expenses of this unjust war be borne—by the party who suffered the wrong, or by that which inflicted it! We have Lord Palmerston's assurance (and we cannot doubt it) that the remonstrances of the English cabinet were conveyed to this Prince through the proper medium; but had they been as forcible as those addressed to the cabinet of Vienna, we feel sure he durst never have disdained them. ((20))

However, feeble as the language must have been, the protest, we are told, was made—he chose to incur the risk—he would play out his desperate game.

Mr. Mac Farlane (vol. ii. p. 275) attempts some excuse for certain military blunders of that unlucky campaign, which can only be explained by the King's incapacity and that of his generals. The utterly abject condition to Which his army was reduced, however, is to be attributed to the hostility of the Lombard peasantry and the treachery of the governing junta at Milan, or rather perhaps of the political clubs under whose dictation it acted. Nothing was dreaded so much by the republicans as the victory of the King of Sardinia. Against Austria they deemed themselves secure in the support of their ultra-montane allies, but the monarchy of Charles Albert and the supremacy of Turin would be a worse and more galling servitude than that from which they had just escaped. The Lombards, for whose advantage the invasion was made, refused every sacrifice of purse or person, and the Piedmontese army, commanded by incompetent chiefs, and abandoned, if not betrayed, by its allies, had no resource but in the mercy of Marshal Radetzky. The forbearance with which this veteran commander conducted himself is denied by no one: had revenge 'been his object, the Milanese themselves afforded him an ample opportunity for its gratification. It was stipulated that the Piedmontese troops should quit the Imperial dominions, that the fortress of Peschiera should be restored and the garrison retire with the honours of war; it was further provided that the Sardinian fleet should leave the Adriatic, and all assistance be withdrawn from the Emperor's rebellious subjects. How, we ask was this treaty fulfilled, and how was the "octogenarian chief" rewarded for his forbearance? The Piedmontese commandant at Peschiera refused to recognise the validity of the armistice, and did not surrender the fortress till he had exposed it to a bombardment; no punishment followed this flagrant breach of martial law; the military stores, indeed, were seized and retained till the other conditions of the capitulation had been fulfilled—no unnecessary precaution, we think, nor very severe retaliation for the breach of treaty. Again—it was a full month before the Sardinian admiral (Albini) gave a semblance even of obedience to the orders of his sovereign; during the whole of that period he continued to cruise between Venice and Trieste, giving all possible annoyance to the Imperial fleet • and when at length he did retire, it was only to Ancona, from whence he speedily returned to the Venetian seas, entering the harbour when he pleases, crippling the trade of Trieste, supplying the rebels with provisions and ammunition, and, in short, in defiance of the stipulated terms of the capitulation, committing every act of open hostility. It is such acts that the English cabinet would seem to have supported, and it is against such acts that we raise our protest.

We have endeavoured on several occasions to exhibit the system of Austrian policy, both foreign and domestic, as it really existed, and not as it appeared through the distorted medium of prejudice and political animosity. It is no wonder that the charges of mismanagement and tyranny were for ever re-produced, since the Austrians never condescended to any formal justification of themselves, nor have ever courted popularity by hiring venal authors to proclaim their praises. We are sorry, however, to see those accusations renewed from a quarter where we might have expected something like sound information. Mr. R. M. Milnes, it is true, has not resided in Italy since he was very young, but he might fairly be supposed to have retained friends and correspondents there; and, consulting his own taste and temper, it could hardly be doubted that among these there would be men not utterly rabid in their hostility to Austria. We own, when Mr. Milnes announced a letter to Lord Lansdowne on the Italian politics of 1848, we certainly did expect something more than a mere repetition of disproved liberal libels, with no feature of novelty except the placid good-humoured elegance of diction, interspersed with a few compliments (which would not surprise Mr. Carlyle) on the personal qualities of Prince Metternich. We cannot flatter Mr. Milnes on having selected his moment happily for the publication of his pamphlet, nor can we think Lord Lansdowne would be greatly pleased in seeing his name placed in connexion with it at such a critical period. We do not propose any minute dissection of this opusculum:—we will content ourselves with observing that Mr. Milnes, in censuring the Austrian system of government', makes a distinction between the tenure by which the Milanese Duchy belonged to the Imperial Crown before the revolutionary wars and after that period. We know of no other difference, excepting that before the French occupation the government and the people governed conducted their relations on a happier principle of mutual good will. There is not the slightest ground for his supposition that Buonaparte ever contemplated the separation of the kingdom of Italy from the French Empire. The future independence of the kingdom of Italy could hardly have been intended by the sovereign who, in addition to the whole of Piedmont, had declared the states of Rome and Tuscany integral parts of the French Empire, dividing them into departments, and governing them in all respects like the provinces of France. Neither is he more correct when he represents the press as less free under the Austrian rule than under that of the French—never, we believe, on the contrary, was the press so trammelled by restrictions, so controlled by fear, as during the existence of the French police. He is equally in error when he represents the state of social freedom to have been greater during French usurpation. Never, we will affirm, was domestic tyranny carried to a greater minuteness of persecution than under the despotism of Buonaparte. It is true that he received a more ready, more apparently cheerful obedience—but under what penalty? The laws were warped to bear hard on the ill-wishers of France when they had occasion to claim their protection —the conscriptions fell heavy on their families—soldiers were billeted on their property, and in some cases received hints that the rules of the strictest discipline would not be enforced for the protection of ill-disposed citizens. It must be remembered, also, that the slightest inattention to the rigorous etiquettes of society was construed into an act of rebellion. To neglect the Viceroy's levee was deemed an unpardonable assumption of independence; and a shabby toilette at the Vice-regal drawingroom was a proof of family disaffection. In such particulars the Austrians disdain to interfere. Even Mr. Milnes admits that no material injustice existed: the code of laws differed little from that which existed under the French, and their ecclesiastical policy was wiser arid better than that of any other Roman Catholic State. The nobles, he indeed affirms, were excluded from the pursuits of intellectual labour and honest ambition. This we do not understand: we do not see how their intellects were confined; and if they would not engage in any public career (which Mr. Milnes asserts)we cannot discover how their ambition could be gratified. Had they done so their nation would have been in their favour, as it is notorious how anxious the government had ever shown itself to allure the Italians of birth and consideration into the public service. We would ask this gentleman, since be boasts his knowledge of the country, do the Tuscans, the Romans, or the Genoese, tread these intellectual roads to fame, or do they seek to gratify their ambition by the toilsome paths of business? No one, we think, will affirm that they do; and we can assure Mr. Milnes and our general readers that there is not a society in Italy more indolent than the Milanese—more dissolute, or less likely to seek distinction “by intellectual labour and honest ambition.”

The justification of the Austrian policy in Italy may be found in the events of the last year—in the outrages to which the Pope and the Grand Duke of Tuscany were exposed, and in the flight of those unfortunate princes. We do not know what were the “grave results” that Lord Palmerston apprehended should Austria have interfered in the preservation of peace in Italy; but the results of withholding that interference are before him, and may be judged by all. We would fearlessly appeal to any impartial witness—nay, to the noble Lord himself; —we would ask, does he in conscience believe that the present state of anarchy would have existed in Italy but for the interference of France and England? Does he not believe, on the contrary, that the actual state of that country, bad as it is, would become infinitely worse, but for the dread that Austrian influence may, after all, be permitted to revive?—and, further, will he attempt to maintain that those evils would not speedily disappear before the re-assertion of that influence?

The question of intervention is one of the most delicate in modern diplomacy. It has been treated by the distinguished statesmen of most countries. “Non-intervention is the rule—but I never said that it was a rule without exception; and the exception is to be found when the safety of the state is likely to be affected by the conduct of a neighbouring state, and in that case, on the general principle of self-preservation, the right of interference must exist." Such was the language of one whose memory, we presume, Mr. Milnes at present venerates— the late Lord Grey:—such (which is more to our purpose) was ever the doctrine of Lord Castlereagh, and his friend and successor Lord Aberdeen—such and no other, we are sure, would be the language of Prince Metternich—such, most certainly, was the rule observed by the cabinet over which he so long presided. The code of the statesmen we have just quoted would forbid, as we understand it, all intervention for the propagation of certain theories of government; it would condemn the supposed principles of the Holy Alliance; it is as expressly opposed to the sort of interference which France and England have of late been exercising in the affairs of Italy, while the Austrian interposition in the same country is equally justified by it. But the right to do so is not bounded by the self-evident danger that menaces the Imperial states.

As the seat of Roman Catholic supremacy the Emperor of Austria has a direct right of interference in the affairs of Rome—and it is to him, as the first Catholic sovereign, that the Pope should look for succour. In the affairs of Tuscany his interest is more evident and incontestable, since the reversion of that duchy was settled by a public act of the States of Assembled Europe on his family, and it meantime was actually governed by a cadet of his house. But it is idle in the present case to discuss the right of intervention: the Governments of Rome and Tuscany have made war on Austria—have invaded her dominions, and are even at this moment in a state of open defiance—a state in which all the ordinary laws of civilized nations are suspended—and the duty of a war of extermination is openly preached from the senate, the rostrum, and even the pulpit.

The state of that beautiful country is heart-rending—and not the less so that we are obliged to condemn the weakness and timidity of the indolent majority. Tuscany peculiarly affects our sympathy by the contrast of its past and present condition. The travelled reader will doubtless recall the pleasing impression his wanderings in Tuscany and his visit to Florence have left upon him: the cheerful people—the benevolent prince, whose hand was ever open to charity, and whose sumptuous dwelling was the seat of refined hospitality. The aspect of prosperity—the atmosphere of beauty—the luxurious ease—were saddened by no painful drawback to shock his feelings and alloy his enjoyment! Alas for the meek-hearted prince, whose gentle nature wanted no virtue but firmness to adorn it I—alas for his innocent and disinherited children, his beautiful and courageous consort—for here too as elsewhere (both of yore and of late) woman's constancy has shamed the trepidation of man! Lord Palmerston never saw this interesting group, the centre of an affectionate people, inspiring involuntary homage and dispensing gracious influences around them. It was a sight to soften the cynical and inveterate heart of a true republican—of the Spartan Roland herself! ((21)) We believe there are few who maintain that the material happiness of this favoured principality was susceptible of much improvement. The laws were excellent, and well administered; the censorship of the press was exercised with a light and indulgent discretion; no exclusive privileges existed; nor are we aware that a single class of society could allege a grievance which it was in the power of the law or the prince to redress.

The immediate consequence of the faulty policy of England will be the occurrence of the very danger that was most apprehended —we mean a foreign interference in the affairs of Central Italy. Already the lamentable condition of the two exiled princes has excited the pity and indignation of Europe; and France is actually contemplating an interference in behalf of one of those sovereigns whom Lord Palmerston would not permit Austria to protect when it could have been done without expense or danger. From this interference, however, we have no expectation of a good result to the Italians themselves. Those who ought to resist anarchy, and whose weakness and timidity deter them, will be confirmed in their fatal inactivity. Those who have been led into error by vanity, restlessness, and ambition, will fail to reap the lesson which their folly deserves: while the agitators, the assassins, and the demagogues, will be protected from the punishment of their crime) —nay more, will be suffered to retreat with the spoil they have collected, to plot new schemes of treason and treachery.

All idea of an Anglo-Gallic mediation, we trust, is entirely abandoned. Lord Palmerston, in the discourse before alluded to, disclaims the intention of dictating to Austria. Austria, indeed, is no longer in a position to brook dictation—and we congratulate the noble Lord on his return to prudence. Austria claims the right of settling the internal affairs of her empire without any foreign assistance; and we hope our Ministers have now discovered their double error. They surely must now understand that revolution, and not reform, was the object of the Italian movement; and that obsequious obedience to the dictation of republican France can hardly delay, and will certainly not avert, the dangers of a general war. It is this irrational and ill-grounded dread of French arms that has guided the foreign policy of our Whigs, and not the love of "liberal institutions," which is the motive they have been pleased to assign. We also look on a war as a great and terrible evil; but there are evils greater still than war—mob-tyranny we think a greater calamity in itself, and incomparably more demoralizing in its effects; and we own that, however averse we may be from war with France, we had rather incur those risks than purchase her friendship by assisting her revolutionary projects, despoiling our allies, and spreading the principles of democracy over the face of Europe.

Our foreign policy, and the part we have taken in the commotions on the continent, would be altogether unintelligible but for the key that Lord Palmerston himself has afforded. The want of concert between the Ministers of the Crown has often been made evident by the discrepancies in their several accounts of the same transactions. The conduct of the foreign relations of England seems altogether abandoned to the discretion of one man. Yet how has this confidence been merited? Lord Palmerston himself acknowledges the intention of shaping his policy in accordance with the wishes and requirements of France. "What," said he in his speech on the proposed amendment of the address—"what right have we to inquire whether France wishes a monarch, an emperor, a president, or a consul? Our object and our duty is to cement the closest ties of friendship between ourselves and our nearest neighbour, one of the greatest powers of Europe—that neighbour of whom it was justly said, that in war she would be our most powerful enemy, and in peace our most useful friend." We entirely agree with the noble Lord that we are not justified in interrupting our peaceable relations with a country simply because it changes its internal form of government; but when we "cement the closest ties of friendship " with it, we are justified, it appears to us, in exacting in return that the existing relations between ourselves and that country, and between that country and our other allies, should not be altered in consequence of those internal changes. One of the first acts of the Provisional Government, self-elected on the ruins of social order, w'as to declare all the treaties that bound Europe together null and void—and that too, in consequence of the organic change that had been operated in France. Nor was this all: M. Lamartine, the mouthpiece of this synod of sharpers, proclaimed the fraternity of the French people with all oppressed nationalities, and guaranteed the active co-operation of the Republic in assisting them in their righteous cause.

Against this doctrine it was the duty of all European powers, and especially Great Britain, to protest. There is not a single monarchy in Europe into which the adoption of such principles would not introduce a civil war. The assertion of these doctrines belonged, we were told, to regenerated democratic France. How then can it be maintained that the policy of England is not affected by the form of government that may be adopted by its neighbour? How can bonds of "the closest friendship be cemented " with a power which avows the intention of assisting our rebels and dissevering our monarchy? It is probable, we admit, that while these words were uttered in public secret assurances might be forwarded to the cabinets most interested that they would not be acted on. Such reservations are too frequent in French diplomacy at all times, in but too good accordance with republican morality; but in the present case it was the private assurance that was falsified, and not the public declaration:—

"I feel it due to the public men who have been at the head of Government in France since February last," says Lord Palmerston, "to say that their conduct towards this country has been marked with the most perfect good faith, the greatest frankness, and the most friendly dispositions; and that they have evinced not only an anxious desire to be on the most friendly terms with England, but have also expressed invariably and sincerely to us those pacific dispositions with regard to the rest of Europe which, attaching as we do great importance to the maintenance of peace, must be the foundation of a real good understanding between France and England."

We will not inquire how far these pacific dispositions are in accordance with the declaration of M. Lamartine above cited, or with the commentary on it given by M. Drouyn de Lhys, Minister of Foreign Affairs, in his speech on the 24th of last May in the Legislative Chamber:—"The Executive power adopts," says he, "as the rule of its conduct the three great principles—fraternal compact with Germany, reconstruction of Poland, emancipation of Italy." In other words, this pacific Government declared a partisan war on Prussia, Russia, and Austria. We have a right, we think, however, to examine how far they have been practically adopted as the maxims of French policy. When the King of Sardinia, after a series of disasters, was reduced to a disgraceful capitulation, he applied for the assistance of France, which had once been promised, and for which the Italian clubs had long been clamouring. It was now that the "pacific dispositions" should have been exhibited of which Lord Palmerston boasted, as well as that sense of honour and fair play upon which all governments should be conducted. The French Government did not reply to this appeal in the language of truth and sincerity:—"You have acted without our sanction, you have not asked our advice, you arrogantly boasted of your own sufficiency to drive your enemies before you, you sought the quarrel yourselves; you shall not now involve us in a war because your valour and discretion are less than your presumption." The course taken was very different:—"If you will join us in a mediation," said the organ of the French cabinet to his obsequious ally in our Foreign Office, "we will settle terms of peace between the contending parties; if not, we shall be unable to prevent military intervention in the affairs of Italy." This language might easily be interpreted. The power with which Lord Palmerston had allied himself for the maintenance of the peace of Europe was in fact totally unable to resist the caprices of the Parisian mob, under the dictation of which it now confessed it was bound to commit an act of flagrant injustice. What, we would ask, was the object of this joint mediation? Was it not a proposal to extort those concessions from Austria by a threat of war, which, after her victory, could no longer be expected? Was not this imposing a more degrading condition on the conqueror than any concessions that would have followed his defeat? Or did they intend to impose on their Italian allies by a mock mediation, which was afterwards to abandon them to the mercy of their mighty opponent?

The affairs of Sicily exhibit still more clearly the hollowness of this alliance, and the small value that is placed on it by France; and we return to them for a moment to find a still fuller illustration of our argument. It is evident either that Admiral Baudin had instructions to interfere at his own discretion in favour of the Sicilian insurgents, without consulting his ally, or that he arrogated to himself the right to do so. In the first case, the Government abandoned its pacific policy, and its respect for our alliance; or if the latter supposition be correct, what reliance can be placed on the friendship of a Government which allows such liberty to its officials? If peace can only be preserved on such dishonourable terms, we, for our own part, would rather accept the alternative of war with all its consequences. If these be the fruits, of our alliance with France, we give our Foreign Secretary little credit for his dexterity in maintaining it. At such a price we could have secured the friendship of the elder Buonaparte,'as well as of his nephew, or of any other adventurer to whom the convulsions of faction may give a momentary supremacy. This is an alliance under which all the sacrifices have been made by England—while France has not deigned in public to assume even a tone of conciliation. We may boast, indeed, that France has not invaded our territory; for this boon we must be grateful, for it is all the benefit we have reaped in return for the sacrifice of the Austrian empire and the kingdom of the Two Sicilies.

If there is one maxim which in our diplomacy may be regarded as fixed, it is the policy of maintaining a good understanding with Austria. The greatest maritime power of Europe and the greatest continental power not maritime have everything to gain and nothing to lose by their close alliance; they have a community of interests, and of affections, and of fears; they have common friends and common foes, and should Austria now seek to tighten her connexions with Russia it will have been the desertion of England that compelled her to do so. From the union, too, so intimate, and once so cordial between England and the Sicilies, both countries have derived advantages; yet this ancient friendship we have been willing to sever without the shadow of a reason or a grievance; nay, to convert it into a state of hatred and defiance; we have shown ourselves ready to engage in a scheme for dismembering the monarchy, and to establish that supremacy of France in the Mediterranean which our ancestors did so much to prevent. We would not, however, be misunderstood. We do not believe it is in the power of any ministry, however feeble or abject,—no, not even if Mr. Cobden himself were placed in office, instead of those who walk by his counsels— to deprive our arms of the glory that attends them like a birthright; our national traditions are not so easily forgotten, our national character so easily altered. It is now nearly twenty years that, with a few short intervals, the Government of this country has done all that lay in its power to subvert the establishments of our own empire and to shake allegiance and loyalty among many different classes;—with what small success let Chartist demonstrations and Irish rebellions prove! So is it also, we firmly believe, with our military renown. Could the policy of the Foreign Secretary be crowned with complete success, should Austria be despoiled of her Italian dominions for the benefit of France, and of the Dalmatian coast for that of Russia: should Genoa and Sicily be declared Republics under the direct protection of France, and the gracious superintendence of French vice-consuls, and a grand Mediterranean alliance accomplished to banish the flag of the "perfide Albion" from the southern seas, we firmly believe that once more, our counsels changed and our national spirit aroused, the work of that noble lord and all his colleagues, whether in the cabinet or out of it, in Downing-street or at Manchester, would in one instant be annihilated, and our former supremacy be reestablished in all its pristine greatness.

We cannot repeat too often that we value peace as the greatest of blessings, and that to our desire of preserving it we would make almost any sacrifices; but we think that if the "pacific policy" of the present Cabinet be persisted in much longer, its result must be war—war with the very power we have sacrificed so much to propitiate— and war which we must wage without a single ally. Peace with France can only be secured by a steady adherence to existing obligations—by a frank and open avowal of our respect for those treaties by which we are bound. With France we would maintain a peace, but one which did not bind us to sanction her aggressive and tyrannical policy, or to forward her views in the propagation of Communistic democracy. Peace may be kept without "cementing an alliance nor can we discover why Lord Palmerston himself should now attach so much value to that more intimate connexion which experience must have taught him is so difficult to be preserved. Since he has held the seals of office he has been engaged in many disputes with the French Government, the blame of which, we presume, he does not purpose keeping wholly to himself. He tells us, in the speech so often alluded to, he cares not w-hat the ruler of France be called—whether King or President; but here, we think, he deceives himself; and that in his mind the real merit of "all the public men who have ruled in France since February" is, that they are not the public men who had ruled there previously, and that they are not the servants of a Prince of the Orleans dynasty. We should have thought, indeed, that from such a train of uneasy years, so pacific a minister must, ere this, have learned that the real friendship of France could only be obtained on conditions which would destroy its value. It is now more than twenty years that the dread of a war with France has been the ruling principle of our foreign policy; and it is about the same time that the intimate alliance has been attempted between the two countries: let us briefly consider the issue. By the influence in our national councils of the advocates of the French alliance in 1828 was produced that combination of the great powers of Europe, the result of which terminated in the "untoward"—that is, piratical attack upon the Turks at Navarino, the destruction of their fleet, and the dismemberment of the Ottoman empire, while the preponderating influence of Russia was established in Turkey by our assistance, without which it could not have been accomplished. Whatever advantages may have accrued from the creation of the kingdom of Greece, we at least have reaped nothing but loss and mortification. Athens has ever since been the theater of those squabbles and intrigues in which the agents of the noble Lord are so perpetually engaged; and our last dispute has terminated in forcing our Government to play the ungracious part of a harsh creditor compelling payment from a bankrupt debtor; and the still less creditable one of acting bumbailiff itself, and distraining for the payment of a debt which the contractors expected would never be reclaimed. The example of dismembering a helpless and impoverished empire was not likely to be neglected, and both France and Russia availed themselves of it, in spite of the remonstrances and protestations which we too late opposed.

On the Quadruple Alliance—which has kept up civil dissension in Spain, and which ended by alienating us entirely from our late French ally—we suppose Lord Palmerston is the last person to look back with any satisfaction; yet our readers will all remember how strenuously the importance of the French alliance was then insisted on, how entirely upon its preservation the peace of Europe was represented to depend.

Our new alliance with France has, as usual, been celebrated with fresh sacrifices —the Emperor of Austria was the first, the King of Naples the second victim—and what compensation have we received for our complacency? Are we to thank France that Mr. Smith O"Brien has not been crowned king of Ireland, though if the ambiguous language of M. Lamartine admits of any intelligible interpretation, he promised the Irish the assistance of France if they could secure their independence without it; while he repeated his jargon of sympathy with struggling nationalities, and his desire to recognize the independence of all rebellious provinces. And for this piece of condescendence the noble Lord is transported with gratitude, and for this he demands the congratulation of the country. These are the "pacific dispositions" of which he boasts. In the memorable debate but with infinitely more eloquence than to which we have so often alluded, our ministers inform us they acted from apprehension, and not from conviction.

The French had determined on an interference and, rather than separate our policy from that of France, we resolved to pursue the same course. Will England be ever thus subservient?—and what is the value of a peace which is only to be purchased by paying the penalties of war? What faith could be due to the “pacific dispositions” of a Republican Government giving utterance to such menaces as those under the terrors of which Lord Palmerston and Lord John Russell confess, or rather boast and brag to have acted? These are “the impostors o true fear”—idle dreads. We should in truth rely little on the “pacific dispositions” of any French System—knowing that these have ever given way to designs of nations or dynastic aggrandizement. We have a present, however, the best security for French moderation in an empty Exchequer —a fretting people—a murmuring army— and the dread which a successful General would cause to the Executive Government.

The conduct of our foreign affairs, as Mr. Milnes justly remarks, has ever been less controlled by parliamentary interference than any other branch of the public administration; yet upon our foreign policy depends the question of peace or war—the most important that can agitate a nation. Our foreign minister is accused throughout Europe of being guided in the conduct oi public affairs by motives of pride, of personal piqué, and private resentment, quite unfìtting the organ of a great nation—a weakness, it is observed, that might be expected to sway the camarilla of an absolute monarch, but which should have no place where the affairs of a country are publicly discussed and controlled by a deliberative assembly. We cannot deny that there is truth in the accusation; but public discussion has other evils of its own, and from some of these we are at this moment suffering. In a public debate a minister of any dexterity will always derive advantage from the hostility of injudicious and ignorant censors. His own knowledge is more dangerous to him than their ignorance; and if;e can but avoid imprudent revelations in the heat of debate, he has little to apprehend from the attacks of his adversary. the weak and premature censure of our foreign policy, in a discussion to which it only partially belonged, has been of incalculable service to a cause which was defended with more dexterity than eloquence, but with infinitely more eloquence than truth. An attack which, by every regard for prudence and policy, should have been? postponed till the long-promised documents were produced, only served to strengthen the hands of the minister—to enable him to answer vague accusations with irrelevant pleasantries, to reiterate bold assertions, i! which published papers did not yet disprove—and, at the same time, to wear off the interest of the whole business by premature ' and of course vague debate. By the assistance of his opponents therefore, with the triumphant air of official importance and i half-laughing effrontery, the most unpopular and most distrusted statesman of England—the most captious and quarrelsome, i and the one undoubtedly most disliked on the Continent—was enabled to sit down, amidst party cheerings, as the great pacificator of Europe, the Atlas upon whom the thè tranquillity of the globe depends. the whisper of reason, however, is not so easily stilled as the clamour of the House. the foreign policy of England —neither generous nor prudent, nor yet successful— has alienated the regard of former allies, and has propitiated no favour from any class or party. We are sure his own conscience cannot acquit the Chief Secretary for Foreign Aflairs; and there is a responsibility at the bar of posterity, to which no man of honour and ability can look with indifference. Men, as individuals responsive for their actions at a future tribunal, very frequently cscape the retribution in this world which their conduct has merited; but, considered as societies whose existence is only of this world, they must necessarily suffer in the flesh for their national misdeeds—and their crimes and follies have ever brought their penalties along with them.

We know not whether Lord Palmerston will again be called to account, at the tribunal of the House of Commons, for the complicated evils his policy has entailed upon Europe. We know not whether he may not again be defended from censure by I the blunderings of a vindictive clique, or by | those considerations of party tactics to which ₍he has already been so much indebted. We have heard him called the most fortunate of ministers; one who has ever been protected by unforeseen and fortuitous events from the punishment of his mistakes, misdeeds, and miscalculations. We think he was never so fortunate as in the defeat of his revolutionary schemes in Italy. In the humiliation of the King of Sardinia, whose treachery he abetted, and in the ruin of the Pope and the Grand-Duke of Tuscany, whose imprudence he encouraged, he may certainly recognize a mortification; but in the success of Marshal Radetzky and the King of Naples, who both received marks of his hostility, he has cause to rejoice at the preservation of European society. What would have been the consequence of the success of the Milanese anarchists, the defeat of Marshal Radetzky, and the subversion of the Neapolitan monarchy—events which would assuredly have been followed by others even more deplorable—of this we may form an idea from the actual state of the Italian peninsula. England has hither too been too mercifully' protected from the fate she seemed so anxious to prepare for others. Could she have steered her steady course amidst the sea of troubles she had created? we dare hardly think so—but she has been saved from herself, and other states have been saved from her, and order has found its champions. It is remarkable that, while the revolutionary party throughout Europe has not given birth to one man of common abilities or indeed of common honesty, the only examples of bravery and heroism are found in the ranks of the aristocratic Austrians. Air. Milnes is pleased to inform Lord Lansdowne that such is the ignorance of the English people, that they regard Marshal Radetzky and Prince Windischgratz only as a couple of policemen putting down a serious riot. We can hardly believe that a people, whose "political development" is so perfect, can be in such a state of ignorance; but if they are, "e will say that their guess is nearer the truth than that of Mr. Milnes himself, when he proceeds to assure the Marquess that these great men are only pursuing a scheme of provincial aggrandizement, and a war of races, which is to be terminated in the victory of that to which they belong! ((22)) Far—very far—are they, we are convinced, from cherishing such selfish, such irrational and subversive schemes; we believe them, on the contrary, to be actuated by those feelings of pure and unshaken loy alty which bind faithful subjects to an hereditary prince, and by the devotion of veteran soldiers to their national standard. In the fidelity of the army the Emperor of Austria has found a resource that failed to the house of Bourbon in every stage of the late revolutions; which equally failed Buonaparte, "the soldier’s idol and the son of victory," who was deserted by his troops and betrayed by his generals. While the Austrian empire was shaking under the attacks of the anarchists, betrayed by its allies, and given up by all, the army, brave and loyal, stepped to the rescue, and, with the monarchy, saved civilization itself from an eclipse such as has not overtaken it since the fall of the Roman empire.

Events succeed each other with such breathless rapidity that, while our paper is wet with the ink which records one important step and its probable result, the succeeding post brings fresh intelligence of fresh revolutions which baffle conjecture and make forethought useless. Our readers have seen that we anticipated nothing but defeat and ruin from the weak and treacherous conduct of the King of Sardinia—no other consummation could be expected—but we own ourselves surprised by its rapidity. It was no part of the scheme of the Piedmontese government, or rather of the anarchists to whom it was abandoned, that the aggressive war they had once more hurried into should be brought immediately within their own frontier. Such was their ignorance and folly that they expected the Austrians would retire from Milan and remove the seat of war to the banks of the Mincio and the Adige. The tactics of Marshal Radetzky, equally daring and prudent, have been completely successful. The Austrian territory has been shielded from the injuries of war, and the manoeuvres of a few days have served to nullify the Sardinian army, to banish their king, and to secure every object contemplated by the Imperial Cabinet. It has been the rare good fortune of this great commander, who unites the fire and enterprise of youth with the caution of age, to add fresh laurels to his chaplet at the age of eighty-six. The same courier, however, that brings the intelligence of the defeat, the flight, and the abdication of the King of Sardinia, announces that the pernicious influence of diplomacy is again at work. The ministers who had encouraged the infatuation of the King are certainly bound to console him in defeat, but we are sure the veteran commander will not again suffer his measures to be thwarted, or his policy influenced, by any unwarrantable interference. Experience must have taught him that his sovereign has nothing to expect from England (till our councils are changed) but insult and injury; he must also be aware, however, that his adversaries need hope for no actual support—that our hostility is harmless, and may safely be defied.

From France he has equally little to dread. He is well aware that France can afford to sympathise only with success— that she will never constitute herself the champion of the fallen. Had the Piedmontese invasion been successful her sympathy might have become dangerous; but in defeat and ruin all hostile intervention will be confined within the walls of club-rooms and the streets of Paris.

We trust in the good sense and humanity of both Houses of Parliament not to permit the Foreign Secretary to prolong the miseries of anarchy and warfare under the specious pretence of mediation, but in reality for the gratification of his private resentment, and the salving of his lacerated vanity. We trust he may be compelled to abandon his superintendence of "the peace of Europe"—since his presence in her Majesty's councils cannot, it would seem, be dispensed with.

NOTE

(1) The reader will doubtless remember the universal indignation which was excited against the King of Naples for the imputed destruction of, Messina by the bombardment of General Pronio from the impregnable fortress. Mr. Mac Farlane bears ocular testimony to the forbearance and moderation with which that calumniated officer performed his painful duty. “I took care,” says Prince Satriano, in his speech in the Chamber of Peers on the 6th of February of the present year, “to renew the order to the Commandant of the citadel of Messina never to begin the fire against the batteries erected with perfidious intention, against all the rules observes in sieges, by the Palermitans. These batteries, planted upon the bastions which surround the city, as well as its finest quarters, exposed it everywhere to the fire b*d» of the besieging and the besieged. My orders were given to the effect that the firing should not commence unless in the case of direct provocation.”

(2) This ill-omened minister of mischief hastened back to his native country on hearing of the new troubles that afflicted it. He claimed his share in the lawless invasion of Lombardy, and received the command of the Neapolitan Contingent. Refusing to obey his sovereign's subsequent order to return to Naples, he proceeded with the small part of the troops he could debauch from their allegiance, and is now at the head of that irregular force which, with the assistance of the Sardinian fleet, has maintained the town of Venice in rebellion, to the ruin of its commerce and the terror of its well-disposed inhabitants. It may be well to notice that Mr. Mac Farlane contradicts distinctly the stories, of which the newspapers were full, about the disorderly conduct of the Neapolitan troops on their homeward march, and of the illfeeling manifested towards them; they, on the contrary, paid liberally for those supplies which were everywhere furnished with alacrity.

(3) Lord Palmerston, in his despatch to Lord Ponsonby of 12 Aug. 1847, which he afterwards published, represents the kingdom of Naples as teeming with all kinds of abuses. This wanton and unprecedented attack of course excited the discontent that had |not been manifested before, and the King of Naples found himself denounced to his own subjects by the ally with whom he believed himself in perfect amity.

(4) It is a fact that the flesh of the Neapolitan and Swiss soldiers was sold in the market during the siege of Messina, and devoured by the patriots.

It was not, however, such excesses as these that the British ministers advised the Queen to condemn in her speech from the throne.

(5) Since the above was written the Assembly at Kremsier has been dissolved, with the general approbation of the whole empire—those members alone excepted who are deprived of the salary that made their office so valuable.

(6) This is no surmise of our own. “Our French captain," says Mr. Mac Farlane, "confessed that he had never known such rents made in the law of nations as by his flag and our own in these Sicilian affairs.'—vol. i. p 40.

(7) For this destruction Prince Satriano gives a reason that apparently had not suggested itself to Lord Palmerston, and which we cannot be surprised was not suggested by the English agents in the country who took so personal an interest in this partisan warfare. "In order to reach the gates I was obliged to extend the wings and advance across gardens, surrounded by walls, interspersed with rural buildings, country-houses, and other edifices, of which some—for example, the convent of the Madeleine—were furnished in a formidable manner with men and every means of defence. In order to dislodge the rebel's and to occupy in succession this long suite of houses, which form an exterior dependence of Messina on the southern side, I bad to employ all the means which are in these days rendered necessary by the war of the barricades, and to work in the same manner as was done at Paris, at Vienna, and elsewhere, and as always will be done whenever anarchists constrain peaceable citizens so far as to oblige them to open loopholes in die walls of their houses, to furnish their windows with mattresses, and allow their attics to be occupied, whence, in feet, many shots wore fired by placing the muzzle of the musket between the tiles. Under a shower of balls we attacked and entered one house after another. The barricades erected across the streets and in the suburbs of Messina were not only provided with a deep fosse, but also with a numerous artillery Tho Neapolitan soldiers were exposed in their progress to the fire of an invisible enemy from each house, whence they ended by dislodging the former in spite of the explosion of several mines prepared upon their passage, and which caused destruction in their ranks." He proceeds to describe the panic and horror which his troops experienced in beholding the bodies of their comrades, murdered on the preceding day, naked and horribly mutilated, which revolting details we willingly omit:—"My soldiers, on the contrary, preserved the lives of those who, wounded or not, surrendered at discretion; and many of the citizens sought the citadel for protection, which they always received. I know," proceeds the Prince, "that tho journals throughout Europe have proclaimed the contrary of what I have just declarod as a homage due to truth. I know that their impudence (this speech was made before the report of the debates on the address had reached Naples) has even gone to the extent of accusing the Neapolitans of the excesses perpetrated by the cannibals who in these mournful scenes have outraged the honour of the Sicilian name." We caunot make any further extracts from this important document—we recommend it to the attention of our readers, who will find in it u direct confutation of the accusations vociferated by the Foreign Secretary, and—we blush to add—inserted by the Cabinet into her Majesty's speech to her Parliament.

(8) This same fact is mentioned by Mr. Mac Farlane as notorious before it was assorted by the Prince Satriano in his manly and measured explanation. This explanation is too important to be omitted. Prince Satriano's speech will be found in The Times newspaper of Feb. 21, After giving a detailed account of his disembarkation he goes on to state, "During the first day of my operations, tho movements executed were in noway connected with the town, and could in no decree justify the terrible fire which the Palermitan batteries opened upon the citadel, with tho view of exterminating the garrison, who on their side could not but return it with tho vigour which the sentiment of self-defence joined to the fulfillment of military duty awakens in every soldier. It is sufficient to see where and how the batteries of the rebels were situated, in order to be convinced that their own fire quite as much as the fire of their opponents must have produced the disastrous ruin which Messina still deplores. But to whom the blame." To the Palermitans alone; for if, in directing the erection of these works, they had only lmd in view the capture of the citadel of Messina without destroying the town, they would have cut an entrenchment in the country to the south of the place, and approached by regular works…….. If the besiegers had operated with this regularity the defenders of the citadel could not have hoped for an instant to hold out during the six months which passed without any result, from the iniquitous manner of conducting the operations adopted by the aggressors, with the double aim of mining Messina [we beg the reader's attention to this] and of destroying lives without the remotest hopes of making themselves masters of the citadel."

(9) "If on returning to your country," says the Prince, in addressing Captain Kobb, in a letter dated Naples, Feb. 4, 1849, "you should be questioned on what passed at Messina by the troops under my orders, I rely on your honour and your loyalty to report that which you have so often said personally to me, namely, that you have had every reason to be satisfied in my intercourse with you, and with the discipline which prevailed among the troops which the King had confided to my command There are rules to be respected among civilized nations, and by which useless cruelties are not permitted. Those rules have certainly not been violated by my troops, notwithstanding that the town was taken by assault, after an obstinate defence by barricades and mines, as you well know, and consequently I do not doubt that, in case it should be demanded of you, you will on this subject render me full justice."

To this appeal Captain Robb replies—"In all the relations in which his Excellency has been engaged with Captain Robb, with regard to the affairs of Sicily, he can give the strongest assurances of his having pursued the most implicit good faith, and will at all times feel great pleasure, both in England and elsewhere, in bearing testimony to this fact.”

(10) The Sicilian rebels applied for arms to England; the contractor whom they employed addressed himself to the Ordnance Office, but was refused by the Master-General unless he could procure the sanction of the Foreign Secretary. That noble Lord at once issued the required order —and then the arms were supplied. So decidedly hostile a step did not fail to startle the rest of the Cabinet, and an explanation was forwarded to Naples that the rebels had been supplied with arms from the royal arsenals of England by "inadvertence." Such an explanation must be accepted by the King of Naples, who has endured still worse injuries; but we are rather astonished, we confess, that such an excuse should be pleaded to the British public in the Houses of Parliament. Where, we would presume to ask, did the inadvertence lie? Was the Foreign Secretary not aware of what use was to be made of the arms, or did he give the order to Her Majesty's storekeepers without understanding its import?

(11) It is remarkable that this alteration in the style of the King of the Sicilies was warmly opposed by the Austrian cabinet. The Chevalier di Medici, the Neapolitan minister, anxious to imitate the French system of centralization had proposed this complete fusion of the crowns, which Austria protested against as mortifying to the feelings of the Sicilians—an objection which has been proved but too just.

(12) This argument, however, has not the merit of originality; it will be found in a scurrilous pamphlet published in Paris by Messrs. Bonacorsi and Lumia for the purpose of traducing the nation whose foreign policy Lord Palmerston directs — D"ailleurs, les titres sous lesquels les rois se font reconnaître dans le langage official sont de pures formalités diplomatiques qui n"ont rien de commun avec leurs situations particulières vis-a-vis de loirs sujets. Pendant plusieurs siècles les Rois " Angleterre se sont appelés Rois de France; le Roi de Sardaigne est encore aujourd'hui Roi de Chypre et de Jerusalem. Ce sont la des royauxin partibus dont le titre ne contre aucun droit riel."

(13) This constitution, enforced, rather than supported, by the seal of Lord William Bentinck during his administration of the affairs of Sicily, it is not eren pretended was guaranteed by the English government. The paragraph in the memorandum, drawn up by the minister on the evacuation of the British troops, after disclaiming all right and title to dictate, is as follows:—"La grande-Bretagne n"a jamais voulu imposer une telle condition (the adoption of the constitution) a la Sicile; comme l"amie et l"alliée de la nation sicilienne, son devoir consistait simplement a seconder l" adoption de la partie de la constitution,"

(14) "It is too late (è troppo tardi). It was with these words that Lord Minto was answered in the month of March, 1848, when he went to Palermo to offer the leaders of the movement the concessions of which my august sovereign had been so liberal towards Sicily."—Speech oj Prince Satriano.

(15) The English public will learn the value of these "documents," which conceal the truth instead of throwing light upon it, by the debate in the House of Lords on the 22d of March, 1849. It would seem that a dexterous minister can give what colour he pleases to any transaction by garbling, withholding, or altogether suppressing any part of the correspondence. This is by no means the first time such a charge has been preferred against the present government; but in the case to which Lord Aberdeen alluded in his unanswerable indictment of our foreign policy, the suppress veri was the more unpardonable, since it left a heavy accusation against an allied power unanswered—and it was, moreover, a gratuitous meanness, since the communication was voluntary, the documents not having been demanded. This wanton act of hostility had a great effect in encouraging the audacity of the insurgents in Italy.

(16) The nomination of this unfortunate man to the office of French ambassador at Rome is an inexplicable act of imprudence in the cabinet which M. Guizot directed, but which the King himself superintended. Though undoubtedly an able man, his whole career had proved him an ambitious and unscrupulous one. A personal friend of M. Guizot, his advancement was natural, but surely some more fitting employment could have been found—some situation that did not exact a degree of forbearance and discretion all but superhuman. As a Roman exile, his presence in that capital as French ambassador was an insult to the sovereign Pontiff; as a reformed Carbonaro, his elevation was a perpetual excitement to the ambition of the party he had deserted; while his person was odious to his former associates on account of his apostacy, and contemptible to the public on the same account.

(17) The debate before alluded to on our foreign policy throws light on this mysterious transaction. We cannot but suspect, however, that the public is not yet possessed of all the circumstances of the case. The temperate and dignified reply of Prince Metternich (bearing the date of Vienna, Sept. 27, 1847) to the menaoing and hostile communication of Lord Palmerston was suppressed for six months, and only produced on the motion of Lord Brougham, who, it is to be supposed, was aware of this disingenuous concealment. The remonstrance or rather threat of Lord Palmerston (dated September 11, 1847) was founded upon the supposed ambitious designs of the Austrian cabinet against the independence of the Roman and Sardinian states. A report had been eagerly circulated (and apparently had been credited in our foreign Office) that an application had been made by Austria to the King of Sardinia for permission to garrison the fortresses of Novi and Alexandria —a proposal which had been indignantly rejected by that high-spirited monarch. jVo such demand was ever made, and a formal contradiction of the report was procured from the Sardinian envoy at an Italian court. A full justification of their conduct was therefore in the power of the Austrian ministers. We should conclude from some unaccountable motive that they had declined availing themselves of it, if the disingenuous practices of our Foreign Office did not expose it to every suspicion. We would willingly learn from the noble Secretary himself that he was ignorant, when he made a certain speech, of the existence of this very important despatch.

(18) The best confutation of this calumnious document would be the republication of the capitulation of Milan, which contradicts each statement of the Sardinian ministers.

(19) We alluded in a former article to some earlier chapters of his history; but we ought not to have omitted his conduct in 1830. After the French Revolution of “the three glorious days," Turin was the chosen retreat of the advocates and victims of legitimacy; The King of Sardinia was the champion of that cause; he sought to arm all Europe in crusade in its defence, and he taxed the cabinet of Vienna with coldness and indifference for resisting his ardent knight-errantry; and the causes of Don Carlos in Spain and of Don Miguel in Portugal found in his friendship and in his purse their only gleams of hope.

(20) It has been asserted that these remonstrances were public, and formal merely, while secret encouragement was given in private by British agents to the King's aggressive policy. We do not believe any English minister capable of such duplicity; but we cannot be surprised that persons acquainted with Italy should assign any motive to the noble secretary's conduct, rather than believe in that ignorance in which he really was— an ignorance such that he actually conceived the possibility of establishing a powerful monarchy in the north of Italy, of which Charles Albert was to be the king!

(21) See the Memoirs of this heroine of the Revolution, where she discloses the malignity of her soul in witnessing tho graceful progress of MarieAntoinette amidst the groups of affectionate admirers on the marble terraces of Versailles. See also the regrets she expresses at not having been at the Tuileries on the memorable night of the 19th of June, when the mob broke into the palace, to have feasted her eyes on the prolonged agony of the Queen—her deep humiliation and maternal terrors. These details will also be found in the volumes of M. Lamartine, whose admiration of this heroine falls short only of the idolatry with which she herself contemplated her own virtues and attractions.

(22) Marshal Radetzky, a native of Carniola, by and descent is of Slavish origin, but he was horn and educated before those distinctions of race were insisted on by which the inhabitants of the same country and the subjects of the same prince have sought to introduce fresh elements of dispute, and an exclusive sentiment of selfishness unknown to their less civilized ancestors. This gallant officer knows no distinction but between “(e) friends and enemies of his Emperor and of Austria.

With regard to Prince Windischgratz, Mr. Milnes is wholly in error, an he is of a purely teutonic descent.

Nicola Zitara mi chiese diverse volte di cercare un testo di Samir Amin in cui is parlava di lui - l'ho sempre cercato ma non non sono mai riuscito a trovarlo in rete. Poi un giorno, per caso, mi imbattei in questo documento della https://www.persee.fr/ e mi resi conto che era sicuramente quello che mi era stato chiesto. Peccato, Nicola ne sarebbe stato molto felice. Lo passai ad alcuni amici, ora metto il link permanente sulle pagine del sito eleaml.org - Buona lettura!

Le développement inégal et la question nationale (Samir Amin)

Potete inviarci una email usando il modulo.

You can send us an email using the contact form.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Ai sensi della legge n.62 del 7 marzo 2001 il presente sito non costituisce testata giornalistica.
Eleaml viene aggiornato secondo la disponibilità del materiale e del Webm@ster.