The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1859-11-08 00:00:00

M. DE MONTALEMBERT AND THE
ENGLISH GOVERNMENT.

The following extracts from the famous article in
the rorropoudaut, which has brought down upon
that paper a "Caution," will show the views of M.
de Nlontalembert as to the conduct of our Govern-
ment with rehttiou to Italy. The parts which have
led to the censure of the French Government, are of
course, distinct from these, and refer chiefly to the
insulting assimilation between the lialll6 of .Nlachievel
and those of Napoleon 111, and the King of Sar•
dinia

"But England! but Piedmont! These are accord-
ing to some persons, the real, the great, the principal
criminals. I believe nothing of the kind.
" As for England, I admit without difficulty all the
accusations alleged against her for the part she has played
in Italy. More than ever I have thought it right to ex-
press in these pages the embaraseinent and the annoy-
ance one feels in peaking the truth on the fault* and
vices of England for fear of being confounded (at a period
when the art of confounding is very willingly practised)
with her stupid and brawling detractors, who attack in
her only liberty, dignity, and political vitality, and who
believe they defend Catholicity by maintaining that
people are more happy, prouder, and more free in Naples
than in London, simply because they work less at the
foot of Mount Vesuvius than on the banks of the
Thames!
She will assuredly not long remain on it if she con-
tinue to follow in the affairs of Europe the tortuous and
iminoral policy which characterises her attempts at
action in Italy. At first to do her utmost to prevent
the war; to take when war is once declared no part
j direct or indirect in it, but the moment pewee is made to
, intervene with an arrogance and a persistence which the
noblest sacrifices on her part would hardly justify; to
intervene in order to envemon all the difficulties and to
increase al! the dangers,—seet a part has tost one amuse
—it is ipiwfilef It is true that since the sensible and
honourable despatches of Lord Malineabury before the
opening of the war, aaid the recent harrangue of Lord
John Russell at Aberdeen, • change of Ministry has
taken place. Twenty-one Catholic deputies of Ireland,
the masters of the majority in a new Parliament, have
had at • moment the most critical for the Papacy the
fine idea of transferring power from the hands of Lord
Derby and a Ministry essentially Conservative, mode-
rate, and full of good will towards the Catholics, to
those of Lord Palmerston, whom every one knows, and
Lord John Russell, who distinguished himself among all
the statesmen of England by the violence of hia invec-
tives against the religion which is professed by 150 mil-
lions of Christians and 10 millions of British subjects ;
and of Mr. Gladstone, who, I regret to say, placed him-
self by his last tirade against Pius IX. on a level with
Lord John. But, as has been already observed with
respect to France, nations are, and continue to be, par-
ticipators of the foreign policy of their Governments.
Whatever be the (mange* that have occurred in the
English Ministry, all England beam, and will hear, the
moral responsibility of the tergiversations, the perfidies, j
and the violence of her leaders. England is alarmed at 1
her isolated and menaced condition in contemporaneous j
Europe. She is right to be so alarmed. In spite of
the heroism displayed by her children against the insur-
gents in India. she feels instinctively that the days of
Nelson and of Wellington,of Burke and of Chatham. have
passed away, and she deplores it. She would do better
to deplore the gradual destruction of public and social
spirit which produced her great men. But a day will
1.011 come, but atilt too soon for the friends of liberty
aid civilization, when she shall find what matchless fully
Rile has committed in arraying agaiust her with all the
animosities, all the rancours, all the jealousies which she
etites, and which she aggravates every day, the just
resentment and the filial anguish of 1(10,000,000 of
Catholics.

......
"Ten years ago England, having Lord Palmerston
and Lord John Russell for her Ministers, repressed with
implacsble severity the siniple appearance of revolt in
the lonian Islands, where religion, habits, tradztionai.
interests, language—everything, in a won', without
exception—is repugnant to British domination ; and it
is England which now dares, on the opposite coast of
the Adriatic, to press down with all the force of her
iniquitous partiality the balance in which are weighed
wrongs a hundredfold wore grave, repugnance a thou-
sand times kea legitimate, than that which she has
drowned in blood at Corfu.
, "Sixty years ago she did worse still—she repressed
the revolt in Ireland with a ferocity worthy of the Con-
, vention.
" I sin not one of those blind volunteers who con-
found the present conilif of Ireland with what it was
in 1798. I believe that Ireland would gain nothing in
any respect by separating froin the British Empire ;
but I abhor the politicians who employ two weights and
two measures, and I affirm with all Europe, which
knows it well without daring to say so, that there is nut
a single one of the arguments invented, traded in, and
exaggerated by English journalists and orators against
the Pontificia' Government in the Romagna which
could not be, and which is not every day, retorted by the
patriots and Catholics of Ireland against English
domination in that country. Doubtless, logic dose not
always govern politics; happily, it is not everything in
the world; but, happily, also, it is something. And
assuredly it will not be permitted to this illustrious
nation, so wofully led astray, to heap with impunity
one upon the other, all these flagrant, repeated, and
impudent violations of the rides of logic, which are in
this instance identical with those of morality and
humanity, of Divine justice, and reward to shame."
As to what the Emperor Napoleon has done for
Italy, the following paragraph will show what is the
opinion oh M. de Montalembert

" God keep me from wishing to offend honest and sin-
cere, but deluded people, who have seen in the war in
Italy a work of liberal emancipation! We make allow-
ances for their hopes and their illusions; we do not con-
found them with the stupid or culpable revolutionists
who have substituted an unfortunate enterprise, and a
question impossible of solution, for the great and legiti-
mate cause of Italian independence. But we must de-
clare that, if Italy had really understood her mission and
her glory; if, instead of decreeing • statue to cunning,
to deceit, to political depravity, personified in Machia-
velh, she had remained faithful to the inspirations of the
Feecolos, the Mansunis, and the Balboa, the original and
' real promoters of her inodern patriotism, she
would have set apart, and beyond all questions, the
two-fold majesty M the Holy See."