The Express.
London, England, 1862-04-17 00:00:00

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LONDON, THURSDAY, APRIL 17.

Au. roads, we know, lead to Rome, and if the
debate of last Friday is to be cited ea an example,
all roads, it would seem, lead from Rome. It was
Rome that had sent forth from Ireland the forlorn
hope of the Papal party to confound in one
common anathema all the authors and abettors of
the liberation of Italy, and it was to Rome that
a— the friends of the unity and independence of
Italy pointed as the source of all the troubles and
calamities which afflict the Southern Provinces,
under the auspices of the Emperor of the
FRENCH. It is in Rome that all the conspira-
cies for the overthrow of Italian liberty find
their natural centre and focus. As Protestants,
we may call the fatality providential which has
brought the Roman Court to such a pass, that it
is resolved to conquer or to perish with the
billions& Had the advisers of Plus IX. been
more chary of connecting the cause of the Papacy
with the cancelled rights of legitimate misrule, and
prepared to stand or fall as a Sovereignty of wore
than earthly pretensiona, it is not improbable that
some part of the Temporal Power might have been
saved by timely concessions, and that the religious
sympathies of Italy, if not of the whole Catholic
world, might once more have rallied to a throne
from which only benedictions had descended. But,
thanks to the perverse blindness which has dark-
ened the councils of the Vatican, and made the
Head of the Church a victim to the rancour
and intrigues of his advisers, and a prey to his
own pusillanimity and passion, the Temporal
Power has become so fatally identified wish un-
relenting hostility to national independence, and
even to modern civilization, that before the
Bouitwis brigandage is suppressed and Austria
cast o it is felt that Rome must be the capital
of Its, and that the Pura must cease to be a
King. Or, should it please the Emperor Napo-
LroN to daily for ever between justice and
convenience, and to affect to reconcile light with
darkness, the path of Italy, which already skirts the
confines of schism, lies clear and broad towards
complete abjuration. So much for that confusion
of the spiritual and the temporal which to fervent
Romanists in free countries appears indispensable
to political salvation.
All this, however, as Mr. MONCKTOX MILNER
reminded tho House on Friday night, is a question
between the Catholics of Italy and the Catholics
of the rest of the world. Catholic malcontents
from Ireland, who desert the banners under which
the battle of their own emancipation was fought,
to avenge the downfall of a Government of all
others the most hostile to the emancipation of
the Italian people, are forsooth indignant that
liberal English statesmen should desire the same
liberty for Italian Catholics which they desired
and obtained for Catholic Irishmen. How will
M. Da 310NTALEMBERT and his school charac-
terize the Catholic " Liberals " who use the
freedom they enjoy at home to vilify a Catholic
nation contending for its freedom? These excitable
Papal members, it is true, are loud in their
enthusiasm for Poland, not so much because
Poland is oppressed as because the oppressor of
Poland is schismatic. It is thus that adherence to
the Temporal Power as a political dogma turns
honest sympathies awry, and exposes to de-
rision the very idea of " liberal Catholicism." The
time has been when Catholics and Protestants
fought the battles of political and religious liberty
side by side, but that was before Irish treason.
mongers who claim for themselves the right of in-
surrection against a free and merciful Government,
had deified the most abandoned tyrannies beyond
the Alps. It was before ultramontane principles
and a divided allegiance had almost justified the
apprehensions of the Tory statesmen of fifty years
ago.

un the whole the debate of last Friday is one to
which Englishmen of all creeds and parties whose
judgment is unembarrassed by faction or fanal.i-
cism may look back with pride and satisfaction.
On no previous occasion have the united sympa-
thies of the British people and Government for the
freedom, happiness, and unity of Italy received a
nobler or an ampler expression. All the malig-
nant storiesthathave flitted about in legitimist and
Papal cliques for the last six months were sum-
moned to the light of day and stripped bare. The
Papal advocates put their worst thoughts into the
worst words; and so glaring were the incinsisten-
cies, so flagrant the contradictions into which
their informers had betrayed them at every turn,
that they were fain, at last, to appeal to the testi-
mony of speakers of their own persuasion in the
" enslaved Parliament "at Turin for evidence in
support of their assertions. The tone of the
speakers on the Liberal aide was authoritative,
unreserved, and temperate throughout, as far from
idle declamation as f affected reticence. Tiled.-
chirations of Mr. LA Y A Klo, of Mr. GLA DIMON;
and of Lord PA ticrosruir on the subject of the
French occupation at Home leave no room for mis-
representation of the motives and principles of the
British Government. It los been a frequent and
hkilish device of the French 8912i-Official journsis