The Express.
London, England, 1862-10-11 00:00:00

TO MI =ROI Of TUX IX.PRISEL

81a,—Raving lately returned from Italy, where,
thanks to some valuable friendships, 1 was enabled
to turn a brief and hurried visit to good account,
I venture to transcribe from my notebook s few im-
pressions which you may be disposed to accept
for what they are worth ; that is, as the disinte-
rested and dispassionate conclusions of a sincere
wellwisher to the Italian cause, without respect to
persons or to parties.

•
Exceptions apart, public feeling in Italy seems
almost equally anti-French, anti-Papal, and anti-
Piedmontese. Gratitude to Franco is turned to
gall. The Papacy is regarded as the everlasting foe
to Italian nationality.; and Piedmont—official
Piedmont—as a Prefectorate of the Empire.
This aversion to Fiance, that it to say, to Impe-
rialist France, is a sense of past favours very dearly
purchased, and of favours to oome, to be pur-
chased, perhaps, -mere dearly still. It is a
.00nscionsneas of helpless dependence upon the
caprices of a patron who exacts a province as
payment for a battle, and jobs the Temporal Power
ble a ticket of the Mont de Pidti—a man of dark-
ness, to Awes adventurous duplicity England gives
carte blanche on the Continent in order to insure,
for a while at least, the safety of her own shores.
The aversion to the Papacy is not only the hate
of disappointed love for en impossible Pope ; it is an
old and angry wound inflamed by foreign bandages
and ointments. The Temporal Power is the serpent
cherished in the bosom of Italy. Nothing can recon-
cile Italy to the Papacy—even as a spiritual power
—but its abdication of all temporal sovereignty.
Italy has lived too long in the sacristy to believe
in the altar, and the ebbing faith of these latter
days, the faith of fantastic or intriguing women, has
left the rotten old barque high and dry upon a sand-
bank of indifference and contempt.

Anti-Piedmontiem means Rome the natural
centre and capital of the Italian monarchy, and the
little Sub-alpine kingdom not annexing but an-
nexed. Such, I take it, are the prevailing senti-
ments of nine-tenths of the people of Italy at the
present moment.

Speaking more precisely : distrust of the French
Emperor, sympathy for Garibaldi, contempt for
the existing Cabinet of Turin, are the dominant
characteristics of the public mind in Italy at the
present moment The reasons for this distrust of
the Second Empire are not far to seek. What has
been the demeanour of official France towards
Italy since Villafranca ? What is it now ? The
demeanour of a master with the power of
life or death in his hands. M. Benedetti
is a reputed friend to Italy ; yet only the other day,
a young Swiss, employed in a house of business at
Turin, who in a convivial mood had given vent to
his feelings in front of the French embassy, on
the evening of the illuminations, received next
morning an authoritative written warning to be more
circumspect in his language for the future. Such
is French "influence" at Turin ; whether at Rome,
capital of Italy, it would be quite so imperious is
open to doubt. To this intense increasing grudge
against Napoleonic France all the present
sympathies and antipathies of the Italians may be
referred. Garibaldi enjoys a larger share of the
affection and respect of his fellow-countrymen, of
all parties and opinions, now than at any former
time, and yet the crusade which resulted in the
disaster of Aapromunte was condemned even
by the great patriot's most tried and trusted
comrades and most devoted partisans. Why is this ?
Because Garibaldi, even in his political errors and
excesses,represents with single-minded constancy the
uukpendenee of his country ; independence, that is,
of all foreign dictation or interference; because he
isbelieved by many to have been seduced into the last
fatal enterprise by weak, not wilful, agents of other
than Italian interests.

The incurable suspicion and universal contempt
into which the present Cabinet of Turin has fallen
is due in a great measure to the exasperation of na-
tional susceptibilities. M. Rattaazi's government
stinks in the nostrils of the nation because it is
tainted with disasters that might have been pre_
vented, subserviences that have brought no profit,
and promises that remain unfulfilled. It is called a
French Ministry ; yet it has obtained nothing from
France but the Legion of Honour for Colonel Pal-
lavicini, and compliments for the "catastrophe" of
Aspromonte. It supplanted Baron Ricasoli's Cabi-
net by virtue of its presumed administrative supe-
riority, and its more accommodating temper in
foreign negotiations ; yet ever since M. Rat-
teazels accession to power, and particularly
during the last three months, the internal
administration has been falling to pieces, and
the Roman question stands where it did in
June, when the French government proposed to
guarantee the patrimony of St. Peter to the Pope,
and denied the claims of Italy to Rome.
Brigandage in the Neapolitan provinces breaks
out the fiercer for the state of siege ; and the Pope
is still exchanging visits with Francis the Second,
whom a year ago the French Emperor was said to
be persuading to leave Rome. Such are the re-
sults, say the Italians of all parties (for nothing is
more noticeable than the rapprochement of the mo-
derate and advanced parties since the affair of
Aapromonte) of a shuffling, time-serving, timor-
ous, finessing, pettifogging policy. Weak at home,
weaker abroad ; with no principle it dare avow, no
object it dare pursue ; divided against itself, and
odious to the country, incapable of satisfying
even its foreign patrons, the first breath of parlia-
ment will blow it away.
Such, I apprehend, air, is a fair account of the
actual state of the public mind throughout Italy
with regard to the present Cabinet of Turin. M.
Rattazzi's government, already in the throes of
spontaneous dissolution, is doomed, unless, indeed,
M. Rattazzi, at the opening of the Cham-
bers, shall be prepared to take a step in
advance on the road to Rome. Of this there seems
little likelihood as yet ; nor would a second visit to
Paris save M. Rattazzi from the evil effects of
the first. Au coutraire. But lest I should
seem to abound in the sense of the Opposition,
I trust you will allow me in a second letter to
state as impartially as I can the ministerial case. For
to Englishmen, as I had the honour of assuring
more than one personage high in authority at
Turin, Italian politics can never be a question of
persons. Ricasoli or Rattazzi, it is all the same to
England ; but a truly independent, strong, and
honestly constitutional government—that is whatall
true friends must desire for Italy at all times, and
never more earnestly than now.—l am, Sir, yours,
AN EYE AND EAR-WITNLSS.
London, Oct. 10.

Cayeraz. Paracz. —M. Leotard will give his
&hag and gm:OM parforroances on the flying trapcx in
tie seats transept this day at font o'clock.