The Express.
London, England, 1864-09-13 00:00:00

MGR WATER AT LONDON BEIM&

nits DAT vmmioic. 11L. 3.5 m... .111mmoms. Ob. Om.
To-hobROW Morning. Oh. Mamma Oh. 35m.

LONDON, TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 13.

IT is always an easy matter to point a moral of
any kind by the rigorous application of abstract
rules of criticism without reference to the excep-
tional and qualifying characteristics of the par-
ticular case to which they are applied. The
picture which a contemporary has lately drawn of
the financial prospects of the Italian Kingdom
supplies a notable illustration of this truth. The
essential injustice of the impression which this
picture conveys is almost effectually concealed by
the incontestable truth of the political maxims which
it professes to illustrate, and by the plausible
ingenuity with which certain damaging truths are
dwelt upon to the total exclusion of others which
have an equally forcible, though opposite bearing
upon the final conclusion. That national thrift is
an essential condition, as well as an accurate test,
of national prosperity, and that an extravagant
national expenditure is an equally certain fore-
runner of national decay, are propositions the
general validity of which is beyond dispute.
• That the present expenditure of the Italian
Kingdom is largely in excess of its present revenue
is also an admitted and incontrovertible fact.
From these premises, adopted without scrutiny or
modification, our contemporary jumps at once to
the conclusion that Italy is on the high road to
national ruin, that nothing short of a speedy and
radical change of her policy will be able to arrest
her doom.

Yet, unanswerable as this process of reasoning
may at first sight appear, • little closer investi-
gation will soon convince us that it reposes
upon • fallacy. There are times, says Lord
Bacon, when riches take wings of themselves ;
there are others when wings must be given to them
to bring in more. In the former case • lavish
expenditure is suicidal extravagance ; in the latter
it is the truest economy. In which category, then,
is the budgot of the Italian Kingdom to be placed?
Is the large deficit which it annually records an
evidence of reckless and ruinous prodigality,
or is it rather, under all existing circum-
stance; a wise and reproductive investment of
national capital ? In order, however, to arrive at
• satisfactory answer to this question it w"l
be necessary to inquire—first, whether the present
expenditure of the Italian Government supplies an
accurate criterion of its normal requirements ; and
secondly, whether the present revenue of the King-
dom may be taken as a fair measure of its normal
resources. The first branch of this inquiry may
be confined in the main to notorious political facts;
the second necessarily involves an appeal to specu-
lative opinion. In endeavouring to eliminate
from the present political condition of Italy those
circumstances which are only transient and acci-
dental, perhaps the most prominent feature of this
description which arrests our attention is the num-
ber of local and factitious barriers which operate
to prevent the fusion of the different races of the
Peninsula into one compact and homogeneous
nationality. To break down these bat.iers,
and to facilitate an interchange of ideas
between tribes which have hitherto been kept
in a state of complete political isolation, should, it
seems, be the primary aim of Italian statesmanship.
To speak of the national army of Italy u if its sole
design were to drive the Austrians from Venice and
the French from Rome—as if it answered no pur-
pose in associating the different elements of na-
tional character in the common object of defending
the common country of all—as if it engendered no
sentiment of patriotism, and as if it conveyed no
consciousness of national individuality—is to fail
entirely to understand its capacity for forging and
welding a new people. To ignore these effects is
obviously to underrate enormously the moral pro-
ductiveness, so to speak, of the military expendi-
ture of the Italian Government, and to conceal
the chief causes which render this expenditure for
some time to come a matter of almost paramount
necessity. Not that we look upon the present
armament of Italy as valueless even in a
purely military point of view. The tangible
advantages which it has hitherto conferred
upon the kingdom are, perhaps, only political
and social ; but it has also been a wise and
necessary preparation for contingencies which,
though they have not yet arisen, might have arisen,
and may still at any moment arise. But, whether '1
we look at the military or the political objects of
this branch of Italian expenditure, whether we
regard the army of VICTOR EMMANUEL as one of
the chief means of bringing about the unification
of Italy, or merely as an instrument for the future
recovery, under more favourable circumstances, of
that portion of her heritage from the possession of
which Italy is now excluded, it is obviously unfair
to represent either of these aims as one of
the permanent normal requirements of the
Italian Kingdom. They are both melt-
belly transitory in their character, the
complete realization of them being not on y