The Express.
London, England, 1849-10-01 00:00:00

MR. FOX, M.P., AND THE ITALIAN
REFUGEES.

Mr. W. J. FOX, M.P., delivered an eloquent ap-
peal! yesteNlay monde, at &nth street Chord, Finsbury,
to a crowded and meetly. eongregatiee, in behalf of the
Italian refugees who were naiad, refused as asylum to
Yobs. Ile hes. gewtlemes ebenved that they were mot
ter the perissamme Of ea net of /lOW—et jostles to the
alemeter Odds malty bar • reamess and impartial hoe.
orttki late meats had Mead tat.ia anation—of
ressZte themselves that their seq Maiman might sot be
misitedie whisk they repthetad, and injurious
acedeat di* they
_alikeered—aal dintim to the bran
holjttallte 'Mime el their *tete. the nutyn to •
they were the heroes, and of val.& it was
becared they weebi ham been the snossesful ahampleas. Let
woe 'appose that they had OM ICI listen to • charity m-
um Appeals to the mean elmegiviug of
would
alike digress thenesehie sal the objects of their
present attune* sad Arne. Let charity be asked
sad alms to the neseedtous, whose only claim
was their aseeedty ; kbe asked sad ghatfor May.
statesmen, nobles, ended by their own misdeeds, and do
eervedlpdrives from the enables whirls they caned. Bet
is the one of men who suffered because they had bravely
strima to serve the w std, the term charity would be alto
gather Risepplied. Justice wu their due—the judos to
which they had • right from all who empired to aid, or
thought they had a right to *des hi, of hear
shy towards kaowledp, freedom, sad Whet a
scene of onsmileleas had Swope been for hat to. years;
and why ? 11l did they read die sips elf the lima, er M-
OSSO the history of matins, er the Admirer d hameeity,
who gemmed that an these »Wiliam bed been manly •
hied of iasurreedecary epidemic, spreading like dee chokes
ever the feu of the earth—who saw nothiag le k buriestra
tagiou fear of lonbordioation—who asetWei k le
sea, the dein for power or plund.r, or to emiellet eleurines
er socialist teeceere—er who woven it to be ausauted fur
varied imputations upon individuals eat num.
There was, and mast be, from the way nature
of the cue, • far deeper cease they this—
& common erase for these eommes asavelsiem—_

• =se width was to be aolipht- in the state of
Ramer. It was found in the plain brunt fast that the
people a Strops had outgrown European lidetatione—that
the fenlai end governmental anangememes of Amen every
seemlttllaionged to a by-gone age, and had no fitness or
entilegnity with the existing state of knowledge and right,
amdwith the existing hopes. aspirations, and determined=
of the different peoples. Institutions framed to dark and
hada times, imposed upon a people who had thoroughly
outgrown them, must needs lead to abide( discontent, to •
spirit alwaye ready to take advantage of opportunities of
change, to which change it had that infeasible right which
belonged to human nature. There was no harmony or oot-
respondence between many of the institutions of the different
eountriesof Europe and the present feelings, thoughts, and
aspirations of their inhabitants. The chrysalis was bound in
the cocoon after its wings were grown, sad It was not in the
order of nature that this should lute It was not by claims of
absolute right and of patriarchal monarchic power that the
world was now to be cajoled and hushed. We in this country
knew that the people were the legitimate source of all
power, and that by them, and for them alone, it legitimately
existed ; but there were absolutist orators on the Continent
and in the legislative assembly of Prussia who declared that,
though England made her kings, the Pram= nation had
born created by its monarchs. Hence convuloion which,
however It might be ore powered, could not cease till the
world was once more set smooth-revolving by institutkne
adapted to the progress of humanity. For a time—heaven
knew how long, he prayed it might be abort—Europe was
bound down by force ; with few exceptions it woo under the
rule of brute violence ; thetpower of the army was every-
where in the ascendant. There had been no such predomi-
nance of brute force since the barbarian tribes of the north
leads those fierce irruption which destroyed the old Roman
empire. And what mattered it whether the barbarian forte
were brought from remote forests and deserts, from wilds
where civilised man bad never penetrated, or whether it
was intoned, trained, and organised in the very heart of an
'alight/mei community, u WU the ease with the demorali-leg
mach Lacey that gave to armies their present power ? The result
nos** Name, whencesoever barbarism aridness might come.
That of the present day had this disgraceful distinction. Tee
old wild Ravages of the north, who overran the It nouns, held
woman in reverence; that was the marked characteristic of
her tribe. The modern barbarians, who boasted their °M-
osley and military honour—the Nineteen, the Haymow,
the RadetAys—bad no such delicacy; and woman, under
their sentence, having but =Mks:* sympathy for a cause
which naturally attracted it, bad to succumb or to perish
beneath brute blows. That Europe should endure such
wren, or ouch • state of things, for any time, was utterly I
inconceivable. For the most part, there was tow no such
thing as legitimate government; there were certain persons,
calling themselves kings, who ruled by a brute force which
they had the means of hiring: and that wee all. That was
not legitimate government, any more than tho sway of a
robber, who for a time held his victims in thrall. No
reverence was due to it; no respect should be ebserved in
speaking of it. Wherever such government existed,
rebellion might be an imprudent virtue —it Gould
not be a crime. And would this last ? Was
this the destiny of Europe ? Impossible, if pia.).
mplty, analysing the nature of man, its principals, constb
nest elements, and social tendencin, were true. Impos-
sible—if history bad faithfully recorded the past, and shown
how, amid many severe struggles and temporary *beam
tions, the law of progress hat still prevailed on the earth,
bees= it was the law of nature and of heaven. Impossible
—D there were • providence and • God. Earth, man,
society, was not made for this. Europe was ia the throes of
a new birth of civilisation and neither potentates nor
armies, though they might stay for a while, could ultimately
prevent that birth from seeing the light of day. In regard
inn these convulsions, Rome naturally attracted anent on,
from the fact that misgovernment thee, had long been so
notorious as to arrest the notice, and even call forth the
remonstraseee of despotic governments. It had long been
seen that the species of ecclesiastical rule there set up—a
monstrous identification of church and state, with no attri-
bute of political wisdom or of national independence—could
not but work suffering and discontent in the people soder
such a sway. So it bad been ; and of late tens there had
been some of those compromising and unsatisfactory changes
which neither attracted confidence to their authors nor gave
repass and safety to their objects. The result of which, alter
many collisions was the flight from Rome, of its nominal
Pontifical sovereign, the mused of life tools to act, and the
abandonment of the government to its own ranee's. The
bon. genies= then traced the formation of the Roman
republic, and rebutted the chugs that it was not really a
movement of the Roman people, by referring to the compo-
sition of the republican army, and the Constituent Assembly
He quoted the celebrated passage from Lord John Rumill's
letter to Kr. Huse, alleging that "there has existed, during
the past year, a sort of military veiny of revolutionists, who
have appeared sometimes in Paris, sometimes in Berlin,
tomstintes in Baden, and who were especially in great
otreilph sod numbers at Rome." Why, there was not a
single conspicuous Lase connected with the outbreaks at
Bettie and Bodes, and also with the changes at Rome.
Was it to be endured that such a paltry pretext should be
urged, se that then wen revolutionists by profeetion' and
therefore not entitled to that regard and hospitality which
we showed to the most deeply bloodstained with eoliths'
crimes, from whatever region they might seek our shores P
The gallant defenders of Rome had left its works ef art ea-
touched. Thar courageous assembly which sat till the roofed
the building where it mot was demolished by the Fres*
bombardment took are that the statues and other works
should hammered to the safest place of refuge. None a•
the gold and silver with which they were adorned was talus
from them,whatever the wants of the state, for state par-
poem. The farness rose of gold was untouched, and MI fee
the Pope to bestow as an ornament on the Queen of Melee.
These were men to be received, not as objects of shortly,
but of =peer, of reverence, of homage. Though fading
now, they bad decided the fat= of that great city, and elf
the lovely =any of whisk it was the mistress. The poor,
weak, vactilatiag bigot, who may be about to return, telling
his blood-stained beads, and with his erase of foreign
bayonets—wham. might be the condition of his restora-
tion, or whatever the mock reforms by which it might be
accompanied, would dream a via dream if he thought that
the phew authority of the Papacy would ever live 'pia.
It had ceased to to a living principle In European hearts,—
eye, even in Catholic hearts. He would be but the shadow
of • shade. And should other shadows flit attar him swap,
the scene, it would only be for the whole tribe of them at
length to dinppear. The future of Rome would adWate th
sell upon the past if Rome, and the Papacy would may be
en episode in the history of the eternal city. The bon. sew
tlsman then referred to the treatment of the refugees at
Malta, and read extracts from the details of the eseuvesee
a. published in the Doily New. Whatever had bees the
previous tooduct of these refugees, such treatessat was or
But what absurdity it semeed to talk of
to Malta—crowded as it was with soldiers, and
with gnus and bayonets—from a few weak, sick, tondo&
=7 exiles, with their women *ad children ! Danger to
Malta most Weed be ill-governed, if Siam could
Mho hem any sack source. He questioned whether any
et was ever in danger, but from an abase of
its ra:dons. Hen had no natural tendency to peril their
Yves I. a desperate straggle with the powers of the state ;
there were few so devoid of iatelligense as not tetanal=
the tremendous odds against them There was a tendency
in society to sustain its swaths( ; and governmeats Were
Mways enu power so long as they governed well. alp-
prelusive orbs Malta! It weis the logic of cayenne, to
the palliation of cruelty. In ociaeleske, he oiled es the
maims, not merely to give way to kindly and gonereee
feelings, but to show that they were stlioitose to bear a Meat
and decided =fixation against the saiemprosentatione that had
been heaped on these unfortanate persons, • dear sad de-
cided testimony of respect for their eissreetses, sympathy hor
their suffenage, and conviction of the truth, lutist, sod
nobleness of their cause. He appealed to them, by the keg
established character of his country, by that hospitality Mt
which it bad been accustomed to pride itself, and whisk had
been displayed so aanniti-ently to all mob sadelemes, end
the spirit of which should extend to our remotest devilries
cies, to give a welcome to the wanderer, whenever he led
to se for a sanctuary. He appealed to them by these nod-
twins which had cherished, in hiscountry, the growth og
liberty, which by their flexibility had enabled us to and
the Onnilskons to which other realms were exposed, whisk
had enabled us to make mingressive advances towards the
highest attainments in civil and religious liberty, and which
therefore should lead us to regard with 'meet sad to
cherish with tenderiser those who were labouring in the
same cause, though by different means, which the different
conditions of other countries might have impend upon their
patriots—he appealed to them by those honored and vene-
rated names witch wen dear to every truelniened reader of
English history, is mood Aid with the ottainment el our
liberties from the tyrants rt begone days 1,1 those
oases, he coi.jure t them ti be just and generous to those