The Express.
London, England, 1849-02-26 00:00:00

Wit Orpregio.

MAILL
The mesh: Vlee. Oporto. Lib" MO" Ws. sad Masan
wal be made op teraierrotr 11101Waiii.
The was ter Sew Swab Welse. Tea Moss% lead. sad Few
Taelaid all he mode ap as the switisi a/ the altle Feb.
The Wag ladle Mae, bestedise Beeeds. Mesas% Nur;
Wm Odra% awl Nadia. sad maenad those Ilsr
Ll"ides.it keorde-Iftwesava. The Orsireds. ad 4 sad Tees. will
M rats as swig se ths aed al Mond
no fle~ta r the Vat Mot el hates sad Medan will le med.
as ea et the Sed ItereL
The sea ae biriekti the armee. sed AMU Ara% se le
side ep ea the awake this eh Mud
The oak eke MilMlllllll, al OW Identssesmes. kept. Ades.
°Wm. >•M^_ ha. via be seeds op as the eveniae
of the IA Mai
The mils tar artlfe
eh Mirthbee AsesehniZres Oiled OW"
will be medal. ea the et the Ith
Ile mile tie elleeilee. Mb. GM% Oa Win lOW% Pints
Aka, Myles. ladle. Illapiraell sal Mee. ela Sealhaeglea.
M seeds sem the arealea el the Sea Mari

TO COERIOPONDBNTB.
Advoilloollpb Wooled Ox " The inpren,- Under erasing wia=
tire so IM 011111;10, /fronorlo lava, try odock on UNA,' al

ZION VAT= AT LONDON 111411101
Tau Dtt U W. paa 4; Atterten.4l ads. pat 4.
To-Nrasw SI Pa. pat 4; Aftervia,lo W pia A

LONDON, MONDAY, FEB. 26

COULD we exercise fres jedgment, and indulge in
unconditional recommendations for that most interest-
ing of all questions, tte settlement of the affairs of
Italy, we should say, let each state and each monarch
settle its own Wain, nninterfered with, unmo-
lested. Much u there is to condemn in the conduct
of Romans and of Tuscans, we feel confident that
both the Pope and the Grand Dale, had they been
assured that foreign aid would never be exerted for
them, might very well have compounded matters with
their turbulent subjects, and weathered the revolu-
tionary storm. Pius IX. had, indeed, but to accept
Maitiam frankly se his minister, and the latter
would have brought him through.
It is, however, impossible to expect that either
Austria or France will allow the establishment of

Roman or of Tuscan republic, especially when the
sovereigns of those states are ready, by demanding in-
tervenuon, to give a colour and pretext for it. It is from
foreseeing the inevitable intervention of these foreign
and interested power'', that we recommended the doing
away with the necessity by the previous interference
of Italian powers. There is, at the present moment,
a remarkable pause in the action of great continental
powers. Austria is embarrassed and occupied by the
Hungarian war; its armies having been engaged for
now two months, on or beyond the Theis', without any
satisfactory result. It is even thought that they
cannot finish the war without the assistanoe of the
Russians, an event, the very rumour of which has
created a kind of moral revolt in all Germans
agairstAnstria, and will probably, and in consequence,
fling the imperial crown to Prussia. Its open rivalry
with Prussia for this cause, and for the re-organisa-
tion of Germany, is another curious fact, which
makes Austria pause, and incur no fresh risks of
difficulty or hostility. The active aims and energies of
French policy are in the meantime absorbed in the
fortunes of Louls NAPOLEON. He and his govern-
ment are engaged in the ?reparing for the election of
a new assembly, and till it has seen what majo-
rity it will have therein, and what the spirit
of that majority may be, there is no use
in its even framing a policy. France and Austria
are therefore for adjlurning the affairs of Italy
and thus the Italians have an interval during
which, if they are wise, they will arrange their own
affairs, either singly, or together and ere /caulk.
If the four chief Italian potentates could come to an
agreement—make such conoeesions, or follow such a
line of policy u would content their subjects, even
making use of force and salutary coercion to pat down
the ex savagance of the mere rabble, each as has been
displayed in Genoa and Florence—they might save
Italy from becoming, as it is likely to be, the stalking-
horse or the battle-Held for the selfish ambition of

other
Unfortunately
ower.
the monarch who might take the
lead in each a policy is mostunfitted for it by charac-
ter and precedents. If the fete of Italy seemed to be
in the hands of CHARLES ALBERT during the better
part of 1848, the King of NAPLES might play as emi-
nent a part in 1849. But unfortunately the King of
NAPLES combines theworst qualities and tendencies of
the Austrian and the Bourbon families. He has been
tyrannical, vindictive, sanguinary; and not all his
promises could make liberals trait even the constitu-
tionalism of FERDINAND._ _ .

Then his quarrel with Sicily absorbs all other aims
and ideas in his mind. He thinks lees of Italian in-
dependence or of governing Naples in a fit and liberal
spirit, than of turning the people and resource of
Naples to the redaction and slaughter of the Sicilians.
And until this quarrel between Naples and Sicily is
in some way appeased, the south of Italy is lost, and
worse than lost, to the great cause of Italian in-

dependence.
Unfortunately we see no hopes of the quarrel
between Naples and Sicily being made up. It has
in fact all the bitterness of personal hate, aggravated
by international aversion. FERDINAND OP BOURBON
himself, though by birth a Sicilian, has been the
great persecutor, and oppressor, and decimator, of the
Sicilians. It is not the Neapolitan government, bat the
king, of his own will and caprice, who mal-
treated them so many years, and robbed
them of their liberties, so that it is not so
much for this right, or for that claim, that the
Sicilians hold ont,but from the conviction that, placing
themselves Once more in the power of FERDINAND
or NAPLES, is neither more nor less than the whole
island and its nobkase baring their necks for the exe-
cutioner.
Our tory press could not have undertaken a
more unworthy and unneoessFy task than that of
upholding the claim,and whitening the character of the
modern Mantua There is no people more worthy
of English sympathy than the Sicilians. Sicily, hire Eng-
land, preserves that free constitution that its early
barons and citizens and churchmen founded. This old
constitution was merely reformed inlBl2 under British
auspices, and its continuance was guaranteed under
British auspices in 1815. The two FERDINAND( or
Kinn were the first sovereigns to suspend and
destroy the Sicilian constitution, and to engage in a
wholesale persecution against those Sicilians who re-
mained attached to parliamentary liberties. The
destruction of those patriots, who were by no means re-
bellious, but bore in quiet the yoke of op 'on, was
' undertaken by FIRDINAND and his infamous police
I minister, and the Slalom were subjected to indig-
nities and atrocities Inch as flesh and blood could not
bear.
It mast be borne in mind that the Sicilian revolu-
tion and the entire agitation of southern Italy were
no effects of the French revolution of February—no
spurious insarrection, created by the mare itch for
imitation. The Sicilians, in 1847, declared publicly
that the tyranny of FERDINAND was beyond bearing,
and they war him by public placard that if he did
not make some concessions to their just griefs
they could not but insurge. FERDINAND replied by
the whip and the fetter—and the insurrection of
Palermo expelled the Neapolitan general and his
luoops. For FERDINAND to recover his lost and abso-
tepremacy, he must conquer it, and must wade to
the neck in the blaod of the Sicilians to accomplish it.
He cannot raise, like Austria, 80,000 men, get money
from Russia to supply them, and march,
like Itznarria, at the head of an overwhelm-
ing force. The Sicilians have resources, steamers,
an army of 20,000 men headed by an experienced
and talented French general ; they are in their own
country, surrounded by their own resources, supported
by the infuriate hatred of the entire rural as well as
civic population to the Neapolitans and the Bing.
The war will be one to tke knife.

We have seen at Mead= what such a war produces.
We have the testimony of British officers and of the
French count u to the atrocities of that war at
Messina, which the exculpatory speech of the chief
hatcher himself cannot be talvn to refute. General
FILAIMIRRI, who was a bankrupt trader three years
ago, and screened from his creditors by the despotic
interference of the king, of course supports the des-
potic power of such a sovereign, and would gladly
imposeta upon S
its men oricily..t. But who,wr.ocrdsiorod-twlth
iota of credit to the iword of so notorious a meal
FlLsitOriiii himself does not say a word In reply
to Lord reLYIEUTON's chief accusation, the bombard.
meat and battery of Messina for eight hours after it
had capitulated ; nee to the other terrible charge of
having shut up discloses of the hospital, and set Am to
it with the wounded within. Fu.ANCILEgi denies that
his soldiers could have committed the atrocities attri-
bated to them, because they wee* provideog frtrz
Bid the general took good care to