The Express.
London, England, 1851-04-12 00:00:00

Tim IVEVOLLTION PRECIPTTATTII.

. ....
The contest that WILY to decide on the destinies of Italy
was, at the carry dawn of 1518, brought on the fields of
Lombardy, where alone it could come to a final issue. All
that had previously occurred in other parts of the Penin-
sula, the more or less rational
,reforrns at Rome, Florence,
or Turin,—the more or less plausible constitutions, hastily
framed for Naples, Piedmont, and Tuscany, and even for
the states of the church ; above all, the more significant
'revolutionary outbreaks in Sicily, although of so much
moment upou Italian matters in general, and of the greatest
consequ on the Lombard movement itelf, may, how-
ever, Ire cor sidereal as merely preparatory, merely episodical.
It mattered little where an Italian revolution began,
Austria and Italy were equally well aware where it must
end. Foiled in their treacherous plots at 'tome, compelled
to draw back with bet little honour from Ferrara, unable
to stem the current that was setting in from abroad, the
Austrians began to grow desperate at home. All their pro-
verbial system of slow wisdom and cautiousness, of silence
and forbrantnee, was suddenly overthrown. The Austrians
lost their temper—the very quality by which they had
hitherto prevailed over the more hasty and mercurial
• • • •

The theorie: and examples of Tuscan end Roman pail-jots
were hardly settled . keep the Lombards to a line of legal
passive resistance. The salutary dread of Austrian bayonets
was there to preclude the possibility of any other course.
The most ardent among the Milanese liberals were con-
vinced that "a popular insurrection was not to he thought
et that Lombardy woo only a small fraction of an empire
larger than France ; that to rise was to expose the country
Ito a terrific reae,ion—to deliver up the Lombard cities to
plunder, defeuceless families to military. outrage—to com-
promise the best chances of future emancipation ' • that their
taciies should consist in holding the enemy on the hard and
thorny ground of legality.
From 1610 to 1648 Italy had fought with no other wea-
pons than shouts of "Viva Pie Nono!" the Lombards
caught up the strain; they had'a "Pole's Hymn," which
did du.y instead of a Jblesciteiise. With this the greeted
their new pastory the Archbishop Romilli, on his solemn
entrance into his diocese, on the sth day of Septembo., 18.17.
The appointment of an italiaii after the decease of a Ger-
man prelate (Gaisruck) was hailed as a return to national
principles. Austria was here forced to depart from that
system of denationalisation which had included. the very
clergy. Romilli was an Italian, and came in the name of
the Italian pontiff. The rejoicings, renewed on the Bth,
and assuming a character of political demonstration that
could not be overlooks d, led to the first bloody collision :
the riots o: the Bth September called forth remonstrances
on the part of peaceful and respectable citizens. These
were, for the most part, acts of a strictly legal and constitu-
tional nature. The government of the Lombardo-Venetian
kingdom was /not meant to be based on unmitigated des-
potism. Like most provinces of the Austrian empire Lom-
bardy had a " constitution : " it was the grant of the em-
peror Francis the First, and grounded upon old local
institutions. It had, however e,n suffers dto fall into
almost total disuctude ; partly swing to the actual abuses
and flagrant encroachments of the omnipotent police, but
partly, also, owing to the indifference or stubbornness of
the people; always determined "to spurn Austria and her
gilts, always reluctant to incur the charge of complicity
with her government, even in the exercise of the most
sacred duties. But a recourse to those forms of national
franchises, such as they were,_ well suited the peculiar mood
of the patriots of the day, bent as they were on trying the
effect of lawful demonstrations, on " forcing Austria on her
last entrenchments, and testing the truth of her benevolent
intentions."
There were central congregations in Milan and Venice,
besides provincial congregations' one tot each of the
seven-
teen provinces,—representative bodies, based on no very
free system of election, concentrating in themselves all the
municipal powers of the state. To these the Lombards
turned for redress ; they aimed at raising them from their
wonted state of impotence and subserviency. They stormed
them with addresses, petitions, demands fur committees ap-
pointed to inquire into the present condition of the country.
Men utterly obscure, or only known from their modest and
pacific dispositions, gave the first move ; in some instances,
even men long devoted to the imperial government, and
thereby exposed to popular animadversion. The whole
country was astir with municipal meetings, commissions,
&c. ; whose ostensible aim was merely to put into vi our
the constitution of 1816, and see how far Austria could be
amenable to her own laws and compacts.
In Venice, however, Daniel° Manin, an advocate, and
Nicole) Tommasco, a literary man of long established repu-
tation, thought they could find in the letter of those sta-
tutes of 1816 the basis of a freedom of the press. The first-
named gentleman presented a petition to that effect on the
21st December, 1847; the latter read a speech to the same
purpose before the Athenaeum on the 29th of the same
month, which the government were fain to consider as a
seditous cry. This filled the measure of Austria's wrath
who, determined to rid herself of further remonstrance by
a stroke of her own clumsy policy, ordered the arrest of the
two Venetian paniota on the 18th January, 1818.
The le did not for all that swerve from their peaceful
inn . They followed up their advantage by do•
s in the theatres, in the churches, in the public
slimes; by funeral services in honour of defunct patriots,
by ovations to the Pope, by festivals and anniversaries with-
out sod Lby all that could-have a meaning, that could con-
,ln eausion, however vague and remote, to the hope
soma to their heart*. .The stir of men's minds was ha-
-1 werweleable. In proportion as the Italians made advances
fi is lobo& of residence, the Austrians lost sight of the
meapwail of timely concession.
Perim tut time since the lost three and thirty years the
Inailuda bad at last found a tongue ; for the first time they
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