The Express.
London, England, 1856-07-07 00:00:00

IT AN ITALLIJI WHO IS NOT ♦ NATIVE OP PIEDMONT.

LETTER 11.

is, I believe, • strange phenomenon, and
fraught with great meaning for the future destinies
of Italy, that Piedmont should have achieved liberty
without a revolution. It is, as far as lon low remem-
ber, the only state in the Old World, or in the New,
that has shaken off absolutism without passing
through the phases of popular commotion—the only
country that has never been the theatre of important
insurrections—the only region in which revolt or even
mutiny seems to be an utter impossibility. The
Hones of Savoy has been in possession of part at least
of her Italian possessions for the last eight centuries.
Musa and its valley, as well as Aosta, were never lost
to its princes except during very short intervals of
general European convulsions. On the bastions of
Turin the cram of Savoy has waved with only very
short interruption ever sines 1280. Pinerole, Toren,
Chiesi, Cram, Noe, Mondovi, Toseano, &c., have all
come under the sway of the same rulers by sponta-
neous dedition during the 13th and 14th centuries.
A few unmeaning salt riots in Moodovi, and the
tragical events in the districts of the Waldenses, have
been the only bateau, of serious disagreement be-
tween the princes of Savoy and any of the various
communities subjected to their sceptre; and even
these self-averting populations have at all times
given proofs of the most unswerving, most heroic
devotion to the very sovereigns who ruthlessly
scourged them. Victor Amedeus IL, towards the
end of the 17th century and the beginning
of the following, had to hunt down the man.
taineers of Mondovi with fire and sword; he
burnt and devastated their villages; he hung up the
rebels by hundreds on the ruins of their desolate
dwellings ; he conveyed 4,000 of their families into
captivity in distant lands. The resentment of that
brave but fierce race against their destroyers was so
greet, that in 1797, the country having fallen into
the hands of the French, the people of Mondovi asked
and obtained leave of the city of Vercelli to uubury
the remains of Des Mayen' a foreign soldier of for-
tune, who had been the chief instrument of the
direful executions that had laid waste their lands
under Victor Amadeus; they dug up those remains
more than ninety years after they had been consigned
to the earth, and they scattered them to the winds. Yet,
strange to say, Victor Amedsua himself, the primary
author of all their misery. came up to them, in 1706,
when all his State was overrun by the Peen:kited his
capital besieged by 60,000 men—he came up to the
Mondovese nearly alone, and not only did he meet
with a friendly and cordial reception among his Gl-
ued subjects, but they all took arms with and for
him; they followed his sinking fortunes, and were
with him in all the encounters which compelled the
French to raise the siege of Turin, and ended in the
total destruction of their formidle host.
There is something almost miraculous in this fide-
lity of a brave people to their harsh, however well-
meaning, royal master. Can it be that loyalty is the
only safe basis of liberty p I have already said, in
1796 Piedmont was the only state in Italy that fell
by the band of the French and not by its own band.'
In 1821, Santa Roes, Moffa di Lillis, and the other
Carbonari patriots, conspired, but only in the name of
their Ring, and hoped not only to have their King on
their side, but to help him to the conquest of Lombardy
and the deliverance of all the net of Italy. In
1831, again, the Piedmonts". consented that
the Italian banner should be raised, but in the
name of Charles Albert. In 1833 Menial only suc-
ceeded in corrupting a few noncommissioned *Sorel
and privates of the :Sardinian army, but for the rest,
found the whole of the Piedmont's. nation strongly
averse to his schemes. Notwithstanding great
unnecessary harshness on the part of the Riog's
government, and the blind favour evinced by that
weakminded Charles Albert towards those public
esemies, the haute, the faithfulness of the Piedmon-
tsse continued unshaken, and when at last in 1846,
that King showed some inclination to bask with
Austria. and to take op the championship of Italy,
his Piedmonts." clung to him in victory and in defeat,
and were at last rewarded by the honesty and consis-
tency of his son, and achieved that freedom which
makes them now an object of the envy of the world.
Can anything be more painful than the contrast of
this Happy Family of Piedmont with the condition
of any other Italian community ? Look at Milan
and Lombardy raving for their republican freedom—
i. sheer anarchy—in the middle ages, only to fall
into the hands of the most hideous &spots—monsters
in human frame—those &thus, Visconti, aid Storms,
who all died off like so many generations of mad dogs
and vipers, agreeably to the names and &viol!s they
rejoiced in,only to leave the miserable country they
had brutalised by tyranny an easy prey to foreigners
for an incalculable course of futon ages. Look at
Florence and Tuscany, trying every experiment of
fickle democracy only to bow in the end to the craft
of the Medici, and to be handed over to Austrian
princes, who have not preserved even the semblance
of independent existence. Look at Naples and
Sicily, conquered and organised into a compact state
by a handtul of Norman adventurers ever since the
12th century, and peeling from the Normans to
the Suabiaos, from these to the Anjone, from the
An ors to the Aragoness, and hence to the Spaniards
and Austrians, without ever b.tioniog attached to
any of their ruler., without ever standing up either
for their sovereigns or for themselves, a kingdom
ever conquered wi,host a battle, ever overthrown
without a blow. Look at Parma, passing from the
Roman Farness to the Spanish Bourbons. Look
at Modena, inherited from the Este by Austrian
archdukes. Finally look at the Roman Btates,subaued
piecemeal by priestly craft, ever fretting against
papal rule, ever compelled to bow to it, yet ever ready
to protest and to rise against it.
Can it be that the destinies of Italy may ever have
anything in comma with the destinies of Piedmont ?
Can loyalty, which is the safeguard both of the house
and of the state of Savoy, ever spring up in other
Italian bosoms? Alas! the experiment was made in
1846, and, had Heaven averted the great evils of the
French revolution of February, 1848, it might have
bees crowned with encases. The great movement of
1846, which was truly direct and spontaneous in
Italy, proclaimed pesos and goodwill to all the rulers
of Italy, and up to February, 1848, the reconciliation
seemed a d was sincere every where. That move-
meat sprang altogether from Pradmantees influence.
The apostles of the new Italian political creed,
Oioberti, Rath*, and d'Azeglio, WON all Piedmontese,
and from the moment Pius IL listened to them, it
seemed as if Italy had found at last s plausible solu-
tion to the great question of life and death which has
so lung been pouting all European statesmen. But
the reconciliation between princes and subjects any
where but in Piedmont was hollow and transient.
I will not inquire which of the parties broke faith :
I honestly believe the Pope and King Ferdinand
were driven too hard. Had the patriots shown
greater moderation the primes would not have dared
to meditate or could not have hoped to achieve a
counter-revolution. But whoever might be in fault,
the retrograde movement took place, and now the
enmity between princes and subjects is at its height,
end the Italian question would seem to present only
one means of solution—and that is revolution.

And yet can any man in bin smote have faith ie
revolutions? Can revolution in Italy have any but
the most destructive tendencies P and has Italy evr
exhibited any talent for construction? And can
revolution be tried in Italy without calling down the
animadversion of all peacts.loving Europe P The
only Italian state that bee achieved Warty, that
has reconciled freedom with order, is Piedmont, and
there revolution has always been, is now, sad ever
will be an impossibility. No, no; even after all that
bas taken place, even with half Modena and all
Perms in a state of siege; even with a miniature
reign of terror in Tuscany; with the prisons over.
flowing with the best of men in Naples; with a Pope
sitting enthroned on French bayonets—that bed of
roses; even with governments seeking cot the worst
scoundrels in the state to trust them with the power
to torture and degrade their fellew.beings ; even with
all the oryisg evils which are turning four-fifths of
Italy into a dos of wild besets, I dare to aimed and
racial= that the safety and the liberty of Italy are to
be soeght not in revolution but in recoosiliation. We
mast go back to the idea, of 1048. Piedmont never
went beyond those ideas—end is happy.
What! reconciliation with Louisa of Bourbon and
Ferdinand of Naples! It Is a cruel theory to bold
out to the Italians apparently, bat we mast bow tb
the omnipotence of fate, or, if you like it better, to

the inevitable will of Providence. Revolution isi
an impossibility. Who, in 1836, would have reached
oat a friendly hand to Charles Albert, stained OA he
was with the blood of several 'cores of innocent vio-
-1 time, with overcrowded prisons also, and priests
and Jesuits riding rough-shod over him and over his
people? Yet the reconciliation proved to be practi-
cable, as it was desirable. Men pass away and prin-
ciples remain. There is something in the world
stronger than all the wickedness of King Bombs,
and than all the infatuation of Pio Nono—and
that is public opinion. Let only the Italians be
reasonable, and even their bad prisms, or their suc-
cessors, will be made to hear reason, u Charles Albert
I heard it.

Only in this work of reconciliation between the
Itali►ns and their princes foreign powers, and espe-
cially England, an give a helping hand, and I shall
endeavour to show in what way their aid can be made
most efficient.

MANIN ON THE AFFAIRS OF SICILY.