The Express.
London, England, 1859-04-14 00:00:00

LONDON. ?NUMBLY. .41111 IL 14.

We know not what palliatives are in process of
concoction among the State Doctors who have sum-
moned themselves to the bedside of that uneasy and
distracted patient, Italy, so long the despair el all
the Faculty, and now hovering between convulsion
and collapse. Poor Italy! the victim of her 'oven,
the slave of her admirers, the dupe of her protectors:
the Magdalen of nations, condemned to pity and to
pardon quia muitum afflara, yet abut out by con-
eentionsl decencies from the world's recognition,
denied the hope of emancipation from the bondage
of despair, forbidden a return to honour and to vir-
tue by the jealous purity of ander compesies. Tbme
she lies, this interesting penitent, on her emit at
fiver and consumption, surrounded by selfish adorers,
and by rebuking Pharisees ; if she have one true heart
to lean upon to rescue her from shame and violence,

she is sternly reminded by the rest that shame and
violence are her appointed lot, and it is only when the
hand of death approaches to wipe out the stains of
earthly passion and to make misfortune holy, that
she recovers her lost rights of womanhood, and ap-
peals triumphantly from the cruelty of man to Emil
mercy of her %Air. Italy, with her fatal gift of
beauty and her feminine sense of shame, has suffered
all the cruelty and falseness of the world's angry
lust and contemptuous ingratitude ; and it is for the
eojoycre of her favours and the betrayers of her
honour, the desrikre of her peace and the depre-
dators of her home and happiness, that the world's
consideration and credit are reserved. But Italy
will not die ; her delirium is • scandal to the
neighbourhood, and her struggles for life are a
sad vexation to respectable and well-to-do peo-
ple who, having never been tempted, have never
fallen, and who when their own hour comes will be
let down easy to the grave by the pious pursestringe
of a wealthy conscience. This prolonged agony
of an unfortunate who asks to live a new life of vir-
tue and honour, in a most irregular sod contagious
example. " Better kill than cure her," says pro-
priety ; " Try gentle palliatives," says Pharisaic
charity ; " Cure her, and let her go forth redeemed,"
say those incurable dreamers end sentimeutalists
who would fain be Christian even in diplomacy.
The Christian diplomacy,bowever, that after render-
ing to C.LIAC what is CAVIAR'S would spare a little
for mere mankind, is not the diplomacy of absolute
Sovereigns whose empire, like the Austrian, happens
to be based on a system of organised repulsions and
nicely balanced national hatreds. To divide and
command, not to cherish and conciliate, is the plan of
monarchies whose rule is a calculation of mutually
repelling forces, and of well-adjusted enmities of
race. Such an empire as the Austrian would have
been impossible before the confusion of tocgues, and
Ind the Tower of Babel
Homo of HAPSBURG could have found • fitting occu-
pation in the universe, before the Deluge or after.
It would be impossible, even for the craft of infernal
powers, to devise • system more opposed to human
interests than the system that ranges from the Save
to the Po, from the Carpathians to the Apen-
nines. If we can imagine any individual of our
acquaintance whose way of getting on in the world
should consist in setting sll his friends and neigh-
boars by the ears, and thriving on their quarrels, we
shall be able to form a faint conception of the value '
of Austria% a member of the great European
family. If any two of the nations held in darkness
and subjection by the chanoenes of Vienna could'
for • single moment sae each other's inte-
rest in their own, the control domination
would not be worth • month's purchase.
It is not to be wondered at that the countersign of
Austrian diplomacy should be "as you teens."
The polite and polyglott gentlemen who represent
the System with infinite bootkoesie and per-

suasive ease at the Courts of ertitntle••l Power•
know well enough that to lama one stew of that
ponderous and frowning arch is to endanger the
safety of the entire structure ; and there are even in
the councils of constitutional Powers influences la
secret and silent operation which are equally per
sanded that to pink to pieces that strange ewe
glomeration of every disorder of political arthiteetere
which is It flown as " Austria," is to run the rink of
burying the monarchical principle itself under thin
ruins. Ts this deeply rooted and obstinate dymlis
faith not ens of the juvenile statesmen who are kid
enough to manage our foreign affairs does not impiL
tidy and explicitly assent, and until the pretest
generation is removed in the courts of nature to
another and a better world, or until the prevent world
takes its affairs resolutely into its own hands, westing
expect to hear the Austrian Empire extolled in seism•
phrase and with pompous adjuration, as essential to
the Balance of l'uwer. There is a German
party In this country we know well enough; ear
should we complain of its existence and activity, if
by German, all that is living and moving midi
thinking and stirring in the best hearts and brains
of Germany were meant, and not a dark and deaden.
iog system which is only nominally German,
but diabolically cosmopolite. If the German party
were content to be Prussian in sympathy, sad
to bold with Baron Buttexx that Austria is •
dead carcue tied to living Germany, we for oar
part should have much to say in favour of a great
Protestant and Liberal alliance ; but when we find

the German party sunk in what we moat call this
fatal A ostrian superstition, we deem it to be the duty
of liberal Englishmen to repudiate fie teadlifidee and
to denounce its roanceuvres. If the adbmiate of the
German, or rather the Austrian party will be geed
enough to tell us what Austria has ever
done for the good of Europe, se even for
the balance of power, we *hall listen to
the lesson with great respect. Was it Amnia
that saved Christendom from the Turk f Is it
Amnia that now protects the Turk from the &lave?
Or nu it oppressed Hungary that saved Vienna
from the Moslem, and Russia that preserved Hun-
gary to the House of HAPSBURG ?

Is it not on record that in oar own day Anatria,.o
far from acting as a bulwark against Russ* was
obliged to call in Ramis. to her aid ; and, so far
from preserving the Ottoman Empire from Hari=
ambition, dared neither to move hand nor foot in its
defence, when even Piedmont stood side by side with
the armies of Western Europe. Austria, it is trite,
his made a prodigious display of disinterested
salsify on behalf of the " integrity of the Ottoman
• Empire" (the phrase and the principle are so dear
to her!) since the restoration of peace. Abe has
gives a world of trouble in the Conferences at
Paris, she has intrigued without remission in the
Principalities, created interminable difficulties on
the

Danube, almost set Europe in dames at tsemlin•
Bat in spite of all this trouble and intrigue, all these
difficulties and exasperations, she has always given
way at last, from sheer inability to hold her ground:
the or,ly advantage that Turkey has derived from
her support is encouragement in all the vices of mal.

administration and corruption; the only benefits
that England has obtained from her conoorrenoe are
estrangeffleot from France, and impotence in Italy.

The infatuated persistence of oar statesmen in this
Austrian superstition condemns their efforts in behalf
of peace to a policy of feeble palliatives, which can
►t best result in a paralysing armistice, to be
followed by a conflagration in which the Italian
question will be bet en episode.