The Sun.
London, England, 1862-01-16 00:00:00

the Roman,Catholic Bishop of Montreal placed his
own palace at the service of the Government for
barracks, and all the secular buildings belonging to
their body for the same purpose. It is worth not a
little for future peace with Federal Americans that
they should have received this lesson, Canada is
indeed easily invaded in a hundred places along its
vast frontier, but to penetrate beyond the edge of
the country while its spirit is what it is, would be
quite another task—a harder one than to get past
Manassas on the south of the Potomac.

We may hope that this misunderstanding will
have another effect, that it will induce England as
a military measure to complete the railway between
Halifax and the Grand Trunk Railway, to Riviere
du Loup. We have already adverted to the sub-
ject, and hope it will become a topic of next session.
The Colonial Governments are all willing to aid
in the construction. Commercially it would not pay,
at first; ultimately it certainly would. It must
therefore have Government aid. But as a part of
our defence of Canada it would amply recoup the
national Treasury for any aid it might furnish. It
would supersede the necessity of a large force in
Canada by rendering it accessible more speedily in
all weathers.

January has scarcely advanced beyond its first
fortnight, and already the signal of preparation has
been sounded again and again by General GARI-
BALDI. He who is constitutionally taciturn has
spoken out of late as plainly as man could speak,
and that not once but repeatedly. It is remarkable,
indeed, that the General appears most eagerly to
avail himself of every possible opportunity pre-
sented to him by circumstances—to announce the
proximity of the beginning of the end to his com•
patriots. As yet, there is no doubt of it, the work
of Italian regeneration is only very partially
achieved. Immense strides, it is true, have been
made towards the unification of the Roman penin-
sula. Wonders have undeniably been accomplished.
Such wonders as would—in the north—have glad-
dened the heart of poor CHARLES ALBERT, and
have assuaged the anguish of his death-bed in exile
at Lisbon. Such wonders as would—in the south
—have carried an exquisite sense of conso-
lation to the patriotic soul of PEPE could
be but have foreseen it, whether in prison or in
banishment. The situation of affairs in Central
Italy, it is truf, however, has gradually
become, if that be possible, more problemati-
cal than ever insomuch so, that GIOBERTI
himself might be bewildered as to his antici-
pations in its regard, could he be recalled to life.
The anomaly of the position is this—that while the
chosen King of the nation, the accepted chief of that
expanding sovereignty, has absorbed into his do--
minions ti whole kingdom at the southern extremity
of the peninsula, and numerous principalities in the
north, including among them the whole of Tuscany
and the whole of the magnificent province (the
Austrian province that was) of Lombardy—these
considerable portions of Italy, now reclaimed to the
Italians, are, in a manner, divided from each other,
kept inexorably apart by the continued interposi-
tion of foreign troops, and those troops, the
skilled and veteran soldiers of that most enigmatical
of allies to the Italian people, the Emperor NAPO-
LEON 111.

He it was, of course, who gave the signal
for the war of Emancipation. He it was, who not
only gave the signal for it, but himself conducted it
so tar towards a successful issue, that he wrested
Lombardy from the rule of the Emperor FRANCIS
JOSEPH, and handed it over, with a magnificent air
of magnanimity, t 3 King VICTOR EMMANUEL.
Marring the effect of his gift, however, by showing
to the world directly afterwards that he had
been doing all this—for a consideration ! For the
paltry consideration of absorbing within the limits
of his own empire, Nice and the Nizzards,
Savoy and the Savoyards. Numbering amongst
his liege subjects, however, not all the
Savoyards—of that we may rest perfectly
satisfied, and seeing that facile princeps among the
natives of Savoy is the heroic patriot GARIBALDI.
The position assumed very nearly thirteen long
years ago by the now Emperor of the FRENCH—
then occupying the incongruous post of ruler over
the Gallic people under the name, style, and title of
His Imperial Highness the Prince President of the
French Republic—the position assumed by aims
NAPOLEON thirteen long years ago in the centre of
Italy has ever since then held the hopes and fears
of that peninsula in a state of bewildering equili-
brium. ORSINI'S attempt at the assassination of the
French EMPEROR startled the latter apparently into
activity after a very prolonged silence and Gn inac-
tion that might, but for the hand grenades thrown
upon the pavement of the Rue Pelletier have been
uninterrupted even to this moment. Then came
the dawning of so many magnificent hopes
as to Italy becoming at length the property of
the Italians themselves, and of the Italians exclu•
elusively. These hopes attained their acme upon
the publication of the famous Proclamation written
by the Emperor-Commander-in-Chief in the crisis
of the campaigtt,• and given to the world imme-
diately after his triumphal entry into the capital
of Lombardy. According to that Milan Proclama-
tion, Italy was to be free, not partially, but com-
pletely—from the Alps to the Adriatic. And so
the ball rolled on from Magenta to Solferino—
until suddenly brought to at the foot of the granite
fortifications of the Quadrilateral. From the moment
when that brilliant campaign which had struck the
Austrian chains off Lombardy had been abruptly
terminated by the anti climax of the Treaty of
Villafranea, NAPOLEON resamed in regard to
Italy the whole anomaly of his previous position
in respect to her political aspirations. Never had
those wise, and more than once before this, strangely
prophetic verses of Lord BYRON been more singu
larly applicable than to the conscience, and the
patriotism, and the self-reliance, and the uncoNner

able determination of the Italian multitude :--

"Trust not for Freedom to the Franks,
They have a King [or Emperor) who buys and sells—
Ex. gr. Savoy and Nice I]
In native swords and native ranks,
The only hope of Freedom dwells I"
GARIBALDI' and his compatriots acted instinctively

upon this conviction. And, if it be now dreaded in

,heir regard by the more timorous among their

sympathisers, that they may have formidable odds
against them if again they resolve (as their chief

evidently enough intimates that they have resolved)

upon taking arms again for the completion of the
work as yet but half accomplished—it is only neces-

nary to bear in mind what has already been effected
there by them under similar circumstances! Who

shall say that the campaign of GARIBALDI in the
south was not fax more marvellous in its way than

the campaign of NAPOLEON in the north. True

that, in liberating Lombardy, the French
EMPEROR had to beat back before him, in

a succession of pitched battles, the whole

of the accumulated forces of the KAISER.
But then NAPOLEON had under him for the accom

plisbment of this, one of the most highly-disciplined
armies the world had ever seen martialled against
an antagonist. Whereas, in emancipating the
Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, GARIBALDI had (to
begin with) hardly 2,000 volunteers in all under
his banners—he himself completing his conquest by
entering Naples outwardly as an ordinary raiiway
passenger, attclUbd only by ono or two companions.