The Sun.
London, England, 1862-08-22 00:00:00

THE SUN.

LONDON, FRIDAY, AUGUST 22, 1862.

The appointment of a Prefect of Catania by
GARIBALDI is far more of a revolutionary act than
the raising of his standard, than the summoning
together of a band of armed followers, than the re-
jection of the Royal Proclamation. NICOTERA is
this new GARIBALDIAN Prefect of Catania. And
as such, as an official publicly appointed by the
General, not by the KING or by the KING'S Govern-
ment—NlCOTEßA'S name is nothing less than the
oriflamme of Civil War. There is a conscious-
ness that it is so upon both sides. The scabbard is
flung away—on the one hand by the Hero, and on
the other by the Commissioner Extraordinary now
pitted against him. It is General CUGIA, of course,
who is this Extraordinary Commissioner. His
appointment, as such, is announced in the Turin
Gazette of yesterday. And, together with this
announcement, there appears in the Gazette a for-
mal proclamation that Sicily isin a state of siege.
Simultaneously the Italian Chambers are pro-
rogued. A matter obviously of conve-
nience, almost of necessity under the circum-
stances. And while these preparations for
a deplorable crisis are being made in the Northern
capital of the new Italian kingdom—incidents no
less significant of a rapidly on-coming "tug of war"
are related as occurring on the side of—shall we
say the insurgents ? GARIBALDI enters Catania.
And it is singular to remark how he enters it.
The Royal troops fall back as he advances. The
Hero passes into Catania without any difficulty-•
without encountering the smallest obstructon.
He is received by the inhabitants with enthuAasm-
His welcome there is nothing short of an ov.tion—
and an ovation perfectly spontaneous ari impro-
vised. Barricades are thrown up in tka streets ra-
pidly—from a consciousness that tb) Royal Troops
are hard by : with a legend inseibed upon their
banners reading very much like Miching 212alecho,
freely translated by HAMLET meaning mischief."
The royal fleet, too, is knova to tie there, in those
southern waters, in the immediate vicinity ; ready
to co-operate with the royal army wherever and
whenever that co
-opeiation may be required. Ac-
counts varied, howeer, as to whether the fleet was,
at the time of on' last advices, off Trapani, or off
Catania. There was no uncertainty at all, how-
ever, in Sicily as to the State of Siege having been
formally procbimed there. It was announced in
Turin, as we have seen through the columns of the
official GazAlte. It has been announced in Sicily, by
General GUGIA'S issue of a brief, but at the same time
a wholly: unmistakeable proclamation. " Sicilians !"
says tais document, " Notwithstanding the words
of tlie KING, the vote of the Parliament, and the
forbearance of the Government, in giving time to
tin deluded people to return to their duty, the
armed bands of GARIBALDI continue to occupy an
important town." Bent at once upon that plain
speaking which calls a spade a spade, the General
continues—" The rebellion is thus open, and the
Government has resolved to put an end to this
state of things so compromising for the destinies of
Italy. Every armed band or tumultuous meeting,"
he therefore adds, " will be disolved by force." And,
as if these words were not sufficiently indicative of
the fixed determination of the Government to deal
vigorously with the formidable difficulty before
them, Gen. CUGIA closes his proclamation by saying
—" The liberty of the Press is suspended. The
commanders of the troops of the divisions of
Palermo, Messina, and Syracuse, will assume both
civil and military powers." Meanwhile it must
not be imagined, for an instant, that if the Go-
vernment are showing themselves to be thus
resolute in dealing with the Garibaldian movement,
GARIBALDI himself is evidencing anything like
a tendency even towards inertness. The game of
war upon which he has now, as we all of us think,
so rashly adventured, is seemingly kept up there
in Sicily almost without the necessity of any effort
on his own part. He has only to appear anywhere
in person to be received with acclamations. If,
according to the loyal dictum of &TAMPERE,
"there's such divinity doth hedge a King that trea-
son scarce dares peep at him"—the same may be said
of the soi disant traitor when, as in GARIBALDI'S
instance, he himself happens also, in spite of his
treasonous designs, to be also a King of
Men born without the purple ! Talk as the
Italian Ministers at Turin may affect to do about
the devotion of all the army, officers and privates,
cavalry and infantry, artillery and engineers, for the
cause of the Crown, as opposed to that of GARI-
BALDI (meaning, this last, the cause of the People)
—it would be idle, it would be the sheerest folly, to
blink the feet that in the ranks of the army, no
less, certainly, than among the masses of the popu-
lation there are crowds of Italians who would
shrink with horror from raising a sword, from
pointing the muzzle of a rifle against General GARI-
BALDI That, to them, would be no less flagrantly
and heinously Treason—" leze majeste "—than lift-
ing a hostile hand against the KING himself !
Mad, GARIBALDI'S present enterprise may be.
Deplorably ill advised it unquestionably is. Yet—
Woe will •
It be to those by whose hand GARIBALDI
may P"sit'li fall during the contest ! Even while
reprobating his present extravagant enterprise as
one in every „nt
ewable point of view to be re-
gretted, Europe would vi •
ew the destruction of
GARIBALDI by those now
bent upon suppress-
ing that enterprise—wit, feelings only
to be ex-
pressed by words of execration- Should the fatal
blow fall upon him
new hope,fromthe aide of the KING'S
ne w
courage—
army it would give
possibly a new opportunity—to the Republican be-
lievers in MAzziNi Should it fall upon the Hero
from the side of the French, it would
take all
the resources of the Imperial power to crush out
the passionate rising that would inevitably be wit-
nessed, there, from one end of Italy to the other ! In
the latter contingency the war would,
almost of a
necessity, widen : it would expand from an
Italian
War into an European War. It is from our convic-
tion of the truth of all this, that we cannot but be
impressed with a sense of the momentous import of
the actual state of affairs in Sicily. GARIBALDI,
we may be absolutely certain, will not swerve from
the direct path upon which he has entered. His de-
termination he has already announced in his alter-