The Sun.
London, England, 1862-12-11 00:00:00

of the three powers, or of any number of powers
to say, our Royal families shall not furnish a King
Of GREECE. But unless the country asks of them
in consequence, to point her out a suitable
person,we do not like the obtrusiveness which does
so. Should the Greeks be disposed to indulge tem-

per rather than maintain their prudence, it might
well drive them to decide on having a republic.
We do not think it would succeed with so acute,

political, and naturally factious a people; but still

the disappointment, and the inter meddling together,

may create a great deal of division of opinion, and

give rise to many parties in Greece.
We do not doubt that FERDINAND of Portugal
would make a very good king, and, if the three

Powers have quite made up their minds on that
point, we should, for the interests of the Greeks, be

pleased to hear that their unanimous approbation

could be gained for the elect of Russia, France,
and England. The ex•king is in the prime of life,
forty-six ; he has had four years of personal ex-
perience during the minority of his son, and has
been no doubt his chief adviser ever since; his
reputation for bringing up his family is hardly
second to that of Prince ALBERT; he is a sincere
constitutionalist, and we are not aware of any
drawback from his recommendations for the post,
but that of his religion. He is a Roman Catholic,

though, as a COBURG, we may be quite sure he is
not a man to make his religion offensive to his sub-
jects. We have little doubt that he could, with
perfect sincerity, show all possible respect to their
creed if they can but have patience with his. It is,
however, an awkward fact, that the Greeks
can tolerate any other religion more easily than
the Roman Catholic. They have never been in
direct collision with any of the forms of Protestant-
ism—with the Bishop of Rome and his Church, the
Bishop of Constantinople and his Church have been
at war for ages.

One is tempted to exclaim against the bigotry
of the Greeks; why—if all things else be right—

why quarrel with FERDINAND'S religion ? Canno
they practise their own, and leave him to practise
his ? No doubt of it, we should probably reply ;
but let us look at home. No nation on earth, the
Disunited States not excepted, boasts more of its
religious liberality; yet we have an Act of Parlia-
ment which stringently prescribes the Religion of
the Sovereign. We must surely be the last in the
world to rebuke the Greeks for bigotry. Probably
there are not more than one or two exceptions in
Europe to the rule which requires the SOVEREIGN
to belong to an established religion. In America,
Mr. C. LYELL tells us, it was months be-
fore he could discover what Christian Church
the President belonged to. His office was purely
political, and no one troubled themselves about his
religion ! Well might Lord CARLISLE declare that
the one thing he envied the Americans, was their
perfect religious liberty. Who san doubt for a
moment that our Sovereign ought to have perfect
freedom of choice—not terrified by the penalty of
deposition—in regard to her religion. It surely
ought to be between her God and herself solely.
She ought to be free to become a Roman
Catholic, and bow to the authority of the
POPE, or to join the remnant of the fol-
lowers of GEORGE Fox, and bow only to special
ill'imination of the Holy Ghost. Anything
else is, at best, but bribery by the re-
ward of a crown in the sacred matter of religion
while it affixes a stigma, by act of Parliament, to all
the creeds interdicted to the Sovereign. Yet let
any one imagine the hubbub there would be if it
were proposed to repeal the Protestant succession,
and to permit the QUEEN, if it so pleased her, to be
a Catholic. We may hope the Greeks will be wiser
than millions of bigots would be in this country,
could the cases become parallel ; but should. the
Greeks make religion an insuperable difficulty,
those in England who would almost raise a rebel-
lion against a Catholic Queen are not just the per-
sons to denounce the bigotry of the Greeks.
National Churches and national bigotry will always
be corelatives.

In his difficulty, VICTOR EMMANUEL appears to
have made as judicious a selection of Ministers
as well could be hoped for under the circumstances.
All his Majesty's efforts at conciliation having
failed and fallen through, he has at length de-
cided upon handing over the administrative port-
folios to assured anti-Rattazians. Hardly would it
have been possible at the present juncture to have
decided otherwise. The nation has drained the
Ratazzian cup just fairly to the very dregs. Opened
and emptied out by the late Prime Minister of
Italy, the box of office has proved in its outpour-
ings to be worse than the fabled box of PANDORA.
From it have come forth civil war, bloodshed, tree-
son, almost despair, the rifle. shots of PALLAVI-
CINI'S Bersaglieri, the wounds of GARIBALDI, the
infamy of Aspromonte, the cruelty of Spezzia.
And when the baleful contents had been fully
squandered—lo ! there remaine d not even a
shadowy ghost of one fading Hope behind.
The Cabinet, sprung from a Court intrigue,
has crumbled to pieces at the first breath of the
national scorn and indignation expressed in simple
words and few, but with a dread significance to
RATTAZZI and his colleagues, immediately upon
the reassembling of the Italian Legislature.
Long since had the people of the Roman Peninsula
realised, with a painful distinctness, the futility
and the fatality of the specious programme put
forth by the nominee of his Majesty the Emperor
of the FRENCH when that potentate contrived, by
the exercise of his authoritative influence as the
arbiter of the Destinies of Italy, to oust, for
the advantage of Signor RATTAZZI, the patriotic
successor of Count CAVOUR, the Baron RICASOLI.
From the Ministerial transformation thus effected
nothing but disasters and heartburninga have
emerged. The NEMESIS summoned against the
faithless and tricky Premier, RATTAZZI, by one
fatal rifle shot fired in the midst of the deadly
fusillade at Aspromonte, has caused her sword to
descend at last overwhelmingly upon the head of
URBAN RATTAZZI. Without one regret being
awakened by his downfall, without honour
in the past, without respect in the future,
with silent contempt attendant upon his re-
treating footsteps in the present, RATTAZZI
descends from his high position and passes once
more into obscurity, with a marred, and blighted,
and degraded reputation. In this, resembling in no
way his two eminent predecessors. CATOUR—who
died with his hand yet upon the helm, leaving his
name as an astute and brilliantly successful states-
man eternally emblazoned upon the annals
of the country of the congenial Author
of " The Prince," the profound and phi-
losophic MaeelliaveLm! RICASOLI—who, almost
one might say, grandly withdrew from the fore-
, most rank in the State, as the chief adviser of his
Sovereign, rather than subordinate what he con-
scientiously believed to be the interests of his fellow-
c ou
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AaTnTdA
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on the contrary—prep ired to do everything for the
sake of holding office, ready to succumb from the
very outset to the wishes of his Imperial patron,
NAPOLEON lll.—ready to fling Italy, it
need to be, into the horrors of civil war—
ready even as the dire event soon proved, when