The Sun.
London, England, 1849-09-25 00:00:00

SALES BY AUCTION.

months 30,000 soldiers of Prance. You know all this,
gentlemen, or you could have known it, and therefore
you ought to have done so ; and nevertheless you
shamelessly gave out to the Assembly the number of
" foreigners" as 20,000, as a proof that after all it
was not the Roman idea that you ha 1 endeavoured to
stifle in blood; and upon this cipher of your own in
vention depends the greater part of your argument.
Foreigners! I entreat pardon of my country for
having inscribed the word, after you, upon my page.
What ! Lombards, Tuscans, Italians, foreigners at
Rome ! And it is by you, Fret-ilt/ten, by you who,
in re-establishing the Pontifical throne, hey.? been
supported by Austrians and Spaniard, that this re-
proach is made. A year ago our provinces sent the
dite of their youth to fight upon the pains Hof Lom-
bardy as to a convention of honour ; but Ido not
remember that Radetzkv ever called them in his pro.
clamations foreigners. The absolute denial of Italian
nationality has been reserved fcr the nephew of him
who, at St. Helena, uttered these words :—" Unity of
manners, of language, of literature, show that Italy is
destined to form a single country."
The accusation of violence, of a reign of terror,
directed against the Republican Government, is an
accusation to which the lie is now solemnly given by
the facts of our defence. The armed enthusiasm of a
whole people i 3 not to be commanded by terror ;* and
you are compelled, gentlemen, either to calumniate
the valour of the French arms, or to confute your own
statements—to declare that a few factious individuals
were not only able to restrain a population of 160,000
souls, but also, for two months, to contend with and
often to conquer your army ; or, in order to preserve
yourselves from the stain of imbecility and cowardice,
to confess that the Government, the people, the Na-
tional Guard, and the army of Rome were all united
together as brothers in the common idea of liberty, and
of war to the enemies of the Republic. It is necessary
to speak of this, so that, at least, you cannot repeat
the absurd accusation without others being able to
reply, yours is a premeditated lie.
Pass by the assassination of Rossi, which has been
so often and so hypocritically cited. The Republic
inaugurated on the 9th of February, 1849, has no
occasion to exculpate itself from a deed which occurred
on the 16th of November, 1848, when the princely
party, the Moderates, the partisans of Charles Albert,
possessed the field, and drove away, or condemned to
absolute silence, the men of the Republican faith. No
one in Italy accuses your revolutions of having had
their rise in assassination, because the Duke of Berry
fell by the dagger, and five or six attempts at regicide
succeeded each other in the space of two years in
Paris. Mark the facts which, in every time, and in
every place, accompany every system supported by
violence. During nearly five months of Republican
government can yon, gentlemen, point out a single
condemnation to death for a political offence ? A
single exile, founded upon political suspicions ? A
single exceptional tribunal instituted in Rome to
judge political offences ? A single newspaper sus
pended by order of the Government ? A single de-
cree directed to restrain the liberty of the press ante-
rior to the siege ? If so, point them out. Point out
the laws originating in a system of terror ; point out
the ferocious bands of whom you speak ; point out the
victims of our rule—or resign 3-ourselves to be
branded as liars.
In one of our declarations we said, " The Repub-
lican banner raised in Rome by the representatives of
the people does not represent the triumph of one frac-
tion of citizens over another; it represents a common
triumph, a victory gained by the many, accepted by
the immense majority, of the principle of good over
that of evil, of the common right over the arbitrary
rule of the few, of the sacred equality which God has de-
creed to all over privilege and despotism. We can-
not be Republicans without being and proving our-
selves better than the overthrown powers. . . We
are not the government of a party, but the govern-
ment of the nation. . . Neither intolerance nor
weakness. The Republic is conciliating and ener-
getic. The Government of the Republic is strong,
therefore fearless." In these lines were summed up
the Republican programme ; nor was it ever violated
by the men who ruled our Republic, as yours has been.
0 Ministers of France !
And we were strong, strong in the love of the good
—the bad amongst us are but few ; strong in the
common consent of the citizens, and with a strength
differing widely from yours, gentlemen. We had no
necessity, in order to maintain ourselves in power, to
place the capital in a state of siege, to dissolve the
National Guard, to fill the plialorim, to exile (amongst
others) the representatives of the people, to condemn
to transportation hundreds of working men, and to
surround ourselves by cannon and soldiers. Our ca-
pital was cheerful and happy under the weight of
sacrifice which sudden changes must always impose
upon a state, tranquil and serene when the presence
of your army under its walls 'night have provoked
the malcontents, if malcontents were to be found in
Rome, to acts of rashness. Our National Guards
furnished upwards of 7,000 men for active service
within the city and on the walls. Our prisons were
all but empty of political offenders. Two or three
individuals strongly suspected of intercourse with
your camp, two or three cardinals taken in the very
act of conspiracy, and an official, Zamboni, guilty of
desertion, were all who were under trial when M. de
Corcelles visited the prisons. The five or six
prisoners, Freddi, Alai, and the rest found by him in
the Castle of St. Angelo, were there by order of Pius
IX., and for plots against his Government. The men
most averse to the Republic, a Mamiani, a Pantaleoni,
walked free through the streets of Rome. We
reminded the people who mistrusted them that the
Republic, superior to the dethroned power, held
opinions to be inviolable, unless manifested
in dangerous acts; and the people, generous
by nature, and from a consciousness of
power, understood and respected this: nor
was there any danger for such men, until we could
no longer interpose, and the spectacle of your brute
force irritated the multitude to reaction. Owing to
the impossibility of keeping guard round the whole
circuit of the city, several of our cannons often re-
mained accessible to any one, and without a single
soldier to guard them. And thus it happened on the
16th of May, when our troops moved on the side of
Villetri against the army of the King of Naples—
when from 5 A.M. until midnight the city remained
without a single soldier, and entrusted solely to the
people.

fur life. In Terni, in Bologna, in Ancona, in Rimini.
young men guilty of having a musket in their pos-
session have been shot. There is not, perhaps, in the
Roman States one family in five, one of whose mem-
bers is not either an exile or a prisoner. The men of
the self called Moderate party—the men whom, when
entering Rome, you declared to be rightfully there,
are through you in exile. Mamiani, Galeotti, Father
Ventura are exiles. Your work is one of destruction,
Equal to that accomplished by the Monarchy in Spain
in the year 1823. Woul:l that you had at least the
brutal courage of the Monarchy! But false inter-
preters of an idea which is not your own ; secret
enemies to the banner which . you have publicly
sworn to serve; conspirators rather than ministers,
you are condemned to wrap yourselves round
with hypocritical and premeditated falsehood.
Falshood in your fundamental assertions ; falsehood
in the particulars; falsehood in yourselves; false-
hood in your agents; falsehood—l blush in saying it
for France, which you have at length brought so low
as to soil her traditionary honour—falsehood in the
generals of your army. You have conquered by
falsehood, and 'by falsehood you endeavonr to justify
yourselves. General Oudinot lied when, in order to
deceive the populations, and to smooth fur himself
the road to Rome, he vilely trafficked in our affection
for France, by keeping the Italian tricolor, which he
knew himself about to overthrow, entwined with the
French flag at Civita Vecchia until the lith July.
He lied impudently by affirming in his proclamation
that the greater part of the Roman army had frater-
nised with the French, when the whole staff of the
army protested and resigned, when only 800 men (at
the present time even they are dissolved) accepted the
proposed conditions of service. He lied as a coward
when, after having given his solemn promise in
writing not to assault the city before Monday,* the
4th of June, he assaulted it on the night of the Sab-
bath. The envoy Lesseps lied when, induced by a
culpable weakness, partly redeemed by the hope of
remedying the evil, he re-assured us by continual
promises of a conclusive treaty, and conjuring us
not to attach importance to the movements of the
French troops, dictated solely by the necessity of
satisfying the soldiers, who were impatient of repose,
whilst in the meantime you basely took advantage of
our good faith to study unmolested our defences, to
strengthen yourselves, and to occupy unexpectedly,
during an armistice, the strategetical point of
Monte St. Mario. M. de Corcelles lied when,
in contradiction to the declaration of the
Roman municipality, to that of the foreign
Consuls, and to the testimony of a whole
city, he declared that Rome had never been bom-
barded. The bombs fell for many nights, and par-
ticularly from the 23d to the 24th, and from the
29th to the 30th, most frequently and injuriously
upon the Corso, upon the Piazza di Spagna, upon
the Babuino, upon the Colonna Palace, upon the
hospital of Santo Spirito, upon that of the Pel-
legrini, and in other places. You lied, M. de Toqueville,
when, relying upon the ignorance of your majority,
you boasted a solitary fact in history, of the choice
of the point towards the Porta San Pancrazio, for
assaulting the city as if for the greater safety of the
people and their habitations. Rome offers at the gate
of San Paolo and at the gate of San Giovanni an
open country, whilst the gate of San Pancrazio is
surrounded by the people and their houses; the gate
of San Pancrazio was chosen because from there a
communication with Civita Vecchia could be kept
with less risk, and because whilst from the other
points it would be necessary to descend to a battle
with the people and their barricades, which you
rightly feared, from that of San Pancrazio, the
Janiculum dominating Rome offered the opportunity
of conquering it, not by a war of men, but of bombs
and cannons. You have all lied, from him who is the
first amongst you to the lowest of your agents, to us,
to the Assembly, to France and to Europe, when, from
the first day of the nefarious undertaking to the last,
you gave repeated promises of protection, of bro:her-
hood, and of liberty, that you had already determined
to betray.
Having resolved, in conjunction with Gaeta,
Spain, and Austria, to overturn Republican liberty in
Rome, and after having so long conspired as to de-
ceive yourselves with the idea that reaction amongst
us would second your designs, you demanded assist-
ance from the Assembly; deceiving it, as was unan-
swerably shown by the after discussions, as to the
object of the expedition. You deceived the commis-
sion charged with questioning you the soldiers
whom, ut Toelen, you persuaded you were leading to
fight against the Austrians ; the inhabitants of Civita
Vecchia, amongst whom you descended, like a
masked thief, with two proclamations, one of which
destroyed the other ; then, when the day of the 30th
moved men to indignation, again deceiving the I
Assembly, by sending Lesseps to follow out
the decree of the 7th, and writing the same day
to General Oudinot to remain firm, and promising
reinforcements ; then the same messenger giving
instructions authorising him to act according to
the will of the Assembly, and enjoining him
nevertheless to maintain himself in agreement with
Rayneval, who had instructions directly opposite :
then us ; then all—to. day most likely deceiving the
Pope,; to whom you have promised to restore his
authority unconditionally, and whom now finding it
difficult to make France pardon you for having dis-
honoured her you would wish to reduce to a consti-
tutional Pro-Consul dependent upon your policy.
Nevertheless you_have not lied so skilfully, but that
even in your own words we find the right to perpe-
tual revolt and the absolute condemnation of all that
you have done, or may do without legally consulting
the will of the people ill-used by you.
The preamble of your Constitution in Article 5 de.
Glares :—France respects foreign nationalities. She
never employs her forces against the liberty of any
people. And strangled by that article, which you
would fain, but dare not, tear; without the conscious.
ness of virtue or the strength of crime, you have let
fall words which Europe has gathered up, and which
are now torture to your soul. Odilon Barrot, the man
who, on the 31st of Jan., 1841, declared the absolute
right of every Italian state to libertyandindependence,t
declared to the Commission of the Assembly," that the
idea of the Government was to make !Prance co-
operate in the destruction of the Roman Republic,
• . . . and that it would 'act independently of every
solidarity with the other powers." And when, on
the 16th of April, the reporter of the commission re-
ferred these declarations to the Assembly, the Presi-
dent of the Council said : " I do not deny a single
word: uttered by me before the Commission, and re-
ferred to this Assembly." And, he added, "We
are not going to Italy to impose a government,
neither that of the Republic nor any other. . . .
We do not wish to employ the forces of France to
defend in Rome one form of government or another.
No; our intention is to be present at the events
which may occur in the double interest of our own
influence and of liberty, which may be jeopardised."
The declaration of the French corps of occupation
to the President of Civita Vocchia, dated the 24th of
April, declared that the French Government " would
respect the voice of the majority of the Roman popu-
lations . . . . and that it would never impose
upon them any form of government."
On the 26th General Oudinot repeated that " the
object of the French was not to exercise any oppres-
sing influence, nor to impose any government upon
the Romans against their will."
On the 7th of May the President of the Council
declared to the Assembly that " those:proclamations,
the work of the Minister for Foreign Affairs, in-
volved the whole objects of the expedition."
" 'We ought only to march upon Rome," said the
reporter of the Commission, " in order to protect her
against foreign intervention and against the excesses
of a counter-revolution. . . . as protectors," or,
quoting the expression used by the President of the
Council to the Commission, "if called in as arbi-
trators."
Odilon Barrot repeated on the same day, that " the
Assembly was unwilling that under the direct pressure
of Austria the contra revolutionary spirit should
triumph in Rome."

Ana the Minister for Foreign Affairs confirmed this
by saying : " the object of the expedition was to
assure to the Roman populations the conditions of a
good government, of a full liberty, conditions that
would have been compromised by reaction or by
foreign intervention." And he denied that General
Oudinot had received orders to assault the Roman
Republic; he denied that the General had intimated
to the Roman Government that they must yield up
their powers. Then came the solemn vote of the
Assembly : " The National Assembly invites the
Government to make the necessary preparations
without delay in order that the Italian expedition
may no longer be diverted from the object assigned
to it."

And from that time forwards have you, Ministers
of France, at every instant, in all the steps that you
have taken towards your secret intention—in the
words dictated by you to your envoy, the choice of
whom ought to have been to the Assembly a proof

* Letter of the Ist of Juoe to Gen. Rose :—" Only—
I defer the attack of the place until Monday morning, at
least."

t Besides the absolute right of all the Italian states to
choose that corm of government which they may judge
fitting in all the fulness of their independence, and the
formal declaration of France that she intends to main-
tain that independence, there is another question—the
necessity of the independence of 114+1Y.

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of your liberal intentions— ll the conference-C.
held with us by your agents in the li-rejects of agree- -
ment * drawn up by M. Le: saps and General ,
Oudinot, the 16th and 18th of May. In the letter of
M. de Corcelles, on the 13th June, " France has but
one object ; the liberty of the Pontiff, the liberty of
the Roman States, and the peace of the world." I our
Government has always directly or indirectly pointed
to the will of the populations as the source of every
right, and promised to them the free vote. The piti-
ful honour was reserved for you alone, M. de Falloux,
of having been the first to declare to Europe, in your
speech on the 7th of August, that France had lied
up to that day. The victim was then overthrown . .
with the dagger at its throat. But even your tardy •
declaration of the real object of the expedition, gen-
tlemen, does not cancel the repeated promises of your
government. The Roman people has a right to call
upon you and say, Fulfil them; and we who know
you of old--we who are aware of your designs and
of the necessity that they should be made dear, in
order that the good, hitherto deluded, may abandon
you and seek safety elsewhere—we hold it as a duty
to say to you, and we will say it to you daily whet-
ever you may do, "Fulfil them ; what pre:ext now
remains to you for not fulfilling them ? Rome
is free now from every foreigner, from all the
factions. Some of them have died on the field under
;Le carbines of Vincennes—the rest wander in exile.
The honest men are reassured and reinstated : they
know that all the Cabinets, even the Republican Ca.
binet of France, are ready to labour in their defence,
and the people know how many dangers the expres •
sion of their dearest wish involves for the future.
Take courage, then : make the trial once again.
Give the people a free vote. Withdraw; and let the
armies of your allies, now that the mission assigned
to you in the capital is fulfilled by them in the pro-
vinces, withdraw themselves also; and call upon the
citizens through a provisional government to declare
their will concerning the temporal power of the Pope
and the institutions which ought to govern the nation.
We from afar, exiles through you, accept the experi-
ment. Accept it you then—or again resign your-
selves to be marked out as liars."
You will not, you dare not do it; you know that
the result of the experiment would be the cendema-
tion and the ruin of your designs. Endeavouring to
destroy the Republic in France, and anxious to edu-
cate your soldiers to fire upon its flag-, you cannot
submit yourselves to the risk of seeing it raised again
amongst us by the choice of the peoole. Weak even to
cowardice in your diplomacy, transfixted with shame for
the part you have played in Europe, uneasy about the
opinions of your fellow, citizens, you thought to con-
ciliate your fears and your aims by the appearance
of strength, proving your vigour inaction by
attacking a weak newborn Republic, and now you
would fain deceive yourselves into thinking that a
few orders of the day dated from Rome will flatter the
pride and the warlike tendencies of your people.
Your President needed the votes of the Catholic
party ; and you have need, for 3 our views, that the
principle of authority, founded upon privilege, should
be re-established by the aid of the example of a great
religious institution. Therefore you remain at Rome.
And you will remain as long as you are able, for
you know that nothing but a foreign fcree can
prevent a second revolution. You will remain
odious to both parties, going from subterfuge to
subterfuge, from protocol to protocol, powerless to
prevent priestly reaction on the one side, and the
popular discontent on the other, rendering the
situation worse, not modifying it, still further
complicating the diplomatic question, leaving
undecided the political, and exciting the religious
question. Europe will see that you are not only
wicked but incapable, that you have sullied the
glorious name of France and the honour of your
arms, yet failed to fulfil either your public or secret
programme ; and that you have gained the curses of
the people without having won back the confidence
of their oppressors.
For the name and honour of France are sul ied
not only by the deed of iniquity itself, but by the
mode in which it has been accomplished—not only by
the shameless violation of the programme of non-
intervention and of international indeper &nee
inscribed upon her national flag, and subscribed to by
all the Ministers of her Government—not only by the
cowardly oppression exercised by the French
arms in
conjunction with the Neapolitan, Austrian, and
Spanish forces, against a state almost unarmed, and
with a population greatly inferior to that of the
smallest of the invading states—not only by all the
repeated promises ot liberty, peace, and order, suc-
cessively betrayed ; but even by the smallest particu-
lars of the undertaking, Ido not know of any period
in modern history, that of the dismemberment of
P„ land only excepted, in which so brief a space such
an amount of infamy has been accumulated upon the
head of a nation daring to breathe the name of
liberty. As if the censciousucss of crime might make
those committing it lose all sense of dignity,
and the corruption of the promoters infect their
instruments, every act, from the first day of the
occupation to that upon which I write, has been
marked by immorality. And whilst on the one band
a Government Minister could descend so low as to
insert in the cop,) t of the instructions given to M.
Lessens (recently corninunicated to the State Cottrell)
an expression which entirely altered its meaning, I
myself was compelled to order the imprisonment of
two officials who had come to us for the purposes
of parley, and who abusing our generous confidence,
abstracted the plans of our city works; whilst Gen.
Oudinot, before any act of hostility had taken place,
and whilst the two banners joined by the French
themselves waved together upon the tree of liberty,
disarmed and retained as prisoners in Civita Vecchia
the corps of Mellara ; a little later a French superior
official degraded himself by snatching with his own
hand, from the breast of their dead colonel, in the
church, and during the funeral service, the Italian
cockade. Ah, we tray forgive you Ministers of France
the incalculable and unprovoked evil that you have
done us, our sorrows, our fallen or dispersed brethren,
even the postponement of our future emancipation ;
but one thing we cannot forgive that of
having dishonoured, for many years to come, the
name of a nation to which we all turned as to an
emancipating nation ; that of having by falsehood, by
the materialism of promotions and by the example
of their chiefs, corrupted the soldiers of France,
making them executioners of their brothers, in the
name of the Pope, whom they despise, and by the side
of Austria, which they abhor. Of having degraded
to a meaningless symbol, to a material idol to be
blindly followed wherever it may lead, a banner
which is the sign of an idea, of a faith; of having
sown the seeds of a hatred which will be slow and diffi-
cult to uproot between two nations which everything
tended to unite in the bonds of affection; between the
sons of fathers who had taken together the sacrament of
glory and suffering upon all the fields of Europe; of
having brutally given the lie to the holy dream of the
brotherhood of the peoples, and given to the enemies
1 of progress and humanity the ferocious joy of seeing
France degraded to be the bully and the executioner
of their designs, a blow upon the front of our Italian
nationality, at the same time that she strikes that of
Hungary in the rear for the good will and pleasure
of Austria and the Czar.
Men w:thout heart and without faith, the last dis-
ciples of a school which, beginning with the atheis-
tical doctrine of art for art's sake, concluded ulti-
mately with the formula of power for power's sake,
you have lost all understanding c,f past history, all
presentiment of a future. Your minds are steeped
in egotism and in the fear of that European move-
ment which no human power can arrest, which, ac-
cepted and directed, would develop itself peacefully,
arid which your culpable resistance may succeed too
well in changing into the elements of a fearful war.
You were incapable of understanding the grandeur
and beauty of the new life of Italy which was
dawning in Rome, in the Rome of the people.
But what were your hopes when you decreed frater-
nal war? To destroy, by wounding it to the heart,
the national revolution ? You ought to have seen
that every resistance opposed to your arms by Rome,
the mere fact of your leaguing yourselves with three
Governments to suppress her movements, would give
an everlasting consecration to the dogma of
our unity, and make of that one word,
foeord th,el ,o
Rome,pe a?
religion to all Italy. Remake a throne
For the Pope, and by bayonets ? A constitutional
throne for the Pope ? A temporal throne may be
re-established for a time by bayonets, but not that of
the head of believers. And the simplest logic might
have taught you that the Pope can be nothing if not
an absolute monarch. Two months from this time
will show you that you have in all respects failed in
your purposes. You wished, you said so at least, to
prevent the re-establishment of the old abuses in the
Romad states, and yet those old abuses will inevita-
bly re-appear one after the other, and all the stronger
for having been cancelled by the Republican Govern-
ment for five months, and threatened for the future.
You cannot change the habits, the tendencies, the
wants of the aristocracy of the clergy; you cannot
destroy the people's abhorrence for it; and you can-
not support yourselves on a moderate intermediate
party, which does not exist in Rome. You may dic-
tate conditions, but the non-observance of such
regulations has always been, and will always be, a
fatal consequence in the Roman states..

* A provisional government :4201 be added to the
present executive power, and chosen by the Roman Na-
tional Assembly, until the moment when the populations
called upon to manifest their wishes shall have deter-
mined the form of government which shall rule them,
and the gurantees of security which shall be afforded to
Catholicism and the papacy.—Project of May 6. Art. 3.
The Roman populations have the right of freely pro-
nou❑cing upon the form of their government.—Project
of May 18. Art. 2.
f Everything which, by checking the course of inter.
tervention on the part of other powers animated by less
moderate sentiments, will leave a greater field for our in-
fluence; all that which shall hasten the fall of a regime
condemned to perish, &c.—The phrase in italics was added
in the copy.