The Sun.
London, England, 1848-07-14 00:00:00

mately a portico of the Austrian empire as Alsace

Franche-Comte, Lorraine, and Brittany are integral
portions of the French territory. According to his
idea—the character of Pro Norio is only remarkable
for its " imbecile vanity." According to him—the
lazzaroni and the soldiers of Naples were right in
massacreing the population in defence of the King of
the Two SICILIES. According to him—RADETzKY
acted in the first instance with leniency towards the
insurgent Lombards. According to him—the
institution of National Guards is inconsistent
with the system of representative govern-
ment. According to him a rigid censor-
ship is preferable to a complete liberty of the
press. According to him—the Grand Duke LEOPOLD
has been frightened into concessions to the democrats
of Tuscany. 0 wonderful reviewer ! The thesis
which he endeavours to expound is simply that Black
is White and White Black's; and, from the singu-
larly complacent tone in which the whole is argued,
he is evidently under the agreeable delusion that he
carries his point triumphantly. From what we have
already enumerated, we fancy that it must be appa-
rent to every one that we are not very much mistaken
in calling the article delightfully argumentative.

From the first line to the last, however, we can
recognise the blunder in which the whole of these
ridiculous positions of the Quarterly Review have
originated. Instead of beholding in the recent out-

burst of the Italian multitude the spontaneous move-
ment of an entire people to reclaim a rationality -which
has been long abused by divisions and by aggressors ;
the reviewer only sees the rancourous brawling of a
disaffected race, stimulated to rebellion by the

mezzoceto, goaded to frensy by the voices of their
demagogues, and tempted to civic insurrection, to
intestine war, and to universal anarchy by the in-
sidious and inflamatory propagandism of France.
Why, the Italian movement had commenced long be-
fore the Orleans dynasty was threatened with destruc-
tion, before the dinner on the Champs Elysees was
dreamt of, before the Parisians had begun to think
seriously of expatriating the son of Egalite, or of
broaching the hogsheads of claret in the cellars of
the Tuileries. The Revolution of February only gave
a fresh impetus to what was already in a fair way for its
accomplishment. And when, in addition to the fore-
going misstatement, the reviewer maintains that the
French Charter of 1830 is the most dangerous model
upon which the new governments of Italy could be
based—because (so he argues) the bouleversement of
February proved that Charter to be radically wrong
in itself—he caps the absurdity of his former blunder
by one never surpassed by Sir BOYLE ROCHE or th
Baron MUNCHAUSEN. Every blockhead in Europe
knows perfectly well that the catastrophe which
destroyed the throne on the boulevards was caused
not by the continuance of the Charter of 1830, but
by the non-continuance of that Charter, the viola-
tion of its most important provisions, by the
diminution of the power cf the people and
the concentration of an undue amount of authority
in the hands of the Sovereign. llad Louts PHILIPPE,
indeed, but listened to the warning voice of the
Prince DE JOIEVILLE, instead of banishing him
honourably to Algeria because he dared to recom-
mend a more lenient and popular policy—the
Orleans charlatan might still be in the palace of the
Tuileries, strong in the affections of his people. But
GOD had willed it otherwise. The Charter was vio-
lated in a dozen flagrant particulars—the people of
France were sick of the farce of royalty—they
yearned for the economy, the security, and the justice
of a more liberal and democratic Government—and
so was the Revolution evoked and the Republic
founded.
It must be sufficiently manifest therefore that there

is not necessarily danger to Italy in the adoption of a

charter similar to that of the last French Monarchy,
as the Quarterly Review would lead the ignorant to
imagine. On the contrary, there is a peculiar
security to the Italians in the acceptation of such con-
stitutions in every instance at least where the cha-
racter of the monarch is a direct contrast to the cha-
racter of Louis Pniurru—that character notorious
for its duplicity. Besides, the tremendous downfal of
Louis Pnirarris must act as a solemn warning to
the Italian Princes, telling them always in a
tone of thunder that the stipulations of their
charter must be fulfilled, or that their crowns must
be forfeited. There is one other fallacy, moreover,
in the arguments of the Quarterly Review we must
at once deny and controvert. The writer insists that
the municipal jealousies which have distracted the
Roman peninsula so frequently and deplorably have
only been quelled by the interference of foreigners,
and that the interposition of those foreigners has
invariably been regarded by the Italians themselves
as a great blessing, or rather as a lesser curse
than that arising from the dissensions of
one principality with another. Never was any
egotistical assertion so plainly denied by the
records of history. History tells us, on the contrary,
that foreign aggression has been the great cause, if
not the only one, of the prolonged calamities of Italy.
What, indeed, is the fact ? Why, that foreign ag-
gression did not originate in the intestine divisions of
Italy, but that Louis XII. was first lured into Lom-
bardy by the Regent Lunovico SFORZA—from an
insidious wish on the part of the latter to aggrandise
his own dominions during the confusion caused by
the incursion through Savoy and Piedmont. If any
one circumstance, in short, were wanting to display
the dilemma into which Conservatism has been
driven, it would be found in this extraordinary con..
tribution to the Quarterly Review.

The Queen has subscribed 101. towards the fund
now being raised for the family of Thom, the Inverury
poet, whose death, together with that of his wife, has
plunged his children into the greatest distress.