The Sun.
London, England, 1851-11-27 00:00:00

THURSDAY EVENING-, NOVEMBER 27, 1851.

THE HIGH PRICE OF BEER.
(From the Chronicle.)

/ subject of complaint. When the duty of 103. a
barrel was remitted, porter was reduced id. a quart.
Since that time, the price has been stereotyped, and
beer is sold at 23. 81. per gallon, which might be, and
probably is, brewed at little more than Is. We are,
, fact, paying war prices for a necessary of life. The
agricultural interest suffers by the restricted con-
sumption of barley; and the poor suffer by the exor-
bitant price of a commodity on which, as we have
shown, they spend one-eighth of their earnings.
That a company has been established to sell beer at
a reasonable profit is at least a hopeful evidence that
the public are becoming alive to the existence and
extent of this monstrous social evil. On some future
occasion we may illustrate that stage of the argument
which is concerned with the difficulty of coping with
what practically—we do not say theoretically—is a
huge monopoly, viz., the existence of brew ers' houses.

The brewers have at length found their champions.
Bung, Brothere, and Co., have retained their stalwart
men-at-arms, who have vowed to keep the lists against
all corners. It is a combat a routrance, and of :course
we have no chance. Every resource, both of the
arena and the rostrum, is desperately arrayed against
us. The sciences which respectively address the rea-
son and the passions are banded together. The closed
fist of logic, the argumentative defence of " A Con-
stant Subscriber and Reader," on the one side,
stretches out on the plain ; and on the other " Sowry
Swipes" buffets us with the open palm of his invin-
cible rhetoric. We give in. The brewers have the
field to themselves, and it is only from the depths of a
prostrate despair that we venture upon a feeble apo-
logy for our ill-starred attack on the Twelve.
Our case—we recall it with humiliation—was,
that the brewers made an exorbitant profit; and
we arraigned them as extortioners of the first mag-
nitude. " Snipes "—euphonious name !—in choice
language, somewhat reeking of the pot-house
perhaps, and slightly redolent of its smokeables—
takes the matter up fairly ; he flies at the very throat
of the accuser, and shows to demonstration that, far
from the brewers making exaggerated profits, they
actually lose upon every barrel of beer they brew.
This is the way to meet a charge—an assault of this
sort combines completeness with audacity. It is the
very poetry of reprisal--the brewers' apology is con-
ceived and executed in the highest spirit of art.
Those whom the world has stigmatised as its tyrants
prove themselves—the case has occurred in history—
mankind's benefactors. London is living under the
renewed dynasty of the Euergetaz—Barclay the
Benevolent reigns I But what a melancholy reflec-
tion it is for beer-bibbers, that every quart they swal-
low is to them eleemosynary; Truman and Hanbury
put all our patriots and most illustrious philanthro-
pists to the blush. What were the occasional sacri-
fices of a sinecurist Teller of the Exchequer—what
the casual beneficence of a Howard—what the tem-
porary self. denial of those who have given a single
life, or a single fortune, to the public weal—when
contrasted with the perpetual charities of the Twelve
great alms. givers ? Statutes and canonization are
the very least reward that grateful London should be-
stow on its liberal, yet hitherto secret, dispensers of
good deeds. In Continental churches, if we remember
rightly, statutes of another company of twelve are
raised on each pier and arch ; and the Royal Ex-
change ought certainly to erect images of Barclay,
Meux, and their compeers, in every recess of the
metropolitan hall of commerce. "An actual loss to

THE COAL TAX.
(From the Times.)
History has no stronger revelation, and philo-
sophy no more startling paradox, than the fact that
periods of internal weakness and disorder have often
been marked by the most brilliant triumphs and most
extensive conquests abroad. While torn in pieces by
the dissensions of the triumvirs, Rome found means
to conquer Gaul and to menace Britain. The Pope
was never more formidable to foreign sovereigns than
when he could not walk the streets of Rome without
being insulted, and was scarcely safe within his fora.
fled palace from the conspiracies of his turbulent no-
bility, and Republican France cverran Europe, while
no man in the capital was sure of his life or property
for a single day. Instructed, probably, and moved
by a minute acquaintance with these examples, ancient,
mediaeval, and modern, the Corporation of London
has selected the present moment for the increase of
its territorial dominion and the imposition of
its yoke on necks hitherto unaccustomed to
bear it. To the eye of a superficial observer
no time could appear more improper than
the present for such ambitious designs. It is not
treason to say that this august body is gradually fall-
ing into something very nearly approaching to con-
tempt. Dissensions, hitherto unheard of, become
more and more frequent among the civic dignities.
The Lord Mayor snubs the Aldermen, the Aldermen
growl at the Lord Mayor, and something like a con-
sciousness is evinced that the recent appearances of the
Corporation as hosts of her Majesty and as guests of
the Prefect of the Seine have by no means tended to
the exaltation of civic dignity in the eyes of the pro-
fane and uninitiated. Under these circumstances, it
required no ordinary courage to select the present
time for snatching an increase of jurisdiction, and
the future historian of the Corporation will record
this hardy and successful enterprise with the same
admiration with which Livy tells how Rome, with
Hannibal at ber gates, sent forth her legions to
the conquest of Spain. It was no trifling exploit
to have " taken in,' as our ancient writers would say,
at a singlq stroke St. Albans, Hertford, Watford,
and Hatfield, together with a goodly strip of country
which, if the city of London be considered as the
planet Saturn, would make a very respectable ring;
but it is a double triumph to have done this at a time
when it was supposed that the Corporation had enough
to do to hold its own, and to have accomplished it by
means so secret that the first we heard of it was its
complete success. Smithfield has been torn from the
reluctant grasp of its civic patrons and admirers, but
the same session of Parliament which witnessed this
severe loss saw also the adroit reprisal which by the
insertion of four words in a seemingly harmless Act
of Parliament has placed within the pomceriuna of
city of London a large, fertile, and distant districtwhose subjugation the most ambitious aide
of
never before dreamt.
Who could have thought that 11 -.man had
inoffen-
sive title of "An Act to amend -.lcier the
the vend and delivery of Acts relating to
Westminster, and in c coals in London and
'srtain parts of the adjacent
counties, and to allow a drawback on coals
conveyed beyond certain limits," there could lark the
capture of foi:'c important towns and the conquest of
7/ probably quite as large as the city of
London itself ? Yet it is even so ; and what in-
creases the marvel is, that any one might read the
Act through from cover to cover without discovering
that it has any effect in enlarging that unfortunate
district of country which it has pleased Parliament,
for inscrutable reasons, to tax at the rate of one shil-
ling and threepence a ton on its coals, for the benefit
of the wealthiest metropolis in the world. The sting
is not in the enacting clauses of the 14th and 15th
Victoria, chap. 146, for they are peculiarly modest
and inoffensive. Indeed, the only mention of taxation
is in the second clause, which repeals the second sec-
tion of the Bth and 9th Vic., cap. 101, except that part
which imposes till 1862 duties on coal, calm, and cin-
ders contained in any ship or vessel arriving at her moor-
ings within any part of the port of London, or brought
near London by railways or by the Thames, or to any
place within the distance of twenty miles from the
General Post-office, by any railway constructed or
hereafter to be constructed, or by inland navigation,
or by any other mode of conveyance. So far from
imposing a new tax, this Act simply seems to leave
in force the clause under which the old tax was le-
vied, and the rest of the measure is taken up with
the regulation of duties, customs, and drawbacks in-
cidental to the establishment of that most astonishing
octroi which the city has organized at the distance of
twenty miles from the General Post-office. It is only
when we come to the fiftieth, or interpretation clause,
which probably would be read by few, that we find
the words which are destined so materially to add to
the civic dominions. Hitherto the distance of twenty
miles from the General Post-office has been measured
along the road, railway, or canal, but now it is de-
clared that the expression "London district" shall
mean so much of the several counties of Middlesex,
Surrey, Kent, Essex, Herts, Bucks, and Berks as
shall be situate within the distance of twenty miles
in a direct line from the General Post-office.

the brewer, of Is. per barrel" is the brewers' impreg-
nable defence against their calumniators.
We know not what most to admire in this astound-
.

ing evidence of public spirit. The secrecy of the
thing—the amiable reluctance on the part of this holy
Guild, these Brethren of Mercy, to let their good
works be known—the quiet, calm, unobtrusive nature
of the sacrifice—its magnitude—its continuance—all
are evidences of a charity of the purest and largest
quality. And when one comes to reckon its ex-
tent—to spread this aggregate of liberality over past
years—to multiply it into interest and compound in-
terest—imagination swoons at the immensity of the
gift which, unconsciously to its recipients,. has so
long been showered upon us. If brewers, with barley
at twenty-five shillings, actually lose one shilling on
every barrel they produce, what must have been their
incalculable sacrifices in those dreary years when the
raw material was nearly double its present price?
The mind faints at the total of our obligations to the
brewers' public spirit—the old nails and horse-shoe
sum shrinks into insignificance in comparison with
the aggregate of Messrs. Barclay and Perkins' hidden
alms-deeds. Generation after generation of brewers,
from Thrale to Whitbread, have lived, and have died

embalmed in the odours of their unrevealed virtues—

the memorial of their benevolence perishing with
:hem, for no " Sowry Swipes " lived to rescue
:heir boundless munificence from oblivion. Their

charity has been its own exceeding great
reward ; though it is some consolation to re-

fleet that estates, titles, rent-rolls, capital—all have
accumulated on those self-denying firms who were
always, for the public good and in mercy to the poor,
trading in such a way that they lost upon every
ounce of malt that they manufactured. Providence
has signally blessed these good men by enabling them
to create capital by constantly employing it at a
ruinous loss. The case is clear—accept but " Swipes"
statistics, and the brewers are the greatest heroes, as
well as ;the most remarkable commercial paradox,
which the world has yet seen.
To be sure there are other calculations extant. We
extract from a contemporary document an estimate
which tells a different story, and which we leave to
the curious to collate with that furnished by our
witty and forcible correspondent, Mr. S. Swipes :
" The practical monopoly obtained by the London
brewers has long been a serious and crying evil. A few
months ago, we did hear that the price of beer was to be
reduced to the extent of ss. per barrel; but it is evident
that the design is postponed, if not abandoned alto-
gether. Yet the profits of the brewers are altogether
outrageous, as will be perceived from the following esti-
mate, which is our own. The price of malt, from the
lowest brown, ranges from 44r, to 565. per quarter. We
may therefore assume 50s. as the average price of malt
used in brewing London porter. Seven pounds of hops,
at 9d. per lb., will cost 53. 3d.; the charge for brewing,
as has been allowed by the brewers' brokers, is lls. per
quarter, though, from the improvements in the arrange-
ments and manipulation, the real cost cannot reach that
sum. Allow 6d. per barrel for delivery, and we have the
total cost—from which must bo deducted 2s. for grains,
and we have the net cost of a quarter of malt converted
into porter and delivered at the publican's. Now,
London porter varies in strength from 191bs. to 221bs.
of saccharine matter per barrel, say 201bs. per barrel;
and a quarter of malt, of medium quality, will produce
from 821bs. to 881bs. of saccharine matter. We have
known it to reach 941bs. The account then stands
thus :

Malt...
Hops—.
k)xpeus©s

£2 10 0
0 5 3
0 11 0

These four fatal words, in a direct line, have " taken
in" not merely Parliament, but four towns, one of
which, St. Albans, is not easily to be outdone in the
arts of furtive dexterity. While Parliament thought
it was merely assisting the Corporation in the not
very easy task of explaining its own meaning, it was
really imposing a galling and unjust tax on many
thousands of her Majesty's subjects who had hitherto
been exempt from it, and subjecting the inhabitants
of a large district of country to the same degrading
tribute which has already been levied on the districts
nearer the metropolis. The Corporation exults in its
shame, and assures the victims of its most unprin-
cipled Parliamentary tactics that the augmentation of
the London district was no afterthought, but a deli-
berate and intentional trap, into which Parliament has
fallen.

3 6 3
Deduct grains ... ... 0 2 0

Per quarter... . ... 3 4 3

Which will produco 4 barrel 9, at 0 15 1i
Add cartage 0 0 6

Cost per barrel ...

0 15 74

Si Iling price
Discount 5 per cent.
Cost ...

1 13 0
0 1 7i
1 11 4
0 15 7i

Nothing can be more agreeable to the Corporation
than such a state of things, in which they combine the
useful with the sweet, the pleasure of outwitting Par-
liament with the solid profit of overreaching their
country neighbours. Such amusements, however, are
at the present time a little dangerous to the health of this
apoplectic body politic. People have allowed the Corpo-
ration of London, under the pretence of the conservancy
of the river, and as remuneration for trouble which they
never took to usurp a duty of the Government and
levy a tax on seaborne coal. They have been per-
mitted, on the truest Protectionist principles, to levy
the same tax on coal brought by canal, because, as
expressed in the preamble of the 23d George 111.,
chap. 80, sec. 19, it was apprehended that the convey-
ing of coal from the collieries of Warwickshire,
Staffordshire, Leicestershire, and Derbyshire, might
be detrimental to the coasting trade, by diminishing
the consumption of coals brought by coasting vessels.
They have been permitted by a corrupt use of Par-
liamentary influence in days when the same excike
would not be tolerated to impose a light tax on coals
brought by every railway in the metropolis, and to
erect a chain of custom-houses in the heart of this
free-trading country to enforce their exactions. Not
content with this, they seek to enlarge the number of
their tributaries by smuggling words into a local and
personal Act, which extend its provisions under pre-
tence of explaining them. Possibly Parliament may
think that it has been long enough the instrument of
such practices, and may deem it necessary not merely
to undo this last trick, but toinquire into the right
of one part of her Majesty's subjects to tax another
for purposes in which the taxpa3ers have no interest.

Profit,ft h aper a barrel
company
And it is a£o 15 9"
...is already established,
which upon its own estimate—not the above—gua-
rantees.a
profit on its capital of 70 per cent., which
would fairly justify our estimate of the profits which
brewers make at 100 per cent. To speak seriously,
however, on a serious matter--we are fully content
to allow the question to stand in its present position.
The only detente which the associated brewers offer
is one which proves that they are now manufacturing
at a dead loss—a loss of ls. per barrel on every one
of the 23 million of barrels which they annually pro-
duce—a loss which consequently must have been
about doubled when barley was twice its present
price. Whether this defence does not go a little too
far—just a trifle.more than what the exigency of the
case, to say nothing of common sense, required—we
leave the public to settle.
But, besides this champion, we have to meet an op-
ponent of a different class. Fresh, apparently, from
the most Scottish school of the most Scottish of
sciences, "A Constant Subscriber, &c.," admits our
charge, and the force of the public complaint—allows
that the prices of brewers are exorbitant—but
urges that so it ought to be. Meeting us with
our own favourite weapons from the arsenal of
polical economy—and familiar as ourselves with the
truths of Free Trade—he bolaly propounds the doc-
trine that tradesmen are justified in charging what-
ever they can get. The blame, we are assured, is with
the consumer, who submits to be pillaged—not with
the producer, who, on principle, claims the indefea-
sible right to rob. And theoretically we admit this.
Our wonder is, that, with so patient a public, the
brewers do not double their present charges. Our
argument only incidentally touches their profits, for
our aim has been to stimulate competition. It is just
a case in which we wish to dispel the pleasure of
being cheated—the pleasure of cheating is another
affair, and one of private morals, not of social eco-
nomy. We want the public only to realize the loss
they suffer; for the remedy, we are perfectly aware,
is de jure in our own hands—though what it is de
facto is another matter. At any rate, this correspon-
dent is rather atissue with his contem-
porary, " Sowry. Swipes." The one admits
the extravagant g inis of the brewer—the
other urges that they manufacture at a dead
loss. Both apologies cannot be true. It will not be
argumentatively endured that, of two classes of our
opponents, the one should admit the fact and
justify it upon principle, while the other surrenders
the principle by denying the fact. The brewers
must take their choice, and inform us whether they
consent to the doctrine that they are commercially
justified in charging what they please, or whether
they wish it to be understood that they aro brewing
at a loss—or, if at a profit, at what profit ?
And let it be distinctly understood that this is
not a question between the public and the pub-
licans, i. e., the retailers of beer, Far from it.
We believe that, as a class, they are especially op-
pressed by the existence, and the consequent prac-
tical monopoly, of brewers' houses, as well as by
the vices of the licensing system, and that they
are equally interested with the consumer in
the establishment of a free trade in beer.
The high price charged to the retailers is our

CABS AT SIXPENCE A MILE.--Mr. William
Thompson, of 16, Southampton- row, Russell-square, has
written to the editor of the Times:—Sir,—Seeing your lead-
ing article of this day, in reference to my advertisement on
the 3d instant, I beg to say that yesterday, the 25th, I
brought out my cabs at sixpence per mile, which I trust will
be satisfactory to the public."

In the early part of October, her Majesty's ship
Hogue, lying at anchor in the Tagus, a cry was raised of a
" man overboard." Mr. Crowdy, a midshipman of the ship,
was sitting in the gun-room, and on hearing it immediately
jumped out of one of the ports to save him. It being some
time before a boat could be lowered to pick up those strug-
gling in the water, both Mr. Crowdy and the seaman were
nearly exhausted, when Lieutenant Cave, and Mr. Robinson,
midshipman, also jumped overboard, and were fortunate
enough to rescue them from a watery grave.

SUSSEX MAYORS, 1851-2.—The following gentle-
men have been elected chief magistrates of the boroughs and
einque ports in Sussex, for the ensuing civic year, viz.:—
Arundel—Richard Holmes, Esq. Chichester-111 r. Alder-
man Gruggen. Hastings—Mr. Alderman Ilickes. Peven-
sey —J. W. Breton, Esq. Rye—Mr. E. S. Banks. Seaford—
Ur. Henry Simmons.—Sussex Papers.

EXTRAMURAL INTERMENTS.—At a meeting of the
vestry of St. Pancras, yesterday (Mr. Churchwarden Baker
in the chair), it was announced that the proposed measure
for extramural interments bad been abandoned by the Go-
vernment. Mr. Brettingham said that he was glad the
Government had abandoned the idea of becoming general
undertakers. This was a most opportune occasion for the
vestry to take the matter into their own hands, for, looking
at the crowded state of some of our churcnyards, it Was
most urgent that something should be speedily done. As ha
considered this question one of vast importance to the ex-
tensive and populous parish of St. Pancras, he would at once
move that the vestry should memorialise the Government for
power to take ground for the purpose of extramural inter-
ment. The resolution was unanimously agreed to.

KOSSUTH.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE SUN.
beg to send you the copy of a letter I have
addressed to the Times, and shall feel obliged if ycu
will give it a place in The Sun.—l have the honour
to be, Sir, your obedient, servant,
DUDLEY COWL TS STUART.
Literary Association of the Friends of
Poland, Susses. chambers, Dcke-street,
St. James's, Nov. 26, 1851.

TO THE EDITOR OE THE TIMES.
Sir—Having seen in your paper of the 13th inst. a
letter from Mr. Anstey, M.P., he which I am referred.
to by name, and in which the conduct of two bodies
to which I belong is called in question, I claim from
your justice the insertion of my answer.
Mr. Anstey has retired both from the committee
for managing the Polish and Hungarian Ball, and
from the Literary Association of the Friends of
Poland.
The grounds which he assigns for his retirement
are the impolicy of converting this annual festival of
a great national cause into a demonstration of any
one political partisan, and, above all, of arousing
against that of Poland and Hungary the of
all those to whom, on various grounds, the name of
M. Kossuth was obnoxious; the injustice to other
more illustrious exiles from Kuitayah in singling him
out for universal worship, and ignoring altogether the
existence of the rest ; and, finally, the vote of the
Hungarian Diet, iu 1848, for sending 40,000 soldiers
into Italy to help the Austrians to reconquer Milan--
a vote opposed strongly at the time by Count Teleki
and others of the Liberal party in the Diet, and only
carried through by the strong personal influence and
eloquence of M. Kossuth himself; who moved it.
With regard to the first objection, I have to say that
it was not the object of the committee to convert the
ball into a demonstration in favour of;any individual:
the object was to make it as conducive as possible to
the end proposed—that of relieving the distress of the
Polish and Hungarian exiles. With that object in
view, it has always been the practice to invite any
celebrated person happening to be in London to
attend such entertainments ; and just as Kossuth was
invited to Guildhall other distinguished persons have
been invited to entertainments given there, and at
other times, for similar purposes.
It was thought that in co-operating with the com-
mittee in their benevolent endeavours he would be
doing an act congenial to his feelings, honourable to
his character, and which could be offensive to none.
The ball, therefore, not being intended in any way
as a mode of doing him honour, Mr. Anstey's second
objection as to the injustice to other more illustrious
exiles from Kuitayah of singling him out for univer-
sal worship, and ignoring all the rest, has no applica-
tion and must fall to the ground; and on that point I
have only to say, that if the committee had known
the names of any refugees from Kuitayah more il-
lustrious than Kossuth they would have been very
happy to ask of those persons the same favour which
they asked of him.
As to the third objection, which is that Kossuth in
1848 moved a vote in the iet of 40,000 men to assist
the Emperor of Austria ,11 the war of Italy, I must
remark that even allow,ing Mr. Anstey's statement to
be correct, I cannot admit it to form any reasonable
ground for his w'ithdraw'ing his name from the ball
committee or I.rom the Polish Association. By the
invitation t.,0 the ball neither the committee nor the
associatfion committed themselves to approval of every
act of Kossuth's political career. Oa the act in
question there are various opinions, some blaming and
others cordially approving it; but clearly it was not
an act so decidedly immoral or injurious to the inte-
rests of those on whose behalf the ball was given as
to make it absurd or improper that the author of it
should be asked to a ball for their benefit.
Having thus disposed of Mr. Anstey's objections,
permit me to state in a few words the grounds on
which I have arrived at the conclusion that M. Kos-
suth's conduct with reference to the vote in question
was not merely justifiable, but highly commendable.
Consider for a moment the posture of affairs in Hun-
gary at the time when M. Kossuth delivered his cele-
brated speech of the 20:h July, 1848, printed by you
in extense in the Times of the 19th instant. At that
period Austria had made all the concessions which had
been so long and earnestly sought by Kossuth and his
partisans. The great measures for the commutation
of the corvees, and for the establishment of a Hun-
garian Ministry responsible only to the Diet, had not
merely received the Royal assent, and been confirmed
by the Emperor King in person at Presburgh, but in
the very Speech from the Throne on the 4th of July,
1848, to which the vote in question was an answer—
a speech delivered by the Archduke Stephen in the
name of the King, those persons had been branded as
calumniators who dared to hint that the consent of his
Majesty to these laws had not been voluntarily given,
or that their revocation was meditated by his Austrian
advisers. Was it not then incumbent on the men
whom: the King of Hungary had appointed his Mi-
nisters.in that country to take care that whilst the King
appeared, on the one hand, thus ready to meet the
wishes of the nation, the nation should, on the other,
perform with loyalty and exactitude the duties which
it owed to the King ?
Now the Pragmatic sanction, which became a law of
Hungary in 1723, and by which the ancient consti-
tution and liberties of that country werfesolemnly and
specifically confirmed, has always been interpreted as
imposing on the Hungarian nation the duty of de-
fending from foreign aggression the hereditary states
of the house of Austria. This was the view taken in
1741 by the Hungarian Diet, when the Queen of
Hungary, Maria Theresa, by virtue of the Pragmatic
sanction, claimed their aid against the combined forces
of France, Prussia, Saxony, and Bavaria, who bad
entered into an alliance for the purpose of depriving
her of her hereditary dominions. Could M. Kossuth, at
a moment when the sovereign had not only confirmed
all the existing rights of the Hungarian nation, but
had restored others which his predecessors had taken
away, have refused with any propriety to acknowledge
the obligations generally admitted to have been
imposed upon Hungary by the Pragmatic sanction?
Would it have been either justifiable or prudent in
him to do so ? It is true that doubts were rife as to
the good faith of the Government at Vienna ; but no
overt act of aggression against Hungary had at that
period been committed. Although Jellachich was
then in arms for the purpose of extorting from the
Hungarian Government a repeal of the union which
had subsisted for many centuries between Croatia and
Hungary, still all participation in his designs was
strenuously denied by the Court. It was not till
the 4th of September, 1848, that he was reinstated
in his dignities by a decree of the Emperor a few
days before he crossed the Drave and marched upon
Pesth. Surely wisdom as well as loyalty required
Kossuth to afford no pretext to the Austrian Mi-
nistry for declaring that Hungary had violated the
compact which bound her to the House of
Hapsburg. Even though such a step might
have been morally justified by the intrigues carried
on by the Court of Vienna with Jellachich and the
Serbians, it would at that period have been difficult
to furnish evidence of those secret transactions • and
what effect would an apparently unprovoked depar-
ture on the part of Hungary from the terms of the
Pragmatic sanction have produced on the more mo-
derate politicians in Hungary ? What impression on
the rest of Europe ? Admit even that such a depar-
ture was not merely justifiable, but that the justifi-
cation could have been made manifest, still I ask,
whether it would not have been most culpable in
Kossuth, by refusing the demand for assistance, to
have risked a rupture with Austria ? It is true that
on the 11th of July the Diet had decreed unanimously
a levy of 200,000 men. But on the 20th, notwith-
standing the unparalleled activity of Kossuth's admi-
nistration, this army must still have existed upon
paper only. Besides the Croats and the Serbs were
in arms on the southern frontier, whilst on the
northern the fidelity of the Slovacks was still doubt-
ful. Will Mr. Anstey venture to assert that it would
have been an act of " patriotism" on the part of Kos-
suth, surrounded as Hungary then was by enemies,
to have peremptorily refused the demand of Austria,
and thus have precipitated hostilities with another
and still more powerful opponent ?
If I have succeeded in showing that the interest of
Hungary required Kossuth to adopt some such line
of policy as that which he pursued, it only remains
to be considered whether the Italian patriots had just
grounds to complain of it. And here I would ob-
serve that it is not correct to speak of the inhabitants
of Lombardy as being in arms for the independence
of their country in July, 1848. On March 22t1 the
inhabitants of Milan had gallantly expelled from
Milan Radetzky and the Austrian garrison who oc-
cupied that city. The example of Milan was speedily
followed by other cities. But subsequently to that
period the brunt of the war in Lombardy was sustained
by Charles Albert. The union of Lombardy with
Piedmont had, indeed, been publicly proclaimed, but
a strong party in Lombardy openly disapproved of
that measure. On the 7th of July Lord Ponsonby
wrote to Lord Palmerston that the Austrians,ai
,
were persuaded King Charles Albert , b
great difficulties to apprehendfrom
causes besides the Austrian army." other
The war
was already stigmatised as " a king's war.,, A
very few weeks later, on the .sth of August, Charles
Albert was saved with difficulty from the fury of the
mob in Milan ; and, therefore, there is reason to be-
lieve that if the project of Kossuth,
so m uch reviled
by Mr. Anstey (instead of remaining as itdid a dead
letter), had been carried into effect; if, after the esta-
blishment of tranquillity and peace in Hungary—if,
after its moral and physical independence had been
secured, a Hungarian army had entered Italy for
the purpose of promoting a friendly compromise,
which should maintain, on the one hand, the honour
of the Throne, and, on the other, equally accord with
the constitutional freedom end reasonable wishes of
the Italian people—there is ground, I say, for believ-
ing that such an arrangement, not merely obtained
through the mediation, but guaranteed by the power,