The Sun.
London, England, 1851-11-10 00:00:00

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.
DAILY NEWS.—The words Republic and Re-
publican are employed in the present discussion and
manifestation throughout continental Europe in two
vary different senses. In one signification it implies
a hatred, amounting to a horror, of existing princes,
d of all those who have broken feith with the people.
These absolute Sovereigns have all by wretched go•
:ernment forced their people to look for a remedy
in a constitutional reform; at the first outbreak they
have consented to their people's demands, sanctioned
them, and swore to them. And thus having first
toread their people to become constitutionelists, then
approved of their being so, and joined even as far as
Use moat solemn oaths in the establishment of such
eovernments, they have turned round, brought in the
military, overthrown the constitutions, shot, hanged,
mod prosecuted all those who abetted them. From
Yeples to Copenhagen this is the story of every Court
in Europe. And the mere filets are sufficient to make
every man of heart and feeling a Republican. And
such a school of republicanism as this has not only
taken root in Hungary and in Italy, but has spread
through Germany and the whole of Central Europe
with a rapidity and general accord, that may, in truth
give some colour to that general conspiracy which
Louis Napoleon denounces in his Message, but which
ries none of the attributes of conspiracy, being neither
secret nor confined to a few, but professed openly by
all the world except by the functionaries and the de-
pendents of the several Governments. To this almost
universal republicanism of sentiment prevailing
throughout Europe must be added the republicanism
of action ; that is, the general conviction amongst
capable and eminent men that the great resistance to
absolutism, and its final overthrow,: can only be
achieved by a great popular movement, by a rising of
the people under their own leaders, and not under the
guidance of either princes or aristocracies. All know
that the last movement in North Italy, and, indeed, in
all Italy, was given up to the guidance of the mo-
narchic, the aristocratic, the moderate constitutional
party in each state. Although this latter is the party
to which we ourselves feel most attached, we cannot
but admit that it failed in Lombardy, failed in Rome,
failed in Prussia ; and that the only brave resistance
was made by the democratic principle and move.
went. There was more political sense, and more
military talent in the defence of Rome, than in the
entire campaign of Lombardy. We must not be sur-
prised, then, if, after the experience of 1848 and 1849,
all those men, who look to the rescue of Europe from
absolutism and soldier law, seek it no longer in a con-
stitutional struggle or in civic resistance, but in a
wide, large, thorough democratic movement. Such
ere now the opinions of all continental liberals, and
such are the convictions of Mazzini and Kossuth: We
must confess ourselves unable to gainsay those argu-
ments, upon which their convictions are founded—un-
able to deny the facts or to question the necessity ;
and yet we must repudiate the name, if it be reproached
to us, of being republican. For however admitting
the justice of that sentiment in the soldier-ridden and
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soldier-devoured countries of Europe, as well as the
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for the establishment and working of a republic.
When we behold France, certainly the foremost of all
those countries in civilisation and enlightenment—
when we behold the French literally incapable of
making a fit choice of a president of their republic,
and this from the utter ignorance and incapacity
of the masses, as well as from the selfish and
petty views and rivalry of men in the upper classes
of society—when we see this in France, we
cannot but despair of Italians, or Germans, or Hun-
garians succeeding in any essay of republican ;go-
vernment. We entertain infinite admiration for Kos-
suth, and considerable respect for Mazzini ; and we
do not say but that both may be right in employing
the democratic lever to throw off the incubi that
weigh on both their countries, but we must say that
we totally disbelieve in the power or ability of either
to found a Hungarian or an Italian Republic. Kossuth,
indeed, is not wedded to the necessity of a republic.
When in Hungary he would have accepted from
Europe any constitutional Sovereign that the liberal
powers of Europe might have recommended. All he
desired to be rid of was the incurable despotism of the
Hapsburgs. Mazzini is more puritan in his repub-
licanism. He scouts the house of Savoy, constitutional
as its proves itself to be, quite as much as the
house of Hapsburg. And Mazzini in this opinion
is decidedly wrong and monstrously unjust.
The greatest misfortune that can Wall any coun-
try, is the disruption of all ties and all sympathy be-
tween the middle and the working classes. The
mere existence of such a schism is either a raging
civil war, or a state of things which is no better than
civil war. France at this moment offers the example
of a complete schism between the middle and work-
ing classes, that schism being kept from breaking into
civil war by the neutrality of the soldiery; 1792
offers an example of the same schism, overawed by
no army and by no authority. There is no one evil
that should so carefully be avoided by politicians,
whether Conservatives or Reformers, as this the
greatest of all. And when we see men like Mazzini,
or like the Red men of France, seeking to base their
power exclusively upon the lower classes, not in con-
junction with, but in opposition to, the class of in-
dustrious middle men of society, we dread the ten-
dency of these proceedings and this policy, as almost
certain to lead to the extreme of democracy in th e
first instance, and after no great lapse of time, to
that other extreme, which is antagonistic and de-
structive, not merely of democracy; but of all liberty
and of all progress.