The Sun.
London, England, 1856-07-21 00:00:00

in a manner by no means auspicious to his own
interests, or the continuance of the dynasty he
has so earnestly endeavoured to perpetuate. The
question now rests between Queen ISABEL' A and
her people, and none but the legitimate parties
can be suffered to participate in the s):ution of
the great problem.

In nine cases out of ten popular instinct is

ike the first decisions of conscience—right, far

more generally right than the elaborate decisions
of cabinets and diplomatists. There is a great
deal of coyness just now amongst our Parliamen-
tary orators on the Intervention question ; none
like openly to say, " force if nothing else will
do ;" or at least to say it in so firm a tone as to

brace the nerves of the Foreign Secretary and his
Premier. They hope, and hope, and hope, for
the twentieth time, that moderate counsels will
prevail—that Imperial Majesties and Royal Ma-a

esties will learn wisdom from the very polite

wisdom of other majesties and their servants

" Representations" are the artillery with which
royalties play their game, while Austrian regi-
ments are pouring down the Alps and inundating
half Italy, and while, as a French officer tells us,
the cannon of Naples are pointed at the city !

Properly enough, for the enemies of the modern
TIBERIUS are his own subjects, and enemies they
must be to the monster who has incarcerated
POERIO and half killed him with chains, after a
trial to which those of JEFFRIES were justice
itself ; and who is now by threats, by suborna-
tion, by perjury, and by bribery, seeking to in-
carcerate scores of victims mere, not for crimes
even against such laws as Naples has, but for the
dark suspicions of himself or his myrmidons.
This Royal nuisance has dared to defy' the mo-
dest suggestions of France and England, and with
reason enough to bid Austria, who, wo are told,
read him a lecture on judicial decency "to sweep
before her own door." The reason for this inso-
lence cannot well be doubted. Ho is quite sure
that the Western Allies will not invade his
tryranuy with other troops than sheets of fool-
scap ; and ho therefore has little scruple in letting
them know how much he cares for what they
scribble upon it. Very different would be his re-
plies if he had to turn his cannon seaward, and saw
the muzzles opposite of some of the broadsides
which we reviewed the other day at Portsmouth.
New while Secretaries and Kings are playing out
this paper game, we fancy the people of this
country have a shrewd suspicion that they could
very soon settle the business—could make Aus-
tria, and Naples too, as meek as lambs, and
wheel the Neapolitan cannon either round to the
sea, or off the batteries altogether. They re-
member how Lords JOHN RUSSELL and PALMER-
STON behaved in 1830, and in 1849 ; that by
diplomatic silence or courtesy they winked at the
incorporation, the laceration rather and devouring,
of Poland by NICHOLAS ; and at his trampling
Hungary again under the feet of Austria. They
knew that firmness then would have saved us the
cost and the horrors of the recent War. At the
same time our Ministers also connived at the in-
tervention of Austria in the Legations of Modena
and Tuscany, and at that of the French in Rome.
This connivance at intervention by others, this
international cowardice, is now avenged on us by
all we have just paid and suffered; the people now
understand that connivance at tyrants' intervention
is a most costly and cruel thing to ourselves, as
well as to the oppressed. Sooner or later English
blood and money must be squandered to rectify
the mischief.
Oh I. but intervention is a delicate matter
Would you have us go to war again ? By all
means if necessary, but necessary it will never be
if we be only decided in time. The curse of the
whole business is, the vile policy which treats
peoples as ciphers, and Royalties only as realities.
With the Whig doctrine on their lips, that Go-
vernment is to be for the good of the governed,
not of the governors, our Whig practice has
always been to let the Governments run their
course ; and when the people, finding the Govern-
ment to have deprived them of almost all the
good which civilised freemen care about, have but
resisted, to fold their arms while Russia, Austria,
or France have re-established anEinperor, a Pope,
or a Duke or two, at the point of the bayonet.
Austria insolently proclaims her determination
to intervene at the demands of any tottering des-
pot, and to save him from making good laws and
ruling by them. What is the proper counter-
part to this ? A proclamation by England that
she too will intervene, but at the call of the
people, if any despot intervene at the call o
another. It is England's part to say,
sympathise with oppressed peoples ; we know
you sympathise with their oppressors, when the
latter have made the evils of revolution more
tolerable than longer submission, we insist, and
will support our decision if you compel us by
force, that the oppressor and oppressed still fight
it out between them. We should like to fight for
the people, but we shall abstain from doing it if
you renounce your odious claim to fight for any
incarnation in a modern form of the old CALIGULAS,
DOMITIANS, and HELIOGABALUSES. If Neapoli-
tans, for instance—resist King BOMBl—hands off!
or we visit Naples, Trieste, and Ancona ; and
take Sicily under our naval care and into our
hands entirely. And as to the Middle and North
of Italy if you do quit, after your seven years'
infliction; we too shall intervene somewhere."
Now we are confident that deoision to this pur-
port would settle the business. BOMBS. dare not
go on if Austria were kept behind the Po at her
peril, and the Legations and Duchies would soon
square matters with their rulers, if the brave
fighters with 'unarmed citizens, the bullies of
Vienna wore taught to keep at home. We de-
mand no intervention, but we demand it in behalf
of peoples as well as of despots ! We must re-
verse the ignominious Whig and Tory policy
which has disgraced us since the Treaty of Vienna,
and let the incurables know that Holy Allianc3
counsels shall override those of England no longer.
We shall be asked by what test are we to distin-
guish the call of a people for succour ; a govern-
ment we know ;—how we can tell the wish of a
people but by their governments? Now, will any
sane man pretend that we did not know the
wishes of Hungarians, Romans, Neapolitans,
Sicilians, and numerous Germans in 1848-9 ?
Why, we knew them by the very concessions
which they extorted from their tyrants, as well
as we know what our ancestors wanted from the
perjured STUARTS. We turned them out by a
foreign intervention sought by the people. Had
WILLIAM 111. been a red-tapist of course he
could not have ventured to intervene. There is
one infallible test, however, of unendurable mis
rule, and that is revolution. In no country of
Europe now could agitators get up an insurrcc-
tion against a really beneficial rule. Revolution
is always a proof that the thousands who prefer
their daily business to everything would rather
jeopardise it than live on beneath the yoke. All
revolutions convict the Government they would
subvert of having first subverted the rights of the
people for whose sake they should govern.
How long, then, is the wretched Holy Alliancel
Coburg, Court, and despot plan of non-interven-
tiou for people, and prowpt intervention for

"we