The Sun.
London, England, 1860-08-31 00:00:00

shall say to the contrary ? Everything in fact
points to probability of the reinstalmeßt in power
of the once Governor of Hungary. Everything of
late—but nothing more directly than this very de-
monstration in his favour on the part of a secluded
section of the Italian population ! What does that
demonstration indicate—of what is it demonstra-
tive ? It indicates as plainly as any popular move-
ment ever indicated anything,that the hatred against
the Austrian rule south of the Carpathian range is
altogether inextinguishable. It is demonstrative
of the fact that the Liberation of Lombardy from
that rule is merely preliminary to a series of kindred
acts of national emancipation. Venetia must follow
in the wake of Lombardy. The pear is ripe—and
being ripe,must fall as inevitably as NEWTON'S apple,
by the sheer force of the universal law of gravitation.
At the first breeze it will fall—at the first breeze ?
And yonder, in the south of Italy, there is advanc-
ing irresistibly northwards the simoom, the tornado,
the whirlwind of the rising of the whole Italian
multitude! GARIBALDI "riding" and "directing"
it in its triumphal progress through Sicily, across
the straits of Messina, into Calabria, onward from
the kindred base of ./Etna to the sympathetic
foot of Vesuvius !

It is no mere meaningless ovation, this ardent
greeting of KOSSUTH by the Italian population of
Bellagio. As we have already remarked here in
our first sentence, it is a reception that is at once
suggestive and opportune. It is wondrously
and admirably opportune, remembering the
actual state of things at this juncture, at
the opposite extremity of the Roman peninsula. It
is vividly and startlingly suggestive, bearing in mind
the situation in which Austria is just now placed,
in the full glow of the observation, alike of all the
greater and lesser powers of Christendom. Hum-
bled before Italy, before Europe in the memorable
campaign of 1859—stripped ignominiously of the
most beautiful and the most precious of all her trea-
sured provinces, that province of which the fair
city of Milan is the crown and the capital—driven
back defeated at every step, from the borders of
Piedmont to the boundaries of the Quadrilateral—
shorn of her military prestige in three or four
pitched battles, and all but routed in the
final conflict at Solferino—Austria has (ever
since the untoward concessions made to
her by the French EMPEROR at Villa-
franca) held but by a precarious tenure—the
Quadrilateral itself—the province of Venetia—the
Kingdom of Hungary.
Is it not notorious that but for the premature
and abrupt termination of the late Italian War of
Independence—the very next move in development
of that grand and glorious scheme of emancipation
—the very next move was to have been the summon-
ing to arms by KOSSUTH of the heroic people of
Hungary ! The ex-Governer, the sometime libera-
tor of Hungary, was there at the seat of war in
Northern Italy—ready to give the preconcerted
signal to his countrymen. He had hastened thither
from his ten years' seclusion in his place of exile in
England. The Imperial Commander-in-Chief iiof
the combined armies of France and Sardinia was
understood to have arranged with the illustrious
chief of the Magyars the very time and the very
manner in which he was to make that terrible diver-
sion which would (had it only been carried out
according to this dexterous prearrangement) have
carried confusion into the councils of the Austrian
EMPEROR, and have completed the discomfiture of
his army and of his Government. Whether or no
the victim of imperial duplicity, Kossum was at
the very eleventh hour baulked in hif ambition.
The signal-horn—not only in his grasp, )ut actually
at his lips—was dashed to the dust upon the morrow
of Solferino, by the news of that disastrous inter-
view of the French and Austrian Emperors at
Villafranca, with its consequent armistice ripened
in the fullness of time into a treaty of pacification !
Since then KOSSUTH has wisely withdrawn into
honourable retirement. During the chief part, if
not during the entire interval of time that has
subsequently elapsed, he has withdrawn from
European observation as a sojourner in Switzer-
land. He has now reappeared upon the stage of
public events, and reappeared there effectively and
conspicuously. It augurs ominously for Austria
that the period of GARIBALDI'S triumphal march
upon Naples should be the time, and that Northern
Italy should be the scene, of KOSSUTH'S reappear-
ance. The coincidence, however, if sinister for the
Austrian Government, is auspicious in a singular
degree for the whole mass of the Italian population.

With despots it always seems, in times of a little
difficulty, to be " Double or quits." When those
outside can easily see how a little reasonable yield-
ing might give them a long and pleasant lease of
all the power that mortals can need over others,
they know not how to bend. Every one, not only
English liberals, but even their brother despots,
could see the position of the late and of the present
King of NAPLES, and the very representative of the
Hapsburgs himself counselled moderation a little in
tyranny. But neither father nor son could see the
desperate game he was playing. Not one lash
would either tear from his scourge, not one turn less
would he give to his rack, not one of his police
fiends would he dismiss—till now the pride must
break which refused to bend, and FRANCIS 11, must
be an unpitied exile—an exile for whom all men
feel that such a commutation of his punishment is

oo great a mercy.
Will it be the same with FRANCIS JOSEPH ? He
could advise his brother despot ; can he advise him-
self ? A short time will now show. At first he
seemed to interpret aright the lesson of Solferino.
Promises were made of proposals shortly to be
offered, which should satisfy all. But most unfortu-
nate was the beginning. The first attempt was the
famous patent of last September, so plausible
at first sight, but soon perceived by the Hungarians,
to whose Protestant Churches it professed to give
the liberties they demanded, to be a designed viola-
tion of the national rights of their churches. So
plain was the object, that Catholics joined earnestly
with Protestants in resisting what was, to so large
an extent, a denationalising of Hungary. The
political scheme which followed was equally felt to
be a "mockery and a snare ;"—a " delusion," it
hardly pretended to be. It gave to the several pro-
vinces, or rather nationalities, of the Empire, several
councillors each, in an enlarged Reichsrath, or
Council of State; and these were, in the first in •
stance at least, to be nominated by the EMPEROR.
Hungary laughed the proposal to scorn. Not one
of her most distinguished men, however conserva-
tive their politics, would incur the odium of accept-
ing the Imperial nominations ! With immense
difficulty several men of humbler position were at
last induced, by promises of liberal procedure in the
council, to accept the post of councillors ; with the
eyes, however, of their countrymen very sharply in.
deed upon them. The Government soon found it, even
with a council imperially nominated, necessary to to-
lerate an unwonted freedom of debate, and the publi-
cations, too, of the debates. It was also compelled to
concede to the council that grand instrument of
liberty, the discussion and authorisation of the
Imperial Budget.
And now, we learn, the Council has accomplished
its most important work—the drawing up, by a
commune of twenty-one, a programme for the. ad-