The Sun.
London, England, 1860-12-31 00:00:00

ThE SUN, FLONDON:i MONDAY EVENING, DECEMBER 31, 1860.

The year opened, indeed, very darkly. Our
Great Ally commenced it by, we are sorry to
remind our read ors of it, the shabbiest piece of
policy of which he We ever been guilty. It is im-
possible, even at this astance of time, to think of
the seizure of Savoy and Nice without indignation
against the perpetrator, Lola profound pity for the
SOVEREIGN, whose heart must ache with the recol-
lection of it till life departs. The bribe to England
was the Commercial Treaty. With singular
consistency in inconsistency, the same monarch
bribes us, as well as his own country, to put
up with the equally shabby intervention at
Gaeta, and the perpetuation and extension of
his occupation of Italian territory at and around
Rome. The bribe is a liberal construction of the
tariff clauses of the treaty, and the abolition of
passports for Englishmen ! Thus the Liberator of
Italy began the year, and has ended it, in the same
spirit. Should not the New Year announce the
withdrawal of the French fleet from Gaeta, we
shall begin to believe that the surrender is, as
reported, to be to the French, and that the Italians
are to be told that strategic reasons connected with
the occupation of Rome, itself a piece of fraud and
insolence, require the French to hold Gaeta! But
will our Cabinet tolerate such knavery P What
should we say of such tricks if practised by
Chinamen P

We confess it lessens our pleasure in the eman-
cipation of Italy, thus far, to see the bit of LOUIS
NAPOLEON so rudely thrust into its mouth. Lord
Ram RUSSELL published his lectures to Prussia,
and to Sardinia; we should like to see his lecture
to the great delinquent, or has he none for him ?
Nevertheless Italy breathes more freely in spite of
him. At the commencement of the year,
FRANCIS 11. was the hardened young REHOBOAM
of Naples and Sicily; and at the end of it he is a
prisoner at Gaeta, the Emperor of the FRENCH
holding his hands on the maritime door of the
prison. All the Peninsula, except the small por-
tions occupied by the Liberator of 1859, and the
oppressor of half a century, being now its own
master. And, despite the dark machinations at
the Tuileries, we may hope that the New Tear
will shame even him out of his heartless and selfish
intervention.

Undoubtedly, however, the glory of the year has
been GARIBALDI and his deeds of daring. The
crooked policy of Emperors and Ministers will of
course find their place in the Annual Register; the
Kings and Ministers of the day ,Lre the necessary
pegs of history, but GARIBALDI will be the great
light of the year. His marvellous moral character,
in such bright contrast with the selfish ambition
and cunning of the crowned potentates, and his
military achievements, before which the battles of
1859 are but commonplace defeats anal victories,
will fill the page to which our own children and
remote posterity will turn: The mere story of his
departure in late spring for Sicily ; the capture of
Palermo and Messina ; the battle of Melazzo ; the
landing on the mainland, conquering or capturing
all who opposed him ; his advance, even before his
own troops, to the Despot's capital; his presenting
a kingdom to a constitutional King ; his slights
from those who were not exactly ungrateful, but
who yet set policy before gratitude ; his manly and
unrewarded retirement to his island farm—his
noble fidelity still to VICTOR EMMANUEL as the
honest Liberator of his country, and his threats
from his farmhouse to the proud oppressor in
Venetia—yes, the story of GARIBALDI will be the
story of 1860. In remoter ages it will be told with
that of CINCINNATUS and of WASHINGTON.

But what a year of perturbation has it been
north of the Alps. All Germany has been uneasy.
Meetings of Sovereigns at Baden, where the Dis-
quieter thrust himself in ; and at Warsaw, where
he did not dare to present himself uninvited, and
a manifesto in which he avenged himself by as.
suming the titles for himself alone, which they
thought belonged to them collectively—announc-
ing himself as the "Pacificator of Europe," and the

" Moderator of Revolutions,"—wore among- the

prominent displays of Royal fear. But the basis of
all this fear was not Louis NAPOLEON only. Him,
alone, they might have met. 1860 has been a year
of national rights asserting themselves, as they
have not done since 1848, but with this distin-

guishing characteristic—that the battle with cen•

tralisation, bureaucracy, suppression, and oppression
of nationalities, and despotism, is waged without

tumult and by passive assertion of right. In Italy
even, where the sword of the free was necessarily
unsheathed at the demand of those who longed for
freedom, too, yet there was much of the firmness

of conscious right. It was this which based the

schemes of the Arch-plotter, in the Duchies, in
Naples aad the Legations, and which compelled the
respect of Europe. But in Hungary, and in

other parts of the Austrian dominions, the struggle

has been one for law on the part of the

people, against persistency in Revolutionary Acts
on the part of the Government. This it is which

nqw makes the movement so irrepressible. Every

demand of the Hungarians is strictly legal ; they

ask least for their own ; the Government can oppose
to it nothing but revolution. If kept down, or not

yielded to, for a time, it has a germ of vitality
which no Imperial decrees, in substitution for legal

rights, can destroy. If the EMPEROR will not

give way now, he leaves for himself trouble for his

gray hairs, should he survive his treachery to see

hem.

And the movement is general. All tho other
provinces of Austria, emboldened by the example

of Hungary, laugh at every proposal, but that of

restoring what the Vienna statesmen have so long

striven to obliterate, their national mode of Govern-

went and Administration. Singularly, also, they
do this determining, in the case of the small na-

the arshitec' t—Captain MACKONICHIE, the bene-
volent reformer of criminals—ALFßED CHALON
and Sir W. C. Ross, the Royal Academicians—
LANDELL S, the engraver—JULLlEN, the musical-
caterer for the million in this country, one whom
we cannot but bear in remembrance as having been
in that capacity conspicuous among the number of
our popular benefactors—ALßEßT SMITH, the
most delightful humourist among our public lec-
turers—Mrs. JAMESON, the charming art-critic—
SPENCE, the entomologist—together with many
other well known• people too numerous, unhappily,
to be here particularised, have contributed thsir
long-familiar names to swell the interest of the
Obituary for the last twelvemonth.

The continental New Year's Eve is to mot
Englishmen quite as interesting a topic as their
own. Indeed, our apologists for this year's abor-
tive session have boldly asserted that the amount
of talk on foreign affairs—those of Savoy and Italy
especially—represented fairly the far greater interest
felt in the cause of liberty abroad, than in that of
extending our franchises at home. Be that as it
may, never for this twelve years has England looked
so hopefully abroad. The United States themselves;
by a bold stroke for emancipation from Southern
domination, have made 1860 a year to be noted by
the sincere friends of human liberty and progress ;
and even a petty Alahommedan power has felt the
impulse, and of all powers whom we could have
thou: ht of, the Bey of TUNIS comes forward to
liberalise his administration.