The Sun.
London, England, 1860-03-13 00:00:00

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THE SUN.
LONDON, TUESDAY, MARCH 13, 1860.

ITALIAN INDEPENDENCE.

We have just received through the rapid medium
of Mr. REUTER'S telegrams the decision of the
votes for annexation to Piedmont in the following
places. This is a happy augury of the other parts,
and NAPOLEON may thank his stars that the thing
is settled so far.

LEGHORN, MARCH 13.
The following is the result of the voting in
Sienna, Pisa, and Leghorn :
For annexation to Piedmont ..
For a separate kingdom

38,026 votes.
333 „

Majority for annexation ..37,693 „
The number of persons inscribed on the lists is
45,218.

Whatever may be the undercurrents running
between NAPOLEON and Count CAVOUR on the
vexed question of Saxony, Tuscany, and other points
in doubt, we cannot fathom, but the following may
throw some light on the matter :

" It is not easy to ascertain whether there really is
an understandingbetween the Imperial Government
and M. CAVOUR; or whether the disapprobation
expressed by the former of the acts of the latter is
not simulated. The easy transfer to France of
Savoy might be evidence of a foregone conclusion,
while the line followed by the Sardinian Minister
in respect to Tuscany is an outward and visible
sign of independence, and indifference to counsel and
authority hardly expected from one in his position.
Be this as it may, it is believed by some that
CAYOUR is playing a game on the complete suc-
cess of which it would be hazardous to specu-
late. We hear that Piedmont is busy with mili-
tary preparations, and it is inferred that the
annexation of Tuscany will be followed, as soon
as possible, by another blow for Venetia, and the
complete exclusion of every Austrian from the
Mincio to the Adriatic. The French army in Lom-
bardy some time ago received orders to be ready
to march at the first notice, and would, probably,
have marched by this but for the intervention of
M. CANOUR. What form that intervention has
taken I cannot say. M. CAVOUR, perhaps, thought
that his design of once, more trying for Ve-
nitia would be difficult of realisation if the
French army had previously returned to France.
If the French evacuated Italy, it might not
be easy to get them back again ; if they re-
mained in Lombardy, when a collision took place it
would be difficult to keep them out of the conflict—
againstthe Austrians, probably; against the Italians,
impossible- At least so reasoned and calculated
the energetic inu AT. •
ster of VICTOR EMMANUEL.
But the question as to whether the Emperor of the
FRENCH is cognisant of the project, and whether
he secretly approves or disapproves, is one of
which time can only give
us the solution. The
order for the recall of the French army has, as I have
said, been countermanded, and after a communica-
tion from M. CAVOUR. Is it in Consequence of a
declaration
from that Minister that
ghaemhsat sre-
nounced for the present his designs .
Aus-
tria ?"

The abolition of the paper duty was last night
decided by a vote of 245 to 192—that is, that it
is better to keep the income-tax addition of
on, making it tenpence in preference to keeping on
the paper duty. Well, be it so. As Mr. MILNER
GIBSON frankly told the House—the repeal of the
paper duty was a boon to the cheap press, without

which it must ultimately perish, for people
cannot long afford to sell things cheaper than
they can buy them. The right hon. gentleman said
what was really too true, that the duty was ob-
noxious on several points, but most of pli on his
own darling protigees—the cheap pr,- s ; but he
did not tell the whole truth with respect to it. He
did not own that repeal would not benefit the public
generally, so far as the cheap press was concerned,
for the penny papers would still be sold at a penny,
and the proprietors would pocket the duty if the
paper-makers would let them ! But that was
a question between PETER and PAUL—if there was
anything to be got out of the public revenue every
one has as good a right as another to get his share,
and as much more as he could, wholly regardless
of the public morality, which is perfectly unheeded
where it interferes with private advantage.
The duty is three halfpence, and if that be divided
into farthings, or half farthings, or even into cents
—coins not yet legalised here—the cheapness of a
paper cannot be made cheaper by any one of these
denominations being subtracted from its published
price. Those who have to pay the duty now—the
paper makers—are merely local sub-excisemen, who
receive the duty from the consumers of paper and
hand it over to the Excise Inland Revenue Depart-
ment. Now, these gentlemen paper makers, like the
leather sellers, wish to look at the money, before
the delivery, and they suddenly find that the
article of paper or rags has advanced in price all
at once from an apprehension of sudden scarcity,
and so they want to secure the falling duty just
like the leather manufacturers, who imagined, or
wished the public to believe, that a murrain bad
got among the cattle, or they had run away, and
leather would be very scarce !—so scarce that a
pair of gentleman's boots would be only three-
halfpence cheaper on thirty stillings l—just
the duty on paper per pound. This rea-
soning it was, no doubt, that gave rise
to the familiar axiom of—" there's nothing like
leather P'—and now it may have a twin brother
axiom in the shape of there's nothing like paper !
for we have clutched the duty !!

We fear that the Chancellor of the Exchequer,
however eloquent in prose, will not be able to
bring down his tropes and figures to suit the
market of expectation in his paper -speculations
—no, not even with the help of Mr. GIBSON nor
with that of Lucifer of the Morning Star com-
bined.

But eventually we have no fear that the repeal
will prove a real public benefit. It will relieve
the paper manufacturers of the odious and vexa-
tious inquisition of the Excise—and it will open
up the trade generally, but will not revive the
little paper mills by the rivulets of Arcadia,
as Mr. GLADSTONE so poetically fancied in
his romantic revelry of " ideas" which have un-
fortunately been worn to " rags" in happier
days!

Mr. GIBSON says that if the duty were to be re-
tained we should have to get a bill introduced
to define what paper actually was, and that
too after we had been swimming in oceans of
pulp for a long century of decomposed rags !
The penny paper is at the bottom of the duty—and
its repeal may yet save the sharpers from their
doom. We shall next have papers sold for less
than their worth, and the world will be all the
wiser, if not the happier, for a knowledge of their
gains. We have ourselves assisted in the advocacy
for the repeal of the taxes on knowledge with a
heartiness as fervid as Mr. Gissores, but we did not
suppose that we were thereby endeavouring to
bring in speculators . sell papers, for a
time, cheaper than they could buy their materials
honestly.

Our great Ally can do very little things. The
Jess because they are done in cool blood. All the
world readily forgave his acts of terror after the
affair: Every individual felt that to be the
r4a4 for bombshells might well excuse a few panic
movements in any one. We forgave, because we
were all conscious that, in the same situation, we
might all need forgiveness for the same follies.
But the follies just disclosed by yesterday's tele-
grams admit of no excuse. The veriest Bonapartist
must be ashamed of them. The tergiversation, the
shifting of ground for an obviously selfish purpose,
the playing fast and loose with principles which
had been so long and loudly proclaimed while they
served imperial ends—are all worthier of the worst
Old Bailey witness, and the most unscrupulous Old
Bailey advocate, than of an Emperor, who we may
suppose would have some concern for the appear-
anoe of honour, whatever care he had about the
reality.
No reader of the newspapers, and of extracts
from the Moniteur and from the laudations of
Parisian and of Manchester Imperialists, needs be
told that Universal Suffrage, and especially in the
choice of a governor and government, has been the
boast of Louis NAPOLEON and of the Empire.
" The Elect of Eight Millions " has been his
favourite motto ; and if the election were a bona
fide one, the boast was thoroughly legitimate. No
one need also be told that the avowed object of the
Italian war was the liberation of Italy, and the
complete expulsion of the Austrians. The failure to
accomplish the last has now been almost forgiven.
More noble and glorious had the achievement been
complete ; but it was felt that a monarch was at
liberty to take account of the effusion of his sub-
jects' blood, and if he thought the prize would cost
too many lives, to retreat. The right of nations,
however, to choose their rulers and their govern-
ment by universal suffrage, and the liberation of
Italy as the object of this war, remained the pro-
minent features of Imperial boasts and declarations.
Both these principles the EMPEROR now shuffles
with, like a card-sharper. He does not recant—
that would be too manly ignominy. He refines, dis-
tinguishes, equivocates—enacts, indeed, the Im-
perial black-leg.
e please,
" in
()n
The proof is not far to seek. "Z
his vocabulary, must at least mean the right, by
universal suffrage, to be governed as weib i
pr tn
this ground he maintains, and his friends at Bir-
mingham and Manchester maintain for him, that
France is free. The Central States of Italy, to be
" liberated," must have the same privilege as
France. For some time the EMPEROR did not
object to this view. He only objected that
the elections by which annexation to Sardinia
was voted were not decided by universal suf-
frage, and he asked for a second election on that
Napoleonic principle. He had a Napoleonic
reason for this. The illiterate peasantry, he well
knows by experience, are at the mercy of the
priests. In his own election, by purchasing the
priests and the army, he secured at once the votes
of millions and the swords of the Pretorians. In
Tuscany, at least, perhaps in the other States, he
long supposed the priests would be able to turn the
confessional into an instrument for obtaining a
popular vote hostile to annexation to Piedmont.
While this seemed probable he asked only a " second
vote," through the ballot and universal suffrage.
Now, throughout all this, he could profess that
he was not enacting the Dictator in Italy. " The
people(he said) have not been tested, but only the
upper sections of them. I am the Liberator of Italy,
not of the middle and upper classes of Italy only/