The Sun.
London, England, 1860-01-28 00:00:00

FRANCE AND SA TOY.

The Patric of yesterday publishes the following
article :

" It is not a shift or provisional arrangement
which France is now following up in Italy. The
late campaign has given her the right, and has
almost imposed upon her the duty, of founding in
the Italian Peninsula a permanent work with every
condition of stability. Italy was a perpetual cause
of disorder ; it was a European malady. That
malady wants a radical cure. It was no longer a
nationality; it was a volcano. This volcano must
be distinguished. What means were best suited to
obtain this desirable result ? Nothing better could
have been done than what has been done—that is
to say, to ask from geography, language, history,
their opinion, expressed by the popular wish.
" To superficial minds the popular wish, though
often repeated, is simply a fiction. To clear-sighted
minds, to historians worthy of the name, to M. Au-
gustin Thierry, for instance, the popular instinct,
resisting all circumstances and traversing the most
various phases without losing anything of its power,
is history itself. The present condition of Italy
gives us a striking example of this truth. Left to
themselves, the populations endeavour to realise
the conceptions of the diplomacy of two centuries,
conceptions which were only violently interrupted
in 1815, when the spirit of hatred and the spirit of
retaliation took the place of skill and prudence.
" In a remarkable article published in the Revue
des Deux Hendee of the 15th of July last, M. St.
Mare Girardin called to mind that at the end of the
17th century, and before the vicissitudes of the
Spanish war, England and Holland had no more
wish than France to abandon Italy to Austria. It
is known,' he observes, that before the will of
Charles 11., which gave the whole Spanish monar-
chy to the grandson of Louis XIV., treaties of par-
tition of that succession, always on the point of
being mooted, had been made between France,
England, and Holland.'
" We have nothing to do to-day with the con-
tents of the first of those treaties of partition, but
let us consider what was contained in the second,
under date the 17th of March, 1700. The Archduke
Charles of Austria, afterwards Emperor Charles
VI., was called upon to take the inheritance of the
Spanish monarchy, especially Southern Italy,which
was given to the Dauphin. As regards the Duchy
of Milan, it was not to be given either to the Dau-
phin or to the Archduke : it was allotted either to
the Duke of Lorraine, who was then to hand over
Lorraine to France, or to the Duke of Savoy, who
was then to make over Savoy and the county of
Nice to France.

" The same attraction which draws through his-
tory the Milanene territory into the arms of Pied-
mont draws Savoy and the county of Nice into the
arms of France. In this point of view, it may bo
said that if the cession of Lombardy to Pied-
mont is an aggrandisement, it is not, properly
speaking, a conquest. The event had been long
foreseen and desired, and the delegates of the
Milanese municipality who came to offer the keys
of the city of Milan to King Victor Emmanuel in
the camp of the Emperor Napolean 111. did not
obey the pressure of victory, but sentiments of old
standing, and sympathies consecrated by centuries.
"IR like manner, when, in 1792, Montesquiou
was ordered to occupy Savoy, he did not enter as a
conqueror, but as a friend, and M. Anselm Petetin,
whom we quote first with pleasure in this question,
has said with truth—' fhe entrance of Montesquiou
into Savoy was not an invasion ; it was a festival.'
" Again, in the same year, 1792, when General
D'Anselme was ordered by the Convention to make
the conquest of Nice, the town, though provided
with formidable artillery, surrendered on the first
summons; and the corporation of Nice proceeded
to the head-quarters of General D'Anselme to sup-
plicate him to occupy the town to maintain order.

"In fact, the country of Nice had long been
French like Savoy. It was so profoundly French
that it had no difficulty in becoming a French de-
partment, and since the last separation, since 1815,
at each political subversion, Nice experienced a
deluded hope that she would become, by the aid of
treaties, that which she really is by her heart and
aspirations. _

" Does it not, moreover, suffice to cast a glance
upon the map to understand that it is a fragment
e.tetached from our territory ? Does not a glance on
the map suffice to show that on the day when
France shall have the frontier of the Alps on the
side of Savoy she will, logically, want the maritime
Alps ? Treaties made in hatred to France may have
decided otherwise, but they have outraged geo-
graphy, and diplomacy in 1815 was in flagrant
opposition to nature. A wise and enlightened policy
will re-establish the proper state of things. No
obstinacy will be shown in separating territories
connected by so many bonds. Like Savoy, the
County of Nice will again become French, and that
great nation called France will no longer have for
frontier a rivulet called the Var."

(From the Times.)

" Her Majesty's Government have received no
information as to the negotiations stated by the
Ministerial journals in Paris to exist between
France and Sardinia for the annexation or the
Duchy of Savoy and the County of Nice to the
dominions of the Emperor of the French." Such is
the answer of Lord Granville to the inquiry of the
Marquis of Normanby upon a subject which has at
present assumed no official shape, and which exists
only in rumours and conversation and newspaper
articles—just as the Italian question did thirteen
months ago, or as the fate of the Pope did only a
very few weeks since. Her Majesty's Government
know of no such design as that of annexing Savoy
and Nice to France. At the same time it happens,
by a singular coincidence, that the Government of
France has been long acquainted with the opinions
of our Government upon any such arrangement ;
and from the tone in which the fact is communi-
cated we may conclude that Napoleon 111. has not
been encouraged by the English Cabinet to indem-
nify himself for his disinterested exertions in fa-
vour of the unity of Italy by adding to the French.
Empire an important portion of an Italian king-
dom. Of course, the French Emperor has no such
design, for, if he had, considering the intimate
bonds of friendship which bind him and us to-
gether, and the frankness of his disposition, he
would have told Lord Palmerston or Lord John
Russell what his intentions were, and Lord Gran-
ville would not have been left in ignorance of any-
thing so important as a formed plan for the parti-
tion of the kingdom of Sardinia. If the Emperor of
the French has said nothing, it is, of course, be-
cause he means nothing. If her Majesty's Govern-
ment has no information, it is, of course, because
there is nothing to be informed about. The House of
Lords, upon Lord Granville's answer, immediately
" dropped the subject," and adjourned. In the
exercise of proper courtesy and credulity, and self-
restraint, all the diplomatists, and senators, and
journalists of Europe ought perhaps to do likewise.
It is, notwithstanding, a disquieting symptom
that the French press is applying itself so sedu-
lously to teach us the history of Savoy and of the
county of Nice. The Paris newspapers are very
anxious to fix upon our attention what happened
to those pieces of territory previous to 1815—pre-
vious to those "treaties made in hatred of France,
in violence of geography and diplomacy, and even
in flagrant opposition to nature herself." There is
just now a very suspicious desire to remind Europe
how, in 1792, when Montesquieu was charged with
the office of occupying the Duchy of Savoy, he was
received rather as a friend than as an invader, and
how his progress was a fete rather than a hostile
occupation. However little we may happen to
care for such memories, it is insisted that we shall
call to mind how in is same year 1792 General
D'Anselme, who was sent by the French Conven-
tion for that purpose, took possession of the county
without opposition, the city itself, notwithstanding
its formidable artillery, surrendering upon the first
summons, and the municipal body going forth to
the revolutionary army, and begging them to come
in and keep order. We are called upon to believe
that what Montesquiou and D'Anselme did with
the armed Sans Culottes of those days was so just
and natural, and so in accordance with the feelings
of the inhabitants of Savoy and Nice, that these
people have never ceased to long for those times
back again. Not only are we asked to believe all
this, but the map of Europe is unrolled before us,
I and we are requested just to cast one glance at it,
and then say whether Nice is not conspicuously a
piece of French territory, and whether it is not
manifestly absurd that a great country like France
should be bounded by a contemptible little brook
like the Var ? And then Savoy ! The mountains
of Savoy are as evidently the natural boundary of
France as is the—we were going to say the mid
channel of the Rhine; but the appeal to geography
and nature is not at this moment pressed to its
legitimate end. When France has the city of Nice