The Sun.
London, England, 1860-07-21 00:00:00

SICILY.

The Opinione Nationale publishes the following
instructions from the Government of Sicily to its
envoys to foreign Powers—among whom are, as is
known, Prince de San Giuseppe for London, and
Prince de San Catalda for Paris:—
" Sicily, in throwing off the yoke of the Bourbonian
military occupation from which she suffered for eleven
years, returns to the full sovereignty of herself, which she
obtained by the revolution of 1848, when, after having pro-
claimed the deposition of the Bourbon dynasty, she called
a new Prince to the throne, when her commissioners were
received by the Governments of France, England, and Sar-
dinia, and when her flag was saluted by the two most
powerful navies in the Mediterranean.

" The violence of arms brought back the Bourbon Go-
vernment, which in law was illegitimate, and condemned
by the country, and which de facto was only a monstrous
tyranny, a veritable anachronism in the midst of existing
civilisation. To such an extent was this so, that it became
proverbial in Europe.
" The right and power of regulating her own destinies,
which violence alone took from her, our country now
justly resumes.
"In January, 1848, Sicily by ber own generous impulse,
entered the Italian movement commenced two years before
in Rome, Tuscany, and Piedmont, and from which the
Austrian and despotic policy of Ferdinand 11. had till then
excluded her.

" At that epoch in Italy, ideas did not go beyond a sys-
tem of local reforms and ameliorations for the different
Italian States, and the project of a league or confederation
of those States independently and freely constituted.

"The Sicilian revolution then based itself on the follow-
ing principles :-1. Restoration of the Constitution of 1812,
which the Bourbons had sworn to, but had violated,
whereby they had legally forfeited the throne. 2. Sicilian
independence, and separation of the island from the crown
of Naples. 3. The wish solemnly expressed to form part of
the Italian league or confederation, or an independent
State under her own King.
" Since that period events and opinions have made great
progress in Italy. The nation, in aspiring to resume her
place and importance in Europe, stopped at first at the idea
of a confederation of States, as the sole means which could
at that moment lead to her object as an intermediary phase
which would prepare her to obtain in a distant future com-
plete unity. At present she entertains the hope of arriving
much more quickly at this supremo object of her wishes.
" Besides, the project of a conferation or an alliance
which twelve years ago pleased and satisfied the public
sentiment, is now a material and moral impossibility, owing
to the decisive rupture which the courts of Rome and
Naples came with the national cause and idea, after the
disappearance of the petty States forming the centre of the
Italian Peninsula.

" It is clear that Italy, desiring a free and independent
existence among modern nations, has henceforth only one
means of salvation; grouping her different States around
the glorious monarchy of Savoy, which personifies her na-
tional life, force, and dignity. Apart from that she would
only find a renewal of the domination of Austria, the bar-
barism of blind and cruel Governments, the discord and
weakness of small populations abandoned to their internal
discords, and to the schemes and influence of foreign coun-
tries.

"The same feeling that impelled Lombardy to hail with
joy the triumph of the allied armies, which threw it into the
arms of Victor Emmanuel, which induced Tuscany, the
Legations, and the Duchies spontaneously to vote their
union under the sceptre of that magnanimous prince—the
same feeling which now glows in every heart of a great
nation from the Alps to the promontory of Llybeum (now
Cape Boeo) is that which animates Sicily. Now she is her
own mistress, Sicily desires, as she always did, to remain
Italian, and that is why, rejecting all thought of an indivi-
dual political separation, which would be in discord with
the new era and modern requirements, she is determined to
form part of that glorious national monarchy of which
civilised Europe now hails the rise as a new basis of order,
equilibrium, repose, and progress for the world. Sicily/
replaced by violence under the yoke of the Neapoli-
tan Government, could only be in the future (as in
the past) a permanent danger for the peace of Italy

and Europe. And if, previously, the barrier which
morally separated the island from the Bourbons of Naples
was unsurmountable, how cam a reconciliation be deemed
possible after the late events, after the horrors of the exist-
ing war, when the Neapolitan Government has just left the
country deluged with blood, sacked, and half destroyed ?
"Sicily, standing alone, would be in flagrant contradic-
tion with lhe movement of agglomeration and assimilation
now in operation throughout the rest of Italy. She would
be too weak, unaided, to resist the attack of any great
State, and would be exposed to fall a prey to foreign in-
vaders. Besides, the choice of a king to govern
Sicily alone would be a source of infinite difficul-
ties and complications, owing to the inveterate
hatred of the people for the Neapolitan dynasty,
and to the jealousy and mistrust which the choice of a
prince of any other house would occasion among the great
Powers of Europe. Concord now prevails in Sicily, as in
1848 ; it reigns in every commune, among all classes of the
people, without exception or difference.
" The fraternal and very natural aid which the Conti-
nental provinces, under the orders of General Garibaldi,
and in the name of the common country, lent to the insur-
rection in the island, ,has only assured the triumph of
the great principle of unity, in the name of which all
Sicily rose in arms and rushed to combat. The volun-
teers who came from the Continent to shed their blood
in the island were astonished to find the feeling
in favour of national unity so strong and ardent.
It is probable that an assembly of representatives
will soon meet at Palermo to give legal expression to the
will of Sicily ; also that the people will be convoked in their
comitia to vote by universal suffrage, as was done in Tus-
cany and Emilia. In neither case can there be the least
doubt of the result.

" With these instructions you will receive the numbers
of the Official Journal containing the acts of the dictature
of General Garibaldi from his first landing in the island.
If needful, you will state the extreme necessities which ac-
company a bloody revolution in a country subjected for
years to a brutal and corrupting tyranny, in a country
where the old institutions have terminated in one sudden
crash; and in presence of these necessities you will show
the urgency of prompt and energetic remedies. It is un-
necessary to recommend you to keep our Government accu-
rately informed of the dispositions you may encounter with
respect to the Italian cause both in official spheres and in
public opinion."