The Sun.
London, England, 1867-01-17 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TigEs.—Strongly interested as we have been at
all times in the full success of the national cause in
Italy, we have, however, always looked upon the
mere expulsion of the Austrians as the beginning,
not the end, of the work of emancipation. Not only
was Rome not to be built in a day, but the mere
digging of the foundations for the new city walls
would take considerable time. The Italians are now
fairly launched. All that material or moral aid
from abroad could do for them has been done.
Henceforth they can only rely upon their own exer-
tions. Should their success come up to the antici-
tions of their most sanguine well wishers, it will not
only be matter for gratified pride to these latter,
but it will be a clear, positive gain for the whole
world. On the other hand, should the experiment
fail, and self-government achieve for one peninsula
no greater good than it has done for the other, human
progress would take but little account of the fallen.
We should only have to resign some of our fondest
illusions as to the indefinite perfectibility of our
race in general, and as to the power of reaction and
restoration of the Italian people in particular—the
people which we had been told had lived two succes-
sive lives and aspired to a third—and that would be
all. Wise men would still heartily wish for the Ita- •
lians a continuation of the enjoyment of their inde-
pendent existence; but that would be rather for the
common peace than from any hope that great good
might come of it for the Italians themselves. The
example of Spain should always be held up as a mir-
ror to Italian eyes. We have been led to these con-
siderations by some melancholy statements in one of
the best Florence journals, the Opinione, with re-
spect to Italian railways. Mental and moral deve-
lopment must in all countries be proportionate to
material well being. All engrossed as the Italian
Government was with preparations for the great
national struggle, it was, however, not unmindful of
that truism, and never slackened in its' endeavours
to give social and industrial life to all possible fin
pulse. Imperfect success, in this respect, is less to be
ascribed to want of judgment and improvidence on
the part of the rulers than to the utter exhaustion
of a prostrate people. In Italy the Government,
however faulty, must for many years be in advance
of the governed. Between 1815 and 1848 there
was for Italy a period of uninterrupted decline.
The only traces of advancement and prosperity
were for some time perceptible in the Austrian
dominions. Up to 1848 Piedmont had not com-
pleted the five miles' railway between Turin and
Moncalieri ; and a Prince of Savoy, on his visit to
Naples, where a Bourbon had constructed al6
miles' line from his town residence to his country
seat at Castellatuare, was ready to exclaim with
envy and wonder, cc 0 fortunati, quorum jam meenia
surgunt !" Between that time and the present a
great change of conditions has taken place in diffe-
rent parts of the Peninsula. Public works have
everywhere kept pace with political emancipation,
and wherever an annexation occurred it was' always
found that in the newly-incorporated province there
was everything to be done. The report of the
General Commission of Railways to which the
Opinione refers comes no further down than the
3 ears 1864-5 ; FO sluggish is still the action of the
Italian Government in its statistical productions,
notwithstanding the appalling number of the
officials. In the former year Italy had 3,173 kilo-
metres of railway is operation, and these rose to
3,595 kilometres in 1865, with an increase of 422
kilometres in a twelvemonth. The Opinione com-
putes the Italian lines at about one-fourth of those
of France and one-fifth of those of England. Of
the 3,595 kilometres for the whole of Italy, 1,773
belonged to the Northern lines ; 1,039 to the Cen-
tral or Roman lines ; 751 to the Southern lines, and
32 to the lines of Calabria and Sicily. We are aware
that some progress has been made in those Southern
provinces and in the island of Sardinia within this
last year or two ; and it may be safely asserted that
four-fifths of the works hitherto accomplished any-
where south of the Apennines, with the exception
of Tuscany, date from the annexations of 1859-60.
The aggregate produce of all the Italian lines
was, in 1864, 58,726,752 f. ; in 1865, 60,765,577 f. ;
the proportion being 18,508 f. per kilometre in the
former, am:l'ooy 16,902 f. per kilometre in the latter
year. The Opinione again compares this meagre
produce of the Italian railways with that of the
French lines, which ranges from 20,937 f. to 57,272 f.,
and to that of Germany, which is of 32,885 f. per
kilometre in Prussia, of 29,740 f. per kilometre in
Austria, and of 26,168 f. per kilometre in the minor
States. Unsatisfactory as these general results may
be for Italy in contrast with other countries, it must,
however, be observed that the produce is not, as may
be imagined, the same for the various Italian lines.
Some of those in the Tuscan and Roman marshy
regions (Maremmane) give no profit at all and do
not even pay the current expenses of their daily
traffic, while those of Northern Italy, the very best
in the Peninsula, yield a produce of 23,374 per kilo-
metre, and that is'a little more than the worst French,
and a little less than the worst German lines. For the
Central linear the produce is of 12,514 f. per 'kilo-
metre ; for the Southern lines of 8,046 f. ; for the
Calabro-Sicilians of 8,662 f.—an array of numbers
from which it will be easy to perceive the diminution
of movement and activity at every step as one pro-
ceeds from North to South. We are willing to be-
lieve that these unfavourable results of Italian rail-
way enterprise may in some measure be ascribed to
want of management, to waste and improvidence on
the part of the administration; but this could hardly