The Sun.
London, England, 1858-04-08 00:00:00

MAZZINI AND LOUIS NAPOLEON.

We publish the following extracts from a letter of
Illazzini to Louis Napoleon. It is right we should state
that we do not concur in all the sentiments they con-
tain :

Yes ; the Empire has proved a lie. You shaped it,
Sir, to your own image. No men, during the last half
century, bas lied in Europe, Talleyrand excepted, as
much as you have ; ant that is the reason of your tem-
porary power. In this unsettled sceptical age of ours,
lies are easily believed in ; only they do not endure.
You called, in 1831 (2), together with your brother,
the insurrectionary movement of the Roman popula-
tions against the Pope a sacred cause ; you brand it
now, and since 1849, as a demagogic one.
You said, in 1833 (3), at Arenenberg, that all noble
souls being driven into exile, or persecuted by govern-
ments, you were feeling proud of belonging to the tribe
of the proscribed, You have since organised a general
releniless persecution against them.
You declared in 1836 (4), when, after the Strasbourg
attempt, Louis Philippe sent you to America, that you
were fe sling guilty to him, deeply touched by his gene-
rous clemency, and pledged to not conspire against him
any more. Two years after, you were conspiring against
him from Switzerland. Four years after, you were
landing a; Boulogne.
You hastened in 1848 to Paris, "to join the flag of
the Republic (5), and evince your devotedness to its
cause."

You wrote during the same year (6) :—" In the pre-
sence of the national sovereignty, I cannot nor will
claim anything beyond the rights of a French citizen."
Yen wrote as a candidate for the Presidency in No-
vember :—(7) "There must be no equivocation between
you and me. lam not an ambitious man, dreaming of
the Emoire. Trained in free countries and taught by
unhappiness, I shall always prove faithful to the duties
imposed by your votes, and by the will of the Assem-
bly. Were I elected President I would pledge my ho-
nour for my yielding, after four year, to my successor a
strengthened power, and liberty in tact."
You wrote as Pr- sident in December : (8) " The oath
I have been taking commands my future conduct. I
hall look as upon enemies of the country, upon all those
who would attempt to change by illegal means what the
wh“le ~f France has estar,lished."

Before these words were spoken, an expedition to
Rome had been planned, merely to ensure the personal
safety of the Pope, by Cavaignao. You had blamed it.
" I never c0u1.)," you had said, " give my vote to a
military demonstration, dangerous even for the ieterests
it aims at protecting." (9) Fur months after yourtroops
were landing at Civita Vecchia.

In 1849, (10) through a proclamation dictated to Gen.
Oudioot, you d,clared that it was not your aim to ex-
erctqat on Rome an oppressing influence, nor to force
upon her a Government contrary to the will of the peo-
roc. Thrp, monthm after. Rollie. her Government, the
will of her people, were Inexorably ern
Soon after, in August, (11) you pledged yourself to
obtain for Rome " a general amnesty, a secular admi-
nistration, the adoption of the French codes, and a liberal
Government." Your troops are still in Rome, and
n ,thin • has been obtained nor is claimed.

In 1849, you concluded your first me" sPage (12) by
saying, " I shall desrrve the confidence of the nation,
by preserving the constitution to which I have sworn."
In 1850, (13) you solemnly uttered these words :
" If the constitution is framed with vices and dancers,
you are all free to strike thorn away. I alone, boned by
my oath, hold myself pledged to keep strictly within its
limits." _ .

In 1851, a few days before the coup d'etat, (14) you
sa'd to the army :—" I shall ask nothing from you be-
yond my rig'i,t rec ei h 7 the Constitution."
And on the 2d of December itself—the final result cr
the usurping scheme still pending—you proclaimed that
" your duty was to protect the Republic." (15)
Then came the sudden violation of the oaths and
pledges—the one ambitious will substituted for the legally
expressed will of the nation—the f-roaious appeal to bru-
tal force—the inexorable orders to Saint Arnaud—the
Assembly half-scattered, half-imprisoned—the generals
arrested—France cosaque hurled at France republicaine
—Paris given up to a bribed, excited, intoxicated, piti-
less soldiery—the line and platoon fire against an
unarmed, inoffensive population on the Boulevards—
slaughter methodically carried on for the mere purpose
.
of striking terror in the souls of the future votet4
women, children murdered in their houses—prisonere
shot; two thoUsand six huMcliecl and fifty-two vic iins
(16)— eighty-eight representatives of the people pro-
scribed-100,000 men imprisoned, transported, internes,
without even the semblance of a trial—the triumph—the
mock election.
And you hoped that on such a systematic lie, on such
an edifice of mire and blood, a dynasty would be raised !
You believed that the transient, ephemeral idolatry of
all actually ruling powers to success, would prevail
against the Cain's mark which God and Justice have
branded on your brow
Sir, there is something above success : God ; some•
thing stronger than fact : Right ; something higher and
more enduring than idolatry : Time. Can you dethrone
God ? Can you cancel Right ? Can you abolish Time ?
For, whilst there is God in heaven, the notion of right
in the heart of man, and time allowed, no real or sham
Emperor, no genius-endowed Uncle, or satanically clever
Nephew, is allowed to substitute, in the nineteenth cen-
tury, his own selfishness to the providential marching-on
of mankind ; no individual, however supported by prie.ts
and bayonets, is allowed to step forward and say—l am
the uncontrollable, irresponsible mind of thirty-five
millions of men, without his being doomed to fall, an
example to masters, a deep teaching to subjects. After
the crossing of the. Rubicon, the avenging dagger of
Brutus ; after the Tuileries, St. Helena ; and between
the two, a shore, restless, hateful, remorseless career ;
and after the two, History, the universal conscience of
mankind, which brands the tyrant for ever. It is the
law—stern, unavoidable, unconquerable. Yon have
speculated on vice and weakness ; reckoned on terror
and cowardice ; fathomed deep, with the piercing
eye of the Dissolving One, the crust of corruption
which the materialism of the first Empire, fifteen years
of jesuitical monarchical opposition, Egotism enthroned
during the reign of Louis Philippe, and the anarchi-
cal dreams of sectarian socialism, have spread on the
heart of your countrymen ; and you have said to your-
self : They are mine. You forgot that under the
superficial alluvial layer was remaining unconquered,
untouched, the noble solid parent earth of France,
which gave growth to Joan yf Arc and to the giant
men of the Revolution. You forget that Europe,
even official, fact-worshipping, godless Europe, would
bend before you only as long as the strength of the
fact you seek to represent would peacefully and
progressively increase, whilst it is more and more
visioly contested and threatened. And you forgot that
between you and materialist Europe stand mon whom
you can neither bend nor break, whose life is the em-
lof a principle at work, since Marathon,
. through the European race, and who must prove in the
end stronger than you, because they never have broken
their oaths, and they do not fight, like you, for selfish
atheistical purposes. We, the men of Right and Free.
dom, have conquered the Inquisition and the Great
Ecnoire ' • depend upon it, Sir, we shall conquer you.
We should have conquered you already had it not
been for Eogland.

You are very ungrateful, Sir, to England. Without
England, without the help which, in an ill•fated hoar,
the English Government tendered to you, you would
h.ve perished locg ago, It is to England that you owe
the sort of legitimacy amongst European constituted
Powers, which you never would have conquered alone.
It is the alliance of England which has kept hitherto
Xtaly and France in. abeyance—you forget it now.
on fruquently Onde to the advantages which have
accrued to England from it ; you speak of it as if it bad
sprung up from your own conception. There is no
truth in either assertion. And as many Englishmen
seem btill bent on being misguided by the boldness of
your utterance, it may be useful that, in the name
of truth, I should here record my double protea
against it.
The Fre' oh-Anglo alliance is act your own thought.
It is the thought of France and England ; you have done