The Sun.
London, England, 1859-10-28 00:00:00

our national dignity by the lawless seizure of lands
over which we have long claimed the right
of sovereignty. Now that but just re-
stored to our former pride of place in
Hindostan, the standard of our ambassador is
hurled to the dust as it were, and stained with
blood, upon the borders of the barbarous empire of
the Chinese. That glorious banner, of which one
of the sweeteA and most impassioned songsters of
our time has sung in thrilling accents, accents
vibrating in our heartstrings, and through every
fibre of our patriotism—
There's a flag that waves o'er every sea,
No matter when or where ;
And to treat that flag as ought but the free
Is more than the bravest dare.
For the lion spirits that tread the deck
Have carried the palm of the brave ;
And that flag may sink with a shot-torn wreck,
But never float over a slave.
its honour is stainless, deny it who can,
And this is the flag of an Englishman '

Hardly can it be forgotten how at the close of
that same truly national and patriotic lyric, the
Song-writer of our Age has sung of the real pride
and glory of my Lord PALMERSTON'S boasted Civis
Britannicus—

The Briton msy traverse the pole or the zone,
And boldly claim his right;
For he calls such a vast domain his own,
That the sun ne'er sets on his might.
Let the haughty stranger seek to know
The place of his home and birth
And a flush will pass from cheek to brow
As he tells of his native earth.
For a glorions charter, deny it who can,
Is breathed in the words, ' I'm an Englishman.'
Yet the maintenance, intact, of this great charter,
the upholding untarnished of this heroic flag--
what are our hopes, in either respect, as scanned
now by the light of these recent tidings from
Washington ? From which capital of the repub-
lican confederation of the United States comes now
to us the startling assurance that no explanation
has been demanded from the American Government
by the Ministers of Queen VICTORIA—that actually
no explanation has been demanded by them from
the American Government as to that lawless and
flagitious seizure of
.the island of San Juan by the
buccaneering and filibustering soldiers of the United
States, under the command of General HARNEY,
acting avowedly and advisedly in the name
of that American Government. Even with
a recollection of the Conspiracy Bill before us
—this disastrous assurance comes to us as
little less than absolutely incredible intelligence.
Let it but be verified by events, and again we say
her MAJESTY'S Ministers, and Viscount PALMER-
STON especially, as the chief of the Administration,
will be held sternly responsible to the Crown and
to the Country immediately upon the reassembling
of Parliament.

ELizA COOK'S Ballad of "The Englishman."

The Pope's carriage stops the way. Liberty was
taking a pretty brisk drive south of the Alps, but
his Holiness looked out behind and begged the Im-
perial charioteer not to knock his wheels off ; so,
the eldest son of the Church graciously called out
to his coachman to pull up. Hungary wants for
her Protestants the liberties which they had pre-
served amidst all the treacheries and perjuries of the
bigoted Hapsburgs till 1848, and she might have
them, but again the lumbering old vehicle is in the
way, and the Minister who has the strongest lean-
ings to religious liberty of any in the Austrian
empire, is sent off without a good or honourable
word, because he evinced a disposition to place the
Protestant coach alongside that of his Holiness. In
Ireland, national schools and Queen's colleges hare
been doing vast good in disposing the rising youth
of the country to respect each other's religious pre-
possesions, and to smoke cigars together as com-
fortably as if Queen lituroutA and PIO Novo were
equally good heads of each other's churches; but
again the plaguy old Italian vehicle is found
in the way. Whenever and wherever the cause
opens hopefully for civil and religious liberty, no
one can get on for the shrieks and cries of the
alarmed old man and his antiquated coachman.
" Pull up ! pull up ! you'll crush and smash
me !" is the cry of Pope and cardinals, and of all
the episcopal lacqueys who attend them.
Now, if we cannot get rid of this nuisance, the
result will be, that all the Liberalism of Europe
will wish the old Papal coach upset and broken to
shivers, and his Holiness driven to resort to the
ever-ready vehicle on which the Prince of the
Apostles travelled. There is every reason to think
that the miseries of the POPE had as much to do
with the peace of Villafranca as any strategical
considerations. There he was, vacillating between
running off to Naples, and keeping at home under
the protection of French bayonets, to listen to the
curses which those bayonets alone repressed ;
and which, but for them, would have
driven him to enact again the footman to his
own coach. Meantime his indignant subjects in
the very smallest towns, such as Perugia, were all,
as he knew, burning to form part of the kingdom of
Northern Italy, under VICTOR E3IMANUEL; and the
whole district of the Romagna, being rather too
strong for him to surprise and butcher, as he did
the Perugians, by mercenary blackguards, sends
his Cardinals packing, and declares for union with
Piedmont. Not an acre of the Pope's territory,
not a man who is unconnected with his Govern-
ment, would be left him to-morrow if the French
soldiers should embark for Marseilles, and the mer-
cenaries hired to keep his flock should be smoked
out of their dens. And yet to preserve this hate-
ful temporal rule over subjects who hate the Prince,
though numbers of them venerate the Pontiff, is
one of the grand difficulties of the present "situa-
tion !" The temporal power of the POPE is the
bane of Italian liberty—the grand obstacle to a free
and united Italy. Reform it, if that be a possibi-
lity, and it would yet stand in the way. Let the
people choose whom they would for their earthly
ruler, and let the POPE confine himself to turning
the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven on behalf of
the faithful, and all Italy would be speedily one.
The Papal States would join immediately the
Duchies and their brethren of the Romagna. He
of Naples would follow his worthy compeers of
Modena, Tuscany, and Parma, and a voluntary
constitutional Italian Confederation would inaugu-
rate itself at once, without troubling the Imperial
signatories to the trumpery treaty of Zurich.
With these plain facts before us we do not think
that the Catholics of Great Britain and Ireland
should disgrace the name of their country by al-
lowing an ultramontane faction of noisy priests and
prelates to represent them throughout Europe.
The inference all Europe over is, that not even
British liberty can change the bigotry, selfishness,
and tyranny of Popery. Now, as in the days of
the Thirty Years' War, the lives and liberties of men
are nothing so that the Papacy be glorified: AU
other Englishmen, meet wherever they may,
are declaring their ardent wishes for Ita-
lian liberty for Roman liberty as well as
Sardinian liberty. Catholics, so far as they speak
out, curse Sardinia as an ecclesiastical rebel, the
Romagnese as traitors—and denounce with anathe •
mas what every free-born Englishman admires. If
Catholics really wish to play into the hands of
Messrs. NEWDEGATE and SPOONER, and to repeal
the Maynooth Grant, and to be thought sorry
friends to any one's freedom but their own, they
could not play their part better. Here they are,