The Sun.
London, England, 1859-01-11 00:00:00

ment of the members to the Council of the Seal for
Titles.

I am, with profound respect, Sire, your Majesty's
most devoted servant and most loyal subject,
The Keeper of the Seals, Minister Secretary of
• State to the Department of Justice,
E. DE ROYER.

The foregoing report is accompanied by the decree
which establishes the Council of Seal of Titles, a
sort of Heraldic College, and nominates the members
of that council. .

THE KING OF SARDINIA'S SPEECH.

(From the. Times)

This is a moment of suspense, when the words of
Sovereigns are substantive events. The opening of
the Sardinian Chambers has been expected. with an
anxiety in no respect warranted by the power or
intrinsic importance of that kingdom. But we all
hoped to read in the speech of the King of Sardinia

some gloss upon the words of the Emperor of the
French, and some indication of the policy to be
pursued. by France towards Austria. If Sardinia
shows a determination to break the public peace it
can only be in the conviction, more or less well
founded, that France is prepared to protect her in
her enterprise. Sardinia defying Austria would be
as a pigmy provoking a giant. insensate a
policy is not to.be attributed to any sane. Govern-
'went. However incautious, or even intemperate,
the King may sometimes hare appeared, there is
strong evidence that he has,upon this occasion only
spoken so much as was permitted, him to speak. It
is even currently reported that the draught of the
document was carefully settled at Paris, and that
the paper went back to Turin much modified in
tone. We May, take it that the speech just de-
livered by the King of Sardinia is a speech which
has the approval of the Emperor of the French.
Regarding it in this light it is not so peaceful
in its tone as the friends of tranquillity might
desire. It would be a temperate and moderate
speech for the King who not long ago told his
officers that they might prepare for active service
in the spring, but it is not reassuring if we are to
read it in connection with those words spoken on
New Year's-day, and with the ambiguous explana-
tion put forth in the 111oliiteur. " The political
horizon is not clear," says the Sardinian Sove-
reign. In what quarter, then, broods the storm ?
What European Power threatens the independence
of the King's subjects ? Do the inhabitants of
Lombardy seek to annex Piedmont in the interest
of their Austrian masters ? Or does the Army of
Occupation at Milan cast eyes of covetousness upon
Turin or Genoa ? Whence comes the storm which
Sardinia fears, or who holds that future which
Sardinia " awaits with firmness ?" The Power
that is determined upon a quarrel need not look
far out and sweep the horizon for indications of an
enemy. If it were the wi4h of Sardinia only to
hold her own, her small horizon is clear enough.
But we, are told that she looks not for a secure, but
for a fortunate future. " Her policy is based on
justice and love of its country's liberty." This
should be a strictly defensive policy, unless the
King of Sardinia interprets the word " country"
in a sense different from that placed upon it by
the treaties he professes to respect. If by the word
" country" he means. Italy, then, indeed, we under-
stand what that policy must be which is based on
a love of Italian liberty. Such a policy which
would rule all Italy from Turin. It is a policy
which wouldmake Milan, and Florence, and Naples,
and even Rome herself, departmental cities, send-
in., Deputies to a metropolis which is scarcely more
Italian than Nice or Toulon. This might tend
to the expansion of the liberty of Italy ; it might
mitigate the stringency of the Bourbon tyranny
in Naples ; it might infuse some energy into
the anile burlesque of Government that obtains
in the States of the Church; it might, per-
haps, improve, although this is rather doubt-
ful, the present condition of Tuscany ; but is it
possible to compass ?—is it a project so
capable of realisation as to be worth a general
European war ? Is it possible that it.could ,be rea-
lised by the agency of France and Russia; and, if
it were realised, could it last? 'Would Austria
endure it ? Would Rome for a moment listen to it ?
It would rather reduce Italy to the state in which
that Peninsula was when YEneas landed on its
shores. It would only produce a chaos out of which
the battling elements should eventually make new
combinations. We might consent to go back to the
days of our boyhood, when, with our heads full of
Livy and our hearts full of Horace, we remembered
the glories of the Republic, and drank in the volup-
tuous literature of the early empire. But the key
note of all that sentiment was Rome, not Turin.
Eighteen hundred years is a long period, even in
the history of Italy. Wave after wave of different
families of the great human kind have advanced,
with more or less force, upon that interesting soil,
and have, to a greater or less depth, covered the
whole surface of what was once a nation—even as
the debris of ages have buried the old Forum and
have choked up Ostium. In Italy's best days her
nationality was never pure. Since then great
Powers have risen and have fallen, and there are
traditions, far more recent and more powerful than
those of the Empire, which divide Venice from
Genoa and Naples from Turin almost as distinctly
as Milan from Vienna. It is ,not enough to over-
come the great improbability that France and
Russia are honestly desirous to create a great con-
stitutional Power ; we must go further—we must
believe that the fragments of races which never yet
were united should now unite under a distant and
scarcely recognised Italian Power ; and that Rome
should be content with a nationality under the rule
of Transalpine Gaul. Every Englishman has sym •
pathies with Italy. As the King of Sardinia says in
the speech upon which we are now commenting—
" Piedmont is great in the Councils of Europe on
account of the principles it 'represents and the sym-
pathies it inspires ; " but our sympathies must be a
little under the control of our reason. England
will never by act or counsel interfere to impede
any effort that may be made towards the over-
throw of the evil Government that now afflicts

Italy ; but we may and must regret to see the ge-
neral peace of Europe broken for projects which
appear to savour only of ambition and to tend only
to strengthen despotism. We cannot see the end;
but we can see enough to feel convinced that what
the Emperors of France and Russia wish cannot
be what we should wish.
" Let us," says the King of Sardinia, " resolu-
tely await the decrees of Providence." Therei s
small philosophy in this. Resolutely or irreso-
lutely, we must equally be governed by those
decrees. Some small parson, when he advertises
that he is about to preach, is so condescending as
to interpolate by the, words " Deo volente" a licence
to Providence to interfere with the arrangement.
We have always thought that this reservation
would be very ridiculous if it were not rather
impious. The question, however, is, not what
Providence may decree, for that we cannot fathom,
but what steps the King of Sardinia is about to
take within the limits of his own human free will.
We must, acting upon the assumption that he is a
sane man, believe that he will do nothing except
so far as he is sapported by France ; and we must
further believe thal; France will :not go beyond a
menace, unless she is irapported by Russia. But
Russia is not impatient for war; she has at pre-
sent internal troubles to distract her councils, and,
whatever strength of hatred there may be in her
recent grudge against Austria, it is scarcely suffi-
cient to induce her to break up the absolute sove-
reignties of Europe into hostile Powers, and to
destroy their force by internecine conflict.
But, whatever,may be the policy of France or the
teniencies of Russia, or the ambition of Piedmont,
our course of action is plain. We have only to look
on and watch the result. In a period of, profound
peace, and at a time when armed force is irresis-
tible, and is arrayed under the command of abso-
lute Sovereigns, any insurrection for merely
uopular objects is obviously absurd. He must be a
very- shallow dupe who can suppose that the great
military. rowers are about to fight for the restora-
tion of long-lost liberties and long-lost nationalities.
There can be no reason that we should spend one
coin or Waste one life to support the Popedom, or
to protect the throne of the Kin°. of Naples, or to
continue the hard and unnatural rule of the Aus-
trians in Lombardy. It is barely possible that any
change in Italy can be for the worse
France b scarcel
and
likely that y any change produced
Russia can be for the better. This is not the help,
nor are these the defenders, we have looked for.
We live in days in which we are asked to believe
in strange things, but it is too great a demand
human credulity to ask our faith in a Tory
^on- ahaping a democratic Reform Bill, and an
-4;e, Sovereigns in building up a

Ministry ...-
alliance of aespuv....
constitutional monarchy.

(From the Daily News. The speech of Victor Emanuel to the Sardinian
Chambers has been looked for with a degree of in-
terest amounting almost to anxiety in every capital
of Europe. At a juncture so critical, friends and.

foes were equally solicitous to learn what language
the wary but enterprising Ministers of Piedmont
would put into the mouth of their sovereign. After
the long protracted suspense in which the affairs of
Italy had lain, people in general would have been
content to wait with solicitude, but with calmness,
for: the announcements that might be made on the
day appointed for the opening of the Legislative
session at Turin. Some days previously they had
been,startled, however by the authoritative utter-
ance of expressions which, if they meant anything,
seemed to be a forestalling by a greater Power of
the policy about to be adopted and avowed by the
lesser state. The abrupt and laconic declaration
of the French Emperor was interpreted generally
as a prelude of war. The Funds fell ; diplomacy
became hysterical ; negotiators looked indignant
at the interruption of their unfinished task;
and an ambiguous note appeared in the Moniteur
designed to adjourn panic sine die, and requesting
all discreet and loyal believers in Imperialism to set
down.the escapade of the Ist January in what the
Dutch would call " their Forget Book." But the
disinterested patriotism of the Bourse is not so
easily reassured ; and the memories of men are even
more prone to disobedience than their convictions
-or their consciences. Public curiosity could not be
coaxed to sleep by the softest notes of the Guides.
The Sardinian Parliament was summoned to meet
upon the 10th inst.; and in its presence it would be
impossible to play fast and loose with the great
issues of peace and war, and Italian independence
of Austrian domination universally believed to be
depending.
To do M. Cavour justice he has not attempted to
elude the great responsibility df his position, as
chief adviser of a confiding and courageous
For some years he has deemed it his duty to disy
suade his countrymen and their Sovereign from
anticipating what they and he believed to be their
destiny. He has been content to incur distrust at
home at the hands of the impetuous and unreason-
able, because he would not rashly risk all of good
already achieved and of glory hereafter to be won,
in a desperate struggle with one of the greatest
military powers in existence. He was equally un-
moved by the ceaseless complaints of foreign diplo-
macy at the studied reserve he perseveringly main-
tained. Neither Count Buol, M. Manteuffel, nor
Lord Malmesbury could lure him or his colleagues
into the rash avowal of warlike purposes on the
one hand, or into momentary paltering with the
hopes of Italy on the other. He felt that the best
if not the last chance for freedom in the Peninsula
during the present generation had been given him
in charge ; and that compared with the duty of
wisely exercising that sacred trust all other duties
were and ought to be subordinate. He could not
be unconscious that the character of the youthful
Monarch whom he served rendered him at once
peculiarly fitted in many respects to play the part
of a Royal liberator, and at the same time rendered
him peculiarly liable to be led away to his ruin
by injudicious or insincere counsellors. Victor
Emanuel is neither an ambitious politician nor a
military genius. Is it too much to say it is fortu-
nate for himself and his country that he is neither?
The role which ten years ago he was suddenly called
on to undertake is that of a constitutional Sovereign
with a small hereditary realm in possession and
with greatly extended territories in expectancy.
Had he been either a diplomatist or a strategist, he
would probably have tried long since to realise by
anticipation what could only come to him safely and
lastingly by way of reversion ; and he would. have
infallibly lost in the attempt even that which he
seems to have. Lombardy and Venetia were not to
be won by him at any time during the last ten years
by any use of either arts or arms. Until in the ful-
ness of time he should have proved himself
thoroughly trustworthy as a constitutional King, it
was not to be expected that millions of people who
had never owed allegiance to the House of Savoy
would cordially turn to him as a deliverer. It is in-
finitely to the honour of the Lombardo-Venetians,
that amid all their sufferings under Austrian rule
they should have been slow to do so. By his very
forbearance, blended with unswerving firmness, the
priceless conviction has at length grown up in
Italian hearts that Victor Emanuel is thoroughly
loyal—a man whom no temptationiwill induce to
renounce the claim of his country to indigexous rule,
butwho cherishes no dreams of personal aggrandise-
ment incompatible with the will or the interest of
that country. In a word, he has by a faultless po-
litical reign of ten years' duration, satisfied his
neighbours that he is a safe man and a fit man to be
trusted with extended power, and that he will
never try to seize it, but wait until they summon
him to confer it on him.

One thing only was wanting, and that is now
wanting no longer. It was necessary that the gal
lant King of Sardinia shouldtell the people of Italy
who dwell beyond his frontiers that he was prepared
to look all eventualities in the face, and to accept the
noble but perilous liabilities they might impose with-
out hesitation and without fear. " The future," said
the King, in his speech of yesterday, " cannot fail to
to be fortunate, because the policy of Piedmont is
based on justice and love of its country's liberty.
Piedmont is small, but great in the councils of
Europe, on account of the principles it represents
and the sympathies it inspires. It respects treaties,
but is not insensible to Italy's cry of anguish."
What is this but a simple though dignified answer
to the inarticulate prayer for deliverance which all
men have heard of late from the lips of an exaspe-
rated and oppressed people ? It is as though M.
Cavour had advised his Sovereign to say to the
Courts and Cabinets of Europe, to his own Parlia-
ment and army, and above all to the multitudes
who writhe beneath a hated foreign yoke :—" If
you want me, I am ready ; if I arm, it shall not be
said I do so for any unrighteous or unworthy pur-
pose ; other rights or powers I seek and will have
none, but those which I now exercise as a constitu-
tional King; by the letter of treaties, so long as the
status quo exists, I will scrupulously abide, because
I am a King; but to the cry of a nation's grief and
agony I do not pretend to be insensible, for Italy
is my country, and I have • the feelings, the in-
stincts, and the obligations of a man." Well might
Victor Emanuel close his soul-stirring address with
the significant words, " Let us resolutely await the
decrees of Providence."