The Sun.
London, England, 1859-07-14 00:00:00

THE TREATY OF PEACE BETWEEN
FRANCE AND AUSTRIA.

(From the Daily i.rews.)
If a man is to receive the praises of this world
and remission in the next in consideration of all the
offences he has not committed ; if greatcriminals are
to be pardoned on account of all the harm they have
left undone, why, then, the author of the Peace of
Villafranca deserves all the credit due to peace-
makers. Test the Emperor of the French by the
designs imputed to him last Easter, by the secret
conspiracy with Russia for the dismemberment of
Europe, by the projected invasion of England, by
the descent upon Egypt, the partition of Turkey, the
capture of Malta, Gibraltar, and Corfu, and a few
other trifling enterprises East and West, and we
cheerfully admit that Louis Napoleon has deserved
well of mankind for the clever feat of swerving
from the stone walls between the Mincio and the
Adige. He has with impartial perfidy disappointed
his calumniators and deceived his friends. We are
all so glad that the play is over, that we applaud
the manager for cheating us of half the playbill,
and don't stop to inquire whether we have paid
our money for what was omitted or for what is
" underlined." Peace, to use Lord Brougham's
words, is a "blessed boon," and for England it is
almost one of the necessaries of life. We are too
dull to appreciate the glory of war, waged for its
own sake by a man to whom an army is either an
instrument of ambition or an arbiter of fate. We
see noble principles prostituted, and substantial in-
terests disturbed—for what ? To prove that an
Emperor can be a general without ever having
been a soldier, and that the art of war is more
easily learned than the arts of honesty and justi...e.
England is not without reproach in Italy ; but we
are thankful that in the dark business of Villa-
franca her hands at least are clean. We can have
no other possible interest in Italy than an honest
desire for the welfare of its people, for its inde-
pendence and freedom from foreign yoke ; for its
healthy and spontaneous development ; for its
speedy acquisition and secure maintenance of all
those liberties of thought, and conscience, and
action, which we cherish as the daily bread of great
and growing. nations. We have no interest in
making bargains with any despotism on earth for
the preservation of priestly misrule in Rome as a
flying buttress to the tyranny of the sword in
Catholic Empires. We desire to see an Italy for
the Italians, and all foreign influence and interven-
tion in that Peninsula finally removed. We desire
to see the people of Italy choosing their own rulers
and forms of government, and living under the
liberal protection of equal laws. We cannot recognise
arbitrary settlements, in which the breakers of trea-
ties set up their own decisions against public law
and a people's rights, and traffic away the lives and
liberties of populations with smiling ease and cor-
diality. This is the work of Monarchs who do not
understand their age, and whose contempt for
humanity is a religious principle. When the French
Emperor proposes to the Austrian to inaugurate a
better state of things in Italy under joint protec-
tion, and the patronage of the Pope, England may
well be content to wonder how the Austrian-
French ideas of political amelioration are to pre-
vail, and to hold her peace. When a " universal
amnesty" emanates from Louis Napoleon, we are
anxious to know whether the exiles of Lambessa
and Cayenne are comprised in the act of mercy, or
only the volunteers who, under Garibaldi, forced a
passage for the French legions in Lombardy—the
Tuscans, the Modenese, the Parmesans, and the
citizens of the Romagna who preferred death in
battle beside the soldiers of France in a " war of
independence" to an infamous neutrality under the
sway of Austrian satellites ? The Emperor of the
French is a master of irony ; but we are imperfect
admirers of this sort of rhetoric in action, and we
are more and more persuaded that, if our neu-
trality was simple prudence during the war, it is a
duty of honour to maintain it now.
Louis Napoleon returns to Paris a conqueror and
a peace-maker, leaving discontents to fructify in
Italy, and jealousies to ripen in Germany. His
army has tasted blood, snuffed the spoil, and learnt
the secret of quick promotion. Fifty thousand
dead men have had too much of glory, and as
many more, no doubt, enough of it and to spare ;
but the survivors in the hospitals would gladly
have stood another chance or two of winning the
cross of honour, or an epaulette. These men will
not be rocked to sleep by a Te Deum, and will pant
for another forty days' dash at some enemy or
other. Thirty thousand French soldiers have lost
the opportunity of firing a shot in earnest this sum-
mer, and have fought with nothing but dust,
diarrhoea, and extortionate innkeepers. How will
these defranded followers of Prince Napoleon
Jerome be pacified ? Then there are the national
forces in the Romagna, just organising for self-de-
fence and for national independence. What will
become of General Ulloa, and his soldiers,
when his Holiness (of Perugia) has as-
sumed the " Honorai'y" Presidency of the
Confederation, of which Austria, by another
name, will be so considerable a member ?
How will General Garibaldi dnd his gallant re-
cruits from all parts of Italy accept the terms of a
peace which makes Austrian domination securer,
because more compact, in Italy, in making it the
ally and accomplice of French Imperialism and
Papal infallibility ? These are pressing difficulties
not to be set aside or juggled away, and they pre-
sage too clearly a new era of turbulence and dis-
order, of sanguinary reprisals, of oppressive inter-
ventions, under the honorary Presidency of the
Pope, assisted by a twin tutelage of " eldest sons."

(From the Times.)
The Peace followed upon the heels of the armis-
tice quicker than even we could have anticipated.
The great conjuror of the age fought three battles
and had an hour's conversation with vanquished
Austria; and lo ! at the end of this short conference
Lombardy is at once ceded to France, and Italy
becomes a Confederation under the honorary Pre-
sidency of the Pope. The changes are so swift that
the eye is dazzled. We cannot seize the form im-
mediately presented to the brain before the image
is gone, and another takes its place. A few days
ago we were talking of a Congress to prevent the
war. A week ago the world was speculating about
the chances of Austria successfully resisting France.
The battles had their turn. Then that tremendous
Quadrilateral occupied all thoughts. But yester-
day down went all speculations and conjectures
and interest in cam 3s and cannon, and two new
European kingdoms stood in full existence, created
in a couple of hours, stamped on the public mind
by the vibration of a telegraph wire. " The Em-
peror of Austria cedes the kingdom of Lombardy
to the Emperor of Fr rice." Austria, then, has
been thoroughly beaten out of her old characteristic
obstinacy. Peschiera and Verona, Mantua and
Legnano, the line of the Adige, and the lagunes of
Venice—all are abandoned, all are given up.
Francis Joseph candidly and without reticence con-
fesses 'himself, as Mr. 'Cobden would say, " crum-
pled up." He at once and with his 300,000 men
goes right out of Italy( and Italy relieved from his
weight swells up into an independent Confedera-
tion. How can we show our face to the world with
such news as this upon our broad sheet ? What
has the Times now to say in defence of its ungener-
ous suspicions ? How shall we make our apology
to the much calumniated Emperor of the French ?
How shall we meet the triumph and the scorn of
the friends of liberty whom we were weak enough
to warn ? Humble recantation is all that is left to
us. Let us, then, join the Radicals of England, the
Carbon ari of Italy, the exiles of Poland, and the
great political apostle of Hungary, in singing the
glories of Napoleon 111. ! Let us—although the
last of his converts, and scarcely meet to be called
a convert—let us swallow in shame all our ungene-
rous misgivings, and rejoice that now, and in very
deed, Italy is free from the Alps to the Adriatic !
But, soft !In this rush of telegrams,—in this
jostling of quick messages that come from all parts
of the world and mingle the voices of all European
capitals, there are some sounds that jar upon the
general joy. What can be the meaning of this new
announcement,—what can be the nature of this
bitter drop, Which causes the foam of enthusiasm to
subside. which curdles our warm, mantling sympa-
thies ? Italy must be free, for the Emperor has
said it, and who but the unbelieving, ungenerous,
untrusting Times hesitates to believe the Emperor ?
Yet, this enthronement of the Pope, and this resto-
ration of the Grand Dukes, and this detention of
Venetia and the Mincio by
Austria,
version of the first message from is an altered
the Emperor to
the Empress. Yes, Italy is free. But it is free,
not in a demo3ratical, or constitutional, or popular
sense, but in a Napoleonic sense, Freedom is a
word of many meanings, and it often takes its colour
from the reflex of the interests of the man who
uses it. Freedom in Sparta did not mean that the
helots were not to be put to death if they grew
too numerous or too troublesome. Freedom in
Italy does not mean that the inhabitants are to
have any voice in their own government. Italy is
free, but it is free under Imperial conditions. Lom-
bardy, conquered by France and abandoned by Aus-
tria, has been tossed over to the King of Sardinia.
Nobody can say that Lombardy is not free. She
might have had notions of the renovations of the
old Duchy as a Federal State, and Milan may have
objections to be made an appanage of Turin, but
she had better from this time forward keep these
follies to herself. She is free, and she must be
satisfied. So also is Venice free. She is free
under Austria. What more can she want ? Surely
she has not the folly to dream of the days of Dan-
dolo Austria will perhaps give ber one of Aus-
tria's own Archdukes ; and an arra
shall enliven the Piazza San Marco
whose bands
; and well-
dres sed officers, who: shall' add to the picturesque