The Sun.
London, England, 1859-07-27 00:00:00

THE TREATY OF VILLAFRANCA.

(From the Times.)
In another column the reader will find the text
of the treaty signed at Villafranca. It is given with
a certain degree of authority, and has been adopted
by the Paris papers ; so we will accept it as genuine.
It is only important as confirming what some per-
sons still desired to doubt, as to the retention by
Austria of the great fortresses. and as containing no
stipulation which can bind Austria in her future
dealings with Italy. Everything else had been
known with certainty within a few hours of the
signing of the document. The abandonment of Ve-
netia, the reimposition of the Austrian satraps upon
Tuscany and Modena, and the installation of Aus-
tria as a member of the Italian Confederation were
all well-established facts. But there were some who
clung with a faithful tenacity to their idea of
Napoleon 111., the Liberator of Italy," and who
could not be convinced that their confidence had
been misplaced. They have believed even up to this
time that there must be " somethino. behind." They
found hope in the " honorary presidency of the Holy
Father," and they saw in this condition that the
Pope was to be relieved of all his temporal autho-
rity, and remitted to his ecclesiastical title para-
mount. They had faith also in some stipulations as
to the neutrality of the great fortresses. They would
not receive any evidence as sufficient to prove that
Austria would again be allowed to interfere in
Italy. They were confident that in the conditions
of the peace which we had yet heard we had
seen only the moderation of the Emperor of
the French, but in the details which were
yet to come we should see his wisdom. The great
outline showed only how much he had left to Aus-
tria ; the filling up would show what safeguards he
had provided, and how he had sacrificed the mere
outward and imposing form of great success to a
more humble and less obtrusive reality. Many
honest and enthusiastic men were startled and
drew back, but others, who could not afford to
allow that they had been deceived, went on hoping.
Lord John Russell took, as is his wont, a still more
decided course, and at once claimed a partnership
in the glory of these Imperial negotiations by
adopting the conditions, and pronouncing them
" just." However, such as this Treaty is, it is now
in all probability before us. There is nothing to
vary the first appreciation of those who never
trusted, or to give fruition to the hopes of those
who hoped against hope, or to diminish the appro-
bation of those who, like Lord John Russell, saw
in the terms already known the perfection of all
that could be desired—for what Englishman would
ask or wish for more than what is just ?
We have the law. Now for the administration
of this law. Who is to be process-server ? The
two Eagles have ceased to fight, and have agreed
how the prey is to be divided. Who is to make
the division ? It is not enough to publish an
edict ; some one must enforce obedience to it. It
is not enough even to be possessed of irresistible
force ; it will be necessary to put that force in
Opposition may b
hopeless, to resist may
be onlyto be crushed ; but obstinate men who
have espoused desperate causes are sometimes found
to lose their
counting oddlls.o power
The name calculating chances or of
Italians ns t
spear of Napoleon 111. has
an
been at once a shield
has hitherto cheered theal only
nltalyy t o grateful
butra e f
uit
l
tasks. " Chase me these Germans out of Italy."
" Sweep away these Austrians from the Alps
to the Adriatic." These were commands which
met with ready obedience. But now it is to be,
" Italians. obey with reverence the commands
of your Holy Father and Sovereign the Pope."
" Holy Father, reform your Government and cease

to make pillage o_' your people" " Tuscans, take
,c
back your Archduke and serve him loyally. ye
Modenese, kneel befor,l9
the Sovereign you expel-
led." There is not one olf these commands which
does not jar upon the feelir(g
s of thosec not
does
is addressed. There is not 0119 whi to whom ith
create first surprise, and then N 7
olentindignation.
The insurgent subjects of the Pop are enraged at
such a command from tile Liberator of Italy ly ; the
Pope " has his heart filled with bitterness" at such
blasphemous conduct ,in a once dutiful son of the
Church. The Tuscans and. Modenese feel as a man
would feel who, advancing to shake hands with a
friend, found his right hand clinched and a sudden
blow dealt him by his treacherous friend's left fist.
Italy is at this moment stupefied by the buffet
given her. That she will submit quietly is searcoly
to be expected. The people of Tuscany and Parma
and Modena and the Legations are arming and
organising ; Garibaldi and his irregular allies have
40,000 men under arms, and this is but a snowball,
which a little rolling would magnify to an ava-
lanche. The Tuscan division, 10,000 strong, has
gone back to defend the revolution which sent it
forth. The Legations are using those muskets and
cannon of which the Pope makes such complaint,
and will soon have a force under arms which may
set at defiance the 3,000 Papal troops. All this is
not much—not much against those two mighty
hosts which fought at Solferino—not much against
Austria and France united. But is this to be so ?
Are the Austrian and French armies to fight here-
after side by side against Garibaldi and the Tus-
cans ? Is the world to be afforded the spectacle of
the French Zouaves exhibiting the audacity we
have been taught to admire against the Italian
patriots whom they came to liberate, or is France,
who called forth these revolutions, to stand by and
let the Austrians do the butchery ? The latter is
quite impossible. The Emperor Napoleon's personal
honour would not permit it. The former would be
a strange spectacle, and a profitable lesson to all
who hope for liberty by the aid of foreign
swords. Yet without Austrian or French bayonets
we cannot see how the Archdukes are to go back,
and without a certainty of these bayonets being
always at hand it seems impossible that they
should remain in their Duchies.
In all this settlement of Italy we are happily
mere speculative lookers-on. Our sympathies are
doubtless engaged, but our interests are not in-
volved. We should scarcely hav3 thought it ne-
cessary to recapitulate the topics which these con-
ditions suggest, if the English Minister for Fo-
reign Affairs had not told us from his place in Par-
liament that he thought them " just." If his
words fairly represented his convictions, there
would appear to be danger that this country may
be drawn into a recognition of the terms that are
now made public, or that it may even be made in
some way a party to their ratification. Against
anything of this kind, against any interference by
act, or counsel, or protest, or exhortation, we ener-
getically protest ; and we believe the country at
large and the House of Commons in great majority
would also protest. It is yet upon the cards that
Italy may- resist, and successfully resist, for it is
yet possible that the Emperor of the French may
recoil from the odious task of punishing with his
own sword the insurrection which he excited. If
this should happen contrary, we admit, to appa-
rent chances, we might then come into the settle-
ment with some dignity and some authority. At
present we have no locus standi, and cannot pos-
sibly do any good, while by any interference now
we might shut ourselves out from doing good here-
after. lf England should be dragged into this
business, it will only be from the incapacity which
little men sometimes show to abstain from inter-
meddling with great events.

(From the Daily News.)
Long life and rude health are by no means inse-
parable companions. Perhaps it will be found as
often as not that they don't get on together com-
fortably. The cases are exceptional in which the
rude health has been kept in subjection, and the
life has been hard as well as long. Run your eye
over the circle of your own acquaintance ; consult
the eminent practitioner who has felt the family
pulse for forty years ; and the result of your in-
vestigations will convince you that the secret of a
long life is to be " never well." Your vigorous
young friend, whose colour is so fresh, and whose
skin is so sleek—who looks as if he could fell or
eat an ox—whose appetite is prodigious, digestion
undaunted, sleep sure and stertorous, who never
knew a headache or was conscious of nerves, and
whose general aspect is "as hard as nails"—he
will live to a hundred, you suppose ? No ; he will
commit no excesses worth praying for; he will be
a man of exemplary life, of temperate habits ; he ,
will flourish to forty-five or fifty, perhaps, without
turning a hair, and then some fine afternoon go
down like a hammer on his own dining-room carpet,
and a post mortent will reveal a little superfluous
fatty deposit here and there, with internal mischief
enough to kill a regiment. But your poor, pallid,
sickly patient, who looks as if he had been born
sea-sick and had never got his stomach put to rights,
whose existence is an alternation of sick-head-
adhes and sleepless nights, and whose diet ranges
from dinner pills to cod liver oil—he will go
on withering like an annuitant, and die only for
want of breath. Now, has it ever occurred to any
of our readers to wonder at the vitality of the vene-
rable Institution enthroned at the Vatican ? We
speak of course of things temporal, for into spiri-
tual politics it is not our province to enter. The
longevity is at once explained by analogy. The
Papacy is not merely a succession of old men, but
of maimed, halt, and blind old men. Always ailing
and sometimes sick unto death, it never dies be-
cause it is never in good health. No doubt this
extraordinary tenacity of life may be satisfactorily
explained on supernatural principles ; but, as here-
tics, we are excluded from any but the basest secu-
lar point of view, and when we regard his holiness
as a worldly Sovereign we are constrained to re-
mark, that were not his system traditionally in a
precarious state of health, his convalescence would
be far less likely than it appears to be now.
One often sees the absolute tyranny of weakness
in a household where a peevish old gentleman in
an easy chair is discounting the beneficence of his
will by worrying his legatees to death, or where
" baby," with the nurse for a Prime Minister,
exercises an uncontrolled and undisputed sway.
But the finest example of this most pitiless sort of
despotism is the Papacy. Despised even more than
detested by its own immediate dependants, suffered
and scorned by its protectorate, tolerated and con-
temned by the intellect, the science, and the indus-
try of an age of movement and invention, this
venerable and supernatural Phenomenon does
nevertheless hold the destinies of Europe in its
hands, snatch victory from Imperial armies, and
bid the nineteenth century sun stand still. The
difficulty of difficulties, even in a provisional set-
tlement of Italy is, after all, the Roman question.
The question of federation might be easily solved
by declaring, it to be impossible so long as,Austria
retains Venice, and the question of the Duchies by
the simple and natural plan of allowing them to
fix their own fate ; but when we come to the
Romagna, containing the most intelligent, ener-
getic, and self-reliant populations in the peninsula,
we are indignantly warned off by the feeble voice
of a cruel, false, and querulous old man; who in-
sists that, as the Vicar of Christ and the represen-
tative of St. Peter, he is bound to take care that no
interruption in the fulfilment of prophecy, as in-
terpreted by the Cardinal Antonelli for the time
being, be permitted, and that the rock on which.
the Church is fixed be not split in half by the sepa-
ration of the Adriatic provinces from the dominions
of Pius IX. Dogmatic theology, we know, teaches
the doctrine of development, and the latest develop-
ment of the Papacy is a Circular of the Pontifical
Government to its representatives at Foreign
Courts, complaining of the conductoithe Sardinian
Government in protecting the citizens of Ferrara
from the tender mercies of the Holy Father and his
chosen disciples, General Kalbermatten and Col.
Schmidt. It has filled the soul of the Holy Father
with bitterness—that innocent blood should have
been shed at Perugia in his name ? Not at all ;
but that Piedmontese engineers were sent to Ferrara
to destroy the fortress, and muskets, and cannon
supplied to the inhabitants. The fortress of
Ferrara is, it seems, an esssential part of the rock
of Peter, and muskets and cannon are instru-
ments of grace which the Holy Father can-
not permit unsanctified soldiers to dispense. But
the loss of a fortress is not the gravest calamity
which the Holy Father deplores. To the appalling
language of that violent anarchist, Massimo D'Aze-
glio, we must ascribe his bitterest anguish. " God
has made man free in his opinions, political and
religious." These awful words were actually writ-
ten, printed, and placarded on the walls of Bologna.
Well may the Holy Father write to Cardinal Bishop
of Albano—" to continue our prayers is a necessity."
For if this sacrilegious language of Massimo
D'Azeglio should prevail in Italy, the fate of that
Peninsula may be the fate of England—poor, be-
nighted, heretical England. To hold that God made
man free in his opinions is, according to the Holy
Father, to forget the immortality of the soul, and
the Sardinian Commissioner, who counsels modera-
tion to the patriots of Bologna, is a rank materialist.
Some weeks ago we were assured by a correspon-
dent of the Univers that the Prince of Wales had
placed the whole British fleet at the disposal of the
Holy Father. We confess the compliment ap-
peared to us at the time somewhat excessive ; and
we have good reason to congratulate the Admiral
of our Mediterranean squadron and his gallant
officers and crews on their
i escape from a " particu-
lar service" which must infallibly have been at-
tended with unusual danger. Nothing but the pre-
sence of the Holy Father, and a miraculous inter-