The Sun.
London, England, 1866-10-16 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TIMES.—The Italians seem disposed to grapple
with their financial difficulties with no less spirit
than they displayed in their long struggle against
Austrian dominion. It is to be hoped that they will
meet with equal success, and that they will under-
stand that in this 4ew contest Italy must indeed far
da se, and no Solferiuo or Sadowa will be fought for
herbenefit. Venetia hasbeen bought at an incredibly
low price ; but, however cheap, it was not to be had
gratis. The war expenses from June to September
are computed at 555,000,000 f., and General Mena-
brea has just paid 83,000,000 f. to get the Iron Crown
out of pawn. All this, even with the share of the Lom-
bardo-Venetian debt, is very little to give for one
of the richest provinces in Europe. Lombardy and
Venetia, it should be borne in mind, were the two

mulch cows which, although constituting about one-
seventh of the Austrian Empire, were made to yield

one-fourth of its revenue.

Unfortunately, the ex-

penses occasioned by the liberation of Venetia will
fall on an exchequer exhausted by several years'
reckless improvidence. In despite, of Count Cavour's
economical genius, the Budget of Piedmont from
1859 to 1859 has been swamped by the increase of
its yearly deficit. At the time of the annexations
the most liberal State of Italy was the most heavily
taxed and the most deeply indebted. For the last
six years the efforts of Cavour's successors to

make the two ends meet proved egregious failures.
The revenue IN as raised in 1865 to something

very near 700,000,000 f., but it still fell short of
the expenditure by 250,000,000 f. to 300,000,000 f.
The debt at the beginning of that year was
already 4,500,000,000 f., occasioning a yearly outlay
of 230,000,000 f., the great bulk of which was sent
out of the country as a tribute to foreign capitalists.
The first source of all this ruinous extravagance
was, of course, the national armament. The Budget
was burdened with 180,000,000 f. for the army and

48,000,000 f. for the navy. The reduction of the
army to 250,000 men, a number that may be con-
sidered reasonable, taking into consideration the
increase of territory and revenue, and the require-
ments of many fortresses and Southern brigandage,
will bring instant relief. It will take some time be-
fore the Italians learn from Prussia and Switzerland
how twice such a force as their system supplies could

be mustered at half the expense. Melt National
Guard, in which lie the germs of a real national
armament, organised as it now is, is almost worse
than useless. But although the War and Marine
Departments in Italy swallowed up more than one-
fourth of the public revenue, there are many other
items of expenditure which no return of peace will
soon strike off the balance-sheet. There is a civil

army in Italy hardly less ruinous than the military
service. In many of the Governihent departments
the officials in Italy outnumber those of the French
bureaux. The whole ingenuity of Italian adminis-
trators seems to be turned to the utmost multiplica-
tion of places and placemen. The complication in
the mechanism of the State is unutterable, and its
inefficiency, of course, proportionate. Public offices
are most vilely remunerated, yet the scramble after
them exceeds all belief. The work is as light as the
pay is low, for the Italian is always willing to limit
his wants and forego his luxuries if only he can be
exempt from exertion. A public office suffers neither
from rain nor drought ; it provides against sickness,
old age, and death itself. The safe haven of his
bureau well suits the Italian, whom nature and habit
tend to deprive of energy and enterprise. The rush
from all the semi-educated classes is to this ignoble
manger of the State. With the exception of the
rural population, who cannot choose but work, and
who do work very hard, there is no production in
Italy to keep pace with this all-absorbing adminis-
trative consumption. The evil is of old date in Italy,
and is common to most countries on the continent,
particularly to those inhabited by the so-called
Latin races. But in Italy it is seriously aggravated
in consequence of the late political events, as on,the
amalgamation of six or seven States into one the
whole staff of officials who had served under the
Bourbons and the Houses of Lorraine and Este were
supposed to be disaffected, and had to be dismissed.
Their places were often filled with such inconsiderate
haste as soon to lead to fresh changes, and thus to
throw the whole batches of old and new functionaries
out of work, not unfrequent)y with full pay, and
even some consideration for wounded feelings. For
a place in the Government in Italy confers vested
interests, not only lasting a man's lifetime, but even
transmissible to widows and orphans. Personal
selfishness is hardly more ruinous to the Italian
financesthan local selfishness. Against most schemes
of retrenchment the Government has to contend
with provincial and municipal interests. Italy is
divided into 59 provinces. Every province has a
Prefect, a Council of the Prefecture, a whole swarm
of official locusts. The provinces could easily be
reduced to a score, and the administration could be
simplified by a larger development of local fran-
chises. The Sub-Prefectures or ..41andamenti, cor-
responding to the French arrondissements, of which
there are several to every 'province, could be most
profitably abolished. The Universities, now more
than 20 in number, and placed in many instances
at two hours' railway journey from one another,
should be reduced to about four or five for the whole
Peninsula. The same reform should be introduced
in the courts of law, in the bishoprics; cathedral and
collegiate chapters, ecclesiastical seminaries, and
similar institutions which belong to old Italy, and
are abuses introduced by parcelling the country into
so many small States, and dwarfing men's minds
within their narrow limits. With the reconstitution
of Italy into a groat country that mean local spirit
ought to give way before considerations of a more
enlarged patriotism; but the love of the campanile,
or village belfry, the emblem of municipalism, is still
very strong in the Italian heart, and whenever any
measure is brought before Parliament intended to
lighten the public burdens by the sacrifice of local
interests, however paltry, such a chime rises from
all these belfries as generally leads to the defeat of
the salutary motion. Besides the great waste occa-
sioned by an exorbitant civil service, and the hind-
rance rising against financial reform from local in-
terests, Italy had to exhaust her means in the
furtherance of public works. In the Roman and
Neapolitan States roads were in the most backward
state, and railways scarcely
.known. There were
Mont Cenis and the Apennines in three or four
places to be tunnelled. There were canals and
bridges, docks and harbours, to be made, plains to
be irrigated, swamps to be drained. Piedmont and
Lombardy, Tuscany and the Xmilia, belonged to
European civilisation ; but a vast part of the
Abruzzo and Calabria, the islands of Sicily and
Sardinia, were as deep in barbarism as any African
districts, and where so much was to be done one
scarcely knew with what to begin. In countries dead
to all spirit of private association the State must be
a kind of earthly Providence, see to everything,
help everybody, do all manner of work. The Italian
Government, in its incessant distress for money,
deep in the books of the great capitalists who rule
the earth, unable to negotiate loans except on the
most ruinous terms, had to call in fo'reign compa-
nies, by whom every enterprise entailed an expense
nearly three times its real worth. The company
had to be bribed by strong subsidies, to be reas-
sured by guarantees of large percentage ; it then
did its work so badly that it had to be bought off.
Then the work had to be sold off again, the Go-
vernment putting up with enormous losses at every
stage of the bargain. These heavy sacrifices have,
of course, been repaid by splendid achievements,
the benefit of which will be reaped hereafter ; but
in the meanwhile much remains to be done,
and the Budget will not soon. be relieved of the
100,000,000 f. to 120,000,000 f. which are yearly
put down on the score of public works.
The acquisition of Venetia will not in all proba-
bility tend to any sensible diminution of this yearly
outlay, even allowing for the proportionate increase
in the revenue, as vast sums will be sunk in the
maintenance of the fortresses of the Quadrilateral,
in the improvement of the city and harbour of
Venice, and in a railway across the Gothard, the
Splugen, or the Brenner, so necessary for the re-
vival of Venetian trade. From all we have said it
may be understood how much easier it is to upbraid
the Italians for their mad extravagance in these late
years, and to press upon them the necessity for
future retrenchment, than to trace the evil to its
just causes, or to suggest any practical remedy. No
doubt the financial condition in Italy is very grave,
and the Government must come out of it at any
cost ; but it is a task of uncommon magnitude, and
not to be accomplished without the full co-operation
of the nation, and its readiness for self-denial, for
real patriotic devotion—above all things, for hard

work.
THE " ANGLO - AMERICAN TIMES." -- Every
nation has a few names which are dear to
the people and treasured by them as household
words. In America the founders of the Indepen-
dence of the country are regarded as the fathers of
the Republic. This catalogue includes the name of
the late President of the Union League Club of New
York, whose address on resigning the post to which
he had been elected we have elsewhere reviewed.
John Jay, the grandson of the great American, has
ably maintained the renown of the name he has
inherited. A lawyer of great eminence, an
orator the poetry of whose language has
run; over the Union, a writer of the clearest, tersest
style, this gentleman adds to a patriotism worthy.
of his grandfather the strongest and most uncom-
promising principles of Liberalism. These principles
he holds to be the very life-blood of the nation to
which he belongs. For their preservation he con-
siders no sacrifice too great ; to uphold them he
believes all material questions of interest are but
feathers in the scale. Life and all are but vanity
when weighed against the broad statements- con-
t tinedin the Declaration of American Independence.

.11......4

To the action of such men is due the war which
led to that Independence. To the action of such
men is due the still greater war which overthrew
the Southern oligarchy, and wiped out Slavery as
an Institution of the United States; and let any one
read this gentleman's address to the Union League
Club, and see if he can rise from the perusal of thit
document with one particle of a belief lingering in
his mind that the results of the latter war can be
neutralised by in lifference or neglect of the prin-
ciples involved by those who fought it Men
may be deceived as to the tendency of events,
and make terrible mistakes in attempting to carry
out the principles to which their lives are devoted.
These blunders may give rise to a sea of troubles,
and involve hereafter the heaviest sacrifices. But
however clouded the horizon may become, however
dark the future may lower, the principles of free-
dom, upheld by such champions, are secure of a
triumph in the end. England, who has long since
fought her battle against despotism, whose institu-
tions have been consolidated by the lapse of ages
and by the blood of martyrs, has grown heavy and
stupid on her material prosperity, and cannot com-
prehend the depths and the strength of feeling
which now actuate the champions of human right
in the Northern States of America. She sees and
condemns the violence of party, she groans aloud
over the blood spilt and the treasure wasted, but ,
she does not see the great issues involved, nor know
the keen sense of the position entertained by the:
vast body in the United States who have suffered.
so deeply for the cause, and are ready to suffer still
more. Had she truly estimated the great ques-
tions contested, the pure and disinterested aims
of the Northern patriots, it is more than
probable that her action would have been very di'
ferent towards the North in the agony of the great
strife. Saturated with her own materialism, she
attributed selfish motives to those who fought out
the great battle of Liberalism. It was a fight,
England said, on the part of the North for empire,
It was a battle, she declared, of the manufacturers of
the States of New England and Pennsylvania to force
their goods at protected rates on a reluctant South.
It was a war of the arrogant, irrepressible Yankee'?
maintain the ascendancy of the Eastern States, and
to tax alike for their benefit the hoodwinked West
and the rebellious South. Thatmen actuated by such
sordid motives could have expended hundreds 0,
millions sterling of their own treasure, and poured
out their blood like water, staggered this Europese
opinion, but it has not fully opened the eyes of this
aristocratically ruled country. In spite, however,
of the press, which has in general falsified the isseeS.,
at stake, and distorted the facts, the light of truth
is dawning on this land. John Jay's address is
the clearest exposition of the sentiments which
have guided the party to which be belongs
in their great contest. It is totally free from all cog'
geration of style or sentiment, and at the sane
time that it expresses, in the most uncompromising
manner, the principles held, it exhibits a tone
the kindest conciliation, and broad and statesmen'
like views. There is nothing rabid, nothing
narrow, in this noble address. While proclaiming
aloud the undying spirit which actuates the man;
bers of the club to uphold the principles contendeu
for, he frankly extends the right hand of fellowshiS
to his defeated foe. " I respectfully comma,
" to your consideration," he says, " the propriev
"of cordially opening your doors to Soutber_n
" gentlemen coming to New York, who, howeNr
" deeply involved they may have been in tue
"Rebellion are now prepared not only to acquiesG„f
"in the result of the war and the abolition v
" slavery, but to assist in the work of Reconstrl
"tion on the basis of Universal Education all
" Equal Right." After enumerating those the
gentlemen will there meet, he goes on to say, "
" they will learn how truly, with the determinall°_,
" of the Northern mind, to insist that our nationr,
" policy shall henceforth be that of equal and
" versal freedom, is blended a deep and earnest
" sire that no sectional strife may again disturb et:
"peace, but that the South and the North waY
" more closely bound than ever before in the boor
" of a common interest and mutual affection."