The Sun.
London, England, 1861-05-21 00:00:00

NORTH ITALY.

A letter from Turin, dated May 18, says ;—Kos •
suth and Klapka are both here in Turin, where they
lately arrived from distant and different regions.
This of course is by no means looked upon as a
chance meeting, and its object is, naturally enough,
supposed to be to come to some understanding with
the Italian Government, or with some of the Italian
parties, as to "what is to be done next." It was said
that General Klapka meditated a trip to Caprera ;
this would mean, probably, that nothing can be ob-
tained from Cavour.
There is no doubt but the Italian and the Hun-
garian patriots have some occasion, though no good
reason, to be anything but satisfied with one ano-
ther. They have both brought themselves to the
very verge of a hostile outbreak with Austria,
and are both equally afraid to commit themselves
to the first steps. Botn have all to lose, though
both may gain all by a single cast of a die. They
would fain use each other as a catspaw. The Hun-
garians reproach the Italians with reluctance to set
to work with the means they have at their disposal,
—a regular army, a treasury, 22,000,000 emanci-
pated people ; the Italians retort upon the Hun-
garians their inability to shake the fidelity of the
Hungarian troops, the mainstay of the Austrian
empire, the kernel of her Quadrilateral garrisons.
These complaints may all be well founded; inaction
on both sides may be very reasonable, but in the
meanwhile Austria gains by the respite.
There is something, however, which preoccupies
the Italian mind to the exclusion even of Austria,
Hungary, and Venice. The Roman question is
never allowed a moment's rest throughout this
country. It storms so loudly at the door of Count
Cavour's Government as to endanger, if not his
tenure of office, at least his well-earned reputation.
This ever-vexed question assumes as many varieties
of aspect as are the surmises which the subtlest
brains can put forward with a view to explain the
hidden, and perhaps only half-conceived, designs of
the :Emperor Napoleon. Every fitful dream of
every fevered mind in France, Italy, or Europe,
takes shape and consistency, and is made to circu-
late for a d.iy, a week, or a month, as a well authen-
ticated, offidous, or semi-official rumour. Where
nothing can by' ony possibility be known, it is im-
possible to imagine the amount of trash human
gullibility will be ready to swallow. The report
which finds favour to-day is that France is willing
to withdraw her troops from Rome upon an engage.
ment being entered into by Italy, for which France,
of course, makes herself responsible; that the pre-
sent possessions of the Pope will be secured to him,
and no molestation will be offered to him on the
part of the Italian nation. Rome will be Papal
and independent, and Italy will have to look else-
where for a capital.
I need not dwell upon the improbability of this
least plausible of all plans, as it must be obvious to
English readers, or indeed to any persons in a
calmer mood of mind than the Italians at present
enjoy, that neither Monsignor de Merode nor
General Lamoriciere himself could uphold the Papal
throne against the Romans themselves for a single
day if the Pontiff were left to his own resources,
and that in the event of a successful riot, the Pope
would either have to be supported by the Italian
Government, when he would find himself at their
mercy, or he would have to.sue for another French
intervention, when matters would again be brought
into the present unsatisfactory condition. More-
over, the newsmongers who suppose Count Cavour
to be mixed up with such a proposal forget that he
proclaimed, and led the Italian Parliament to pro-
claim, Rome as the capital of Italy,—a proclamation
by which the Minister as well as the nation bound
themselves to the total extinction of the temporal
power of the Papacy, even at its head-quarters.
With a King at Rome the Pope sinks to the rank
of a Bishop.
No doubt, however, the Italian Prime Minister
and his best friends are pressing hard at the
Tuileries for a solution of the Roman question.
But the oracle of the Tuileries shakes his head and
gives no sign. Speak to nine out of ten of the
Neapolitan deputies, question nine out of ten of
the travellers of any country or party lately re-
turned from Naples, they will unanimously give
you their conviction that order will never be re-
stored in the Southern provinces, bloodshed and
brigandage will never be put down, the real unity
of Italy will never be cemented till Rome becomes
tle capital of Italy. My own impression would
lead me at least to substitute for the last sentence
this other one—till Rome ceases to be the focus of
priestly, Bourbonist, Ultramontane, Legitimist, and
all other mischievous intrigues—a cessation of
which would not necessitate the translocation of the
Italian seat of Government.
What the real, remote, and contingent object of
the Emperor in this perpetuation of the miseries of
Italy may be there is hardly a man who would pre-
sume to guess. His stanchest friends in this coun-
try are fairly brought to their wit's end in their
attempts to explain or justify his conduct. "As
the most Christian Emperor," they say, " he could
plead the duties of the Eldest Son of the Church to
screen the Father of Believers from harm ;" but as
the supplanter of the French Bourbons no one can
see what reason he may have to aid and abet the
bloody deeds of a Neapolitan Bourbon. Of the
complicity, or at least connivance, of General Goyon
and other Frenchmen in power at Rome at the
brigand raids which they affect to prevent few per-
sons in Italy seem to entertain any doubt. But, then,
the Emperor's friends urge, " these men exceed, or
rather betray, their instruct ions. They are the
enemies of France no less than of Italy. Bour-
bonists at heart on the North no less than on the
South side of the Alps." This would be to excuse
perfidy and duplicity on the score of weakness and
imbecility. The Emperor would scarcely thank his
apologists who represented him as employing his
own enemies in his service without more than suffi-
cient means of swaying and controlling them.
No, no ! What takes place on Rome and on the
Neapolitan frontiers is certainly Napoleon's own
doing, and men are left to cudgel their brains to
make out his motives as they can. The problem
from beginning to end admits of only two solutions,
each of which, if frankly adopted and applied
throughout, would set forth the Emperor's conduct
as perfectly consistent. The Emperor crossed the
Alps two years ago for the deliverance of Italy ;
from that day, or from the day of Villafranca, he
uniformly exerted himself with a view to throw
obstacles in the way of that deliverance. This he
may have done, either, agreeably to one hypothesis,
because he thought it might be good for the
Italians that they should earn their freedom
by hard strife ; and hence the question of Venetia
left open, hence the long and unfair opposition to
Central Italian annexation, hence the various
schemes for a confederacy, a combination of three
States, a dualism. The Italians needed tempering
by all this long ordeal ; the Imperial Providence
which tried them well knew how much they might
bear, and what would be best for them.

Or else take the other supposition, and say that
the pretended liberator only wanted to become the
High Protector, the supreme ruler of Italy, and
then one can conceive why he came to terms with
half-vanquished Austria; why, even while he suf-
fered the old Austrian tools to be broken at Parma,
Modena, and Florence, he objected Ito the fusion of
those provinces with Piedmont; why .'ke prolonged
the death-throes of Bourbonism at Gaeta ; why he
now endures Pius IX. at the Vatican, Frai.'cis 11.
at Albano, and Chiavone and De Christen astride
the frontier. His power of doing mischief is indee.i
great, but it is not unbounded. The annexation of
Central Italy was achieved in spite of him, some
people think, but the indignant Emperor avenged
himself, and Italy had to pay the scot by the
uponcession
the of a Savoyacquisition
qul
sltion
and Nice. Is a price equally set
of Rome and the pacification of
the South ? I gave you in one of my last letters
the surmises which are rife in some circles here
about some French scheme for wresting the island
of Sardinia and the western Genoese territory from ,1

the Italian Government. Men's minds are not yet
quite reassured on, that score. To be sure, sanguine
men trust that England and Europe would never
consent to this new aggrandisement on the part of
France; but neither did they believe 18 months
ago that France could get the " southern slopes" on
such easy terms. Strange things come to pass
when people obstinately refuse to take warning.