The Sun.
London, England, 1861-03-08 00:00:00

THE SUN.
LONDON, FRIDAY, MARCH_B, 1881.

We have to thank Mr. HENNESSY for a two
nights' conversation on Italy—a conversation with
no other object in reality than that of each speaker
saying what he liked. What he, Sir G. BOWYER,
and Mr. MAGUIRE could hope to gain from it, it is
not easy to say. They could at best but serve as
foils to show off to the best advantage the cause of
Italy and Piedmont, and the universal feeling
amongst Englishmen in direct opposition to their
own. Had they wished to accelerate the downfall
of the temporal power of the POPE, to blacken the
memory of the expelled Italian Princes, to encou-
rage their late subjects in following our own
example of 1688, and to strengthen the hands of
VICTOR EMMANUEL and his able Minister, they
could not have done better than raise a debate on
Italian affairs.

It is, of course, childish to arraign our Foreign
office for representing in its policy the wishes of all
but there is a band of notable Irish patriots who, en-
joying the fullest liberty themselves, are never tired
of demanding that Italians shall be slaves. So
strong and universal is the wish of England, Scot-
land, and Wales that the liberties we enjoy should
be possessed also by other nations, that nothing
makes a Ministry, otherwise unpopular enough, more
tolerable—we might say acceptable—to the nation,
than its foreign policy in favour of constitutional
liberty. Great Britain cannot comprehend the
consistency of rejoicing in her own freedom, and
wishing to keep others beneath the yoke. We
perceive the zeal of Irish Catholics to uphold the
hated temporal despctiam of the POPE, but while
we could pardon the illiterate mob for enlisting to
win the glories of capitulation in so good a cause at
Spoleto, we fail to comprehend how men of education
enough to enter the British House of Commons
can make common cause with the superstitious
multitude. Do they, we are inclined to ask,
speak their real sentiments, or• do they speak
for bigoted priests, and the voters whom those
priests will some day whip up to the poll ? Can
these legislators for a free country catch nothing
of the spirit which breathes all around them ? Are
they, as well as the heroes of Spoleto, amongst the
benightedly superstitious? It seems difficult to
believe it, yet they enter upon their cause with
such an intemperate warmth that it looks like
conviction ; Mr. BOWYER even took upom himself
to deny the facts of Perugian atrocities, a denial
for which he received an ample rebuke by Mr.
GLADSTONE, who read the return of the POPE'S
officers to the POPE himself, describing barbarities
which make one's blood run cold, as acts worthy
the commendation of his Holiness.
Mr. MACQUIRE asked what had the POPE done
that he should be despoiled of his dominions ? He
might better have asked what he had done that he
ought not to be despoiled of them ? Especially,
when the spoilers were the people themselves who
inhabited them. It is simply absurd to quibble about
the hospitals and charities of Rome, the amount of
taxes and so forth, when the broad fact is before
the world that all the subjects of the Porn hate
and detest his government, and throw it off as soon
as, and wherever they can. He cannot hold an
Sere of his dominions, through the attachment of
Is subjects to their ruler. No sooner are Austrian
troops withdrawn from the Legations, than away
go the POPE'S Legates with them, glad only to get
off with a whole skin. And were the French to go
to morrow, the POPE it he did not go with them,
3nust go to bed that night as spiritual ruler only of
liis morning's subjects. But, in plain English, we
think the conduct of the Irish Catholics utterly
,disgraceful to them. It is mean, irrational, and
selfish. They fancy there is something grand in
%ming a Pope a temporal Prince ; so, to dignify their
Chief Bishop, they are prepared to sell the liberties
sof their fellow Catholics at Rome. Such conduct
is, however, as irrational as it is mean and selfish ;
for they see that the dominions of the Pops are
not such as to make him independent ; he has been
in almost all history but the tool of some great
Tower, and is obviously now but the serf of France.
Iris independence and dignity would be greater as

a purely spiritual SoTereign. Superstition, how-
ever, is blind.

Between Mr. LAYARD, Sir R. PEEL, Mr. GLAD-
STONE, and Lord JOHN RUSSELL the cause of Italy
was well sustained enough, and the old horrid pic-
tures of misgovernment, that of Naples especially,
revarnished. The novelty of the debate was the
speech of JOHN ARTHUR ROEBUCK. We have all
of us thought Lord JOHN RUSSELL always quite
Austrian enough, especially since his unlucky visit
to Vienna at the time of the Russian war. But
Mr. ROEBUCK has also lately paid a visit to Vienna,
and the hon. member for Sheffield comes back far
more in. love with Austria than our Foreign Minister
now is. Mr. ROEBUCK wishes to see Italy free
and united—up to the Mincio ! Free, except
Venetia! Free, except from Austria! Free, except
from the threats of a Quadrilateral, garrisoned
by 150,000 Austrian soldiers ! This, from JOHN
ARTHUR ROEBUCK ! What does it all mean ? Was
it really because, as Mr. WHITE said, it had been
proclaimed in the city that the honourable member
for Sheffield would return to this country the
Eulogist of Austria, because he was received in
gilded salons by archdukes and archduchesses ; and
because it was rumoured that the honourable mem-
ber had come back from Vienna with a very lucra-
tive contract in his pocket ? Be the cause what it
may, Mr. ROEBUCK now pleads for Austria as our
natural continental ally in thwarting French and
Russian ambition. She is now a constitutional Go-
vernment, he tells us, and even her little children are
learning to prattle the English language, and her
bigger ones to appreciate and " love" the beauties
of English literature ; of MILTON'S prose works, no
doubt, among them. In short, to save Italy from
being the vassarof France, she must be so far as
the strength of the Quadrilateral goes, the vassal
of Austria. One would have supposed, if Mr.
ROEBUCK had not been blinded by Vienna
dust, he must see that nothing could tend
more to liberate Italy from vassalage to France,
than to have such a strong line of defence to fall
back on as that of the Mincio. Were Piedmont
and its fortresses carried by the French, then the
four famous fortresses, defended by freemen fight-
ing for their fatherland, would be a Torres Vedras
indeed to the armies of the invader.
Lord JOHN RUSSELL, it is gratifying to see,
will not sacrifice Venetia to Mr. ROEBUCK and
Austria. He stands by applying his principle
there of letting the Venetians decide for them-
selves. He does not think it for the interest of
Austria herself to make the heavy sacrifices which
she is now compelled to do, merely to garrison the
country. And, he seems to hope that the New
Austrian Constitution will enable the Venetians
to express their opinions in a way which shall
permit Austria to part with the country without
dishonour. Such a bloodless solution would be,
indeed, a happy one, one which England would
cordially welcome. Come what will, however,
Italian unity must be completed, and Rome and
Venetia'share, adorn, and strengthen their country's
freedom.

The republication of Parliamentary Speeches in
a pamphlet-form, as separate brochures, apart
from Bansard, apart from the columns of the daily
newspaper, we take to be conspicuous among the
number of those our political habitudes not, we
deliberately say it, NOT " more honoured in the
breach than in the observance."

Occasionally the advantages accruing from it
are peculiarly those resulting from a parely intel-
lectual enjoyment. Occasionally, that is—now-a-
days it must be allowed very rarely—it places alone
in the hands of the public some masterpiece of ora-
tory in which all the unintentional blunders and
rhetorical elisions incidental to the mere precipi-
tation of rapid stenography have been scrupulously
corrected by revision at the hands of the orator
from whose mouth the speech has emanated. It
was thus, for example, with reference to that
resplendent burst of eloquence which was the
"bright particular star" of the last Session of Par-
liament—that masterly oration upon Reform in
which the doom of Lord JOHN'S Poor Little Bill
was definitively pronounced by the lips of the
right hon. Baronet, the late Colonial Secretary.
Occasionally the reprint of a Ministerial decla-
ration, having reference to some vital theme affect-
ing in the most intimate manner the whole sub-
stance and structure of the national polity, consti-
tutes, for the multitude at large, nothing less than
a boon, the value of which is, in a measure, beyond
the reach of computation. It has very recently
been thus in regard to those two speeches delivered
at two consecutive sittings of the House of Com-
mons, by the noble lord her MAJESTY'S Secretary
of State for Foreign Affairs, those two most ira-
portant and remarkable harargues, in which the
noble lord defined the tendency of the entire foreign
policy of the Government, and elucidated with
especial particularity the significance of the
root principle of that policy, namely, what
is now popularly known as the principle of non•
intervention.

, Occasionally, moreover, it so happens that some
harangue of great intrinsic importance, some speech
that might otherwise have been allowed to pass by
unnoticed, is opportunely recalled, almost upon the
morrow of its delivery either in the Lords or Com-
mons, to the general recollection, is thrust vividly
and visibly in its printed form upon the national
consideration. It is precisely in this way, it is
thus happily and thus opportunely that a speech
which might otherwise have been allowed to evade
popular observation, has been forced anew in the
shape of a distinct brochure upon the attention of the
more thoughtful part of the community. Those who
may either have listened to this speech—the speech
of Lord STRATHEDEN upon the policy of Occasional
Reforms as compared with that of Final Measures—
those who may have listened to it at the time of its
delivery in the House of Lords upon the evening of
Thursday, the 21st of February, or those, again,
who may have merely glanced down the epitomized
report of it as given in the public journals of the
day following, will hardly have appreciated the
real value of its argument, as it may now be very
readily and agreeably appreciated in its revised and
corrected form as a distinct publication. A
,ispenny pamphlet of RIDGEWAY'S, extending in
all to scarcely 19 octavo pages, may readily enough
be obtained and read by those amongst our
reformers who are really and earnestly solicitous
that the much talked-of, but now seemingly
abandoned cause of Reform shall be furthered
and advanced instead of being quietly shelved
and cushioned. They will find in every sentence
almost of this thoughtful argument of Lord
STRATHEDEN'S, reasons enow and to spare why
Reformers generally should not allow themselves,
even now in this second month of the session, under
all the enervating and debilitating influences of a
Cabinet not in earnest in the cause of Parliamen-
tary Reform—(the very cause for the triumph of
which they were called into existence as a Cabinet!)
—to be disheartened. The gist of the argument of
this speech, as the very title-page of its reprint in
the shape of a substantial pamphlet clearly
enough indicates, is demonstrative of the
superior advantages of the policy of Occasional
Reforms, as compared with the now unhappily
patent and notorious disadvantages of the policy of
Final Measures. During twenty years, as Lord
STRATHEDEN argues, namely, from 1832 to 1852, it
was presumed by the majority of our statesmen that
there was no further necessity for any comprehen-
sive or root and branch scheme of innovation in the
great system of popular representation. Occa-
sional Reforms had meanwhile been carried out
now and then, at rare intervals, with the
happiest results. But then, in 1852, the policy
of Final Measures, the policy which had for
a whole score of years been dropped or allowed to
fall into abeyance, was again evoked—the alluring
and even enthralling policy of great and compre-
hensive measures of Reform in Parliament. Four

times, says the noble lord—Four times a recon-
structive settlement in this way has been attempted, I
" with uniform reproach to all the Governments
who ventured upon it !" The Government
of 1852—abandoning its scheme because no
sooner was it explained than it was an
object of all but universal opprobium. The
Government of 1854 " being forced," as Lord
STRATHEDEN remarks, "by a concurrence of all
parties to withdraw their measure of Reform, on
the eve of the Russian war, and never regaining
the credit which they lost by this unfortunate and
ill-timed proposition !" The Government of 1859
being " outvoted on the second reading of their
measure, and in vain appealing to a'general election
to:reverse the judgment of the House of Commons!"
The Government of 1860—but surely the retro-
spect in that instance relates to a period
so very recent and to a disappointment
of all reasonable expectations so very flagrant that
it needs no detailed particularisation. Referring to
all these notorious failures, Lord STRATHEDEN has
remarked (in his speech in the House of Lords on
the 21st of February, p. 7) very shrewdly, and it
might even be said philosophically " The
reception by which these new settlements of Reform
were strangled in their cradles, cannot be ascribed
to want of talent in the Cabinets which framed
them. It cannot be ascribed to any temporary
causes. The more their failure is examined, the
more it will be traced to causes which survive,
and of which, whenever such attempts are made,
the operation may be confidently reckoned on. At
any time they must array against them the hostility
of Parliament, because they threaten dissolution. At
any time they must excite the Opposition of the day
into activity, because on projects so ambitious and
so vulnerable, far more than on any other, the Go-
vernment advancing them may be successfully at
tacked. They must, also, to some extent, create
disunion in the Cabinet which forms them ; be-
cause, unless there is an object to pursue, and
a principle to go upon, as there was in 1831,
but does not seem to be at present, no twelve
statesmen can entirely agree on what ought
to be the nature of the settlement." Ii illustration
of the truth of this last-mentioned source of weak-
ness, and consequently of failure in the projeot of
these Final Measures, of these large and compre-
hensive measures of Parliamentary Reform, the
noble lord contents himself with reminding the
readers of his reprinted argument in a footnote
(p. 8), that the disunion caused in the Cabinet of that
time by the Bill of 1852, was eight years afterwards
disclesed quite incidentally by Lord GREY—(April,
1860) in his speech upon his Committee ! Observ-
ing that the division caused in Lord DERBY'S
Cabinet by the Bill of 1859 was revealed to the
recognition of all at the very time by the simul-
taneous resignation of Mr. HENLEY and Mr. WAL-
' POLE ! " And yet, perhaps," adds Lord STRATH-
EDEN in his footnote, " its application—[a.e. the
application of this remark of his in re-
ference to the divisions caused in Cabi-
nets by these great and final Measures]—
' its application to the bills of 1854 and 1860 is still
more generally felt; although not resting upon
proofs so easy to refer to." A significant intimation,
the force of which every one feels as might be said
instinctively—significant from any one, but espe-
cially so (for reasons most will upon the instant
appreciate), coming from the lips of Lord STRATI-
EDEN.

Contrasted with the utter failure of these four
great measures of Reform, of Parliamentary Re-
forms attempted thus comprehensively, has been
the success attendant, time and again, upon the
various occasional Reforms upon which different
Cabinets have adventured. " The policy of occa-
sional Reforms," Lord STRATHEDEN argues, with
manifest force, " has been already sanctioned by the
Legislature." Adding, "On this principle the Irish
franchise was extended in 1850 by the influence of
one Government ; the qualification of members was
in 1858 abolished, with the sanction of another."
And as to the facility of carrying out this same
policy of occasional Reforms, the noble lord reminds
his hearers in the House of Lords, and since then,
through this reprint of his speech in a pamphlet
form, his readers throughout the country, that
" The Irish Bill of 1850 was carried in the same
year with an Act as grave and as much controverted
as any which hid passed since 1833—the Act for
giving institutions to Australia." Observing
with equal power of argument that " The Bill of
1858, already referred to, was carried in the same
year in which India was transferred by legislation
to the Crown, night after night being spent in
arduous battles on that subject." Whereas how
truly and forcibly does not the noble lord immediately
afterwards remark in broad contrast to this—" The
comprehensive Bill of 1860, although it never
passed into committee, threw out every other mea-
sure except those relating to the Budget, along with
which it was proposed." We are precluded only
by a want of space and time from submitting here
to our readers more than these purely fragmentary
portions of the well considered argument addressed
by Lord STRATHEDEN on the 21st of February to
the House of Lords, and since then (by means of
his pamphlet) through the House of Lords to the
country, in demonstration of the superiority, as a
policy of Occasional Reforms, compared :with
that other and more ambitious policy, which has
four times failed so very flagrantly—in 1852,
in 1854, in 1859, in 1860—the policy of great
and comprehensive measures for the Reform of
Parliament. Even by means of these fragmentary
passages, however, we have displayed enough of the
sound ability, and of the rational tendency of the
argument in its entirety, to commend reformers
generally throughout the country to the examina-
tion of the Speech itself, as originally delivered and
subsequently revised by Lord STRATHEDEN.