The Sun.
London, England, 1859-11-03 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, -IHITRSDAY EVENING, NOVEMBER 3, 1869,

like most of its class, is too demoralised to reform

except by compulsion.
The recommendations which, after being duly
canvassed in Norwich, are, we suppose, to be for-
warded to Lord JOHN RUSSELL to aid him in his
task, are principally three—to prohibit canvassing ;
to provide voting-papers, which are to be so de-
livered on the day of election that the state of the
poll shall not be known till after its completion ;
and the payment of all election charges
out of the county rate. It is also proposed
that petitioning against returns shall be the
duty of the returning officer, who. is to adver-
tise a reward of £25 to persons who will disclose
cases of bribery. Severe penalties to follow in-
fringement of the provisions of the Act.
The proposals are, it will be seen, directed almost
exclusively against the lowest, but not the most
widely spread form of corruption—against bribery.
This was natural in a city like Norwich or Glouces-
ter. The corruption which has assimilated the
counties, politically, to the American Slave States,
would be untouched by these schemes. The
worst effects of slavery are justly said to
be seen, when men can be contented and merry in
their bondage. The degradation of the man is com-
plete when he makes no sign that he desires free-
dom. It is thus, to a great extent over the broad
acres of our country. The farmers, a class of men
well worthy of political liberty, abounding in strong
natural sense, and becoming better instructed every
day,—this vast class slumbers in hopeless bondage.
Liberty is forgotten. The farmer would sing in his
chains, were he not a born grumbler. The cor-
ruption of landlord control works without resist-
ance, for resistance means starvation. It works
indeed almost without noise or friction.
In corrupt old city constituencies the worst bri-
bery " is often practised within the last hour or two.
The undecided," if they think things will run close,
always hold off till then. This is, of course, the
reason for putting the votes into a ballot box to be
opened after all the votes are received. It is ob-
vious that while this plan may have the advantage
intended, it will be little check against the
_previous
purchase of the voter. He will not take out the vot-
ing paper till he has had his fee. He can then give
his receipt far it—the thing which a secret Ballot
alone would prevent, by destroying confidence
between corruptor and corrupted.
Two principal checks are still left, the candidate
is to to have no pretext for spending money ;
and a reward is to be offered to informers. The
reward is less than was paid for voters at Wake-
field ; in such cases no man would kill, by in-
forming, the goose which laid the golden eggs.
Votes generally cost, it is true, much less than £25
—still what with the infamy of turning informer,
and the prospect of repeated bribes, £25 would
rarely induce the bribee to inform against the
briber. The proposal is, however, a good one, but
Lord BROUGHAM'S, to make bribery felony would
go further to settle the business.
As to relieving the candidate of expenses, unless
it were done, after nomination by some hundred or
more electors, it would embarrass, we should think,
the election, by a number of upstart candidates
who would have no title to nominate them-
selves. We like nomination .in some form.
We like too the hustings. As to the
prohibition of canvassing, it is desirable, were it
practicable. We fear, what indeed the discussion
in the Corporation illustrated, the impossibility of
legally defining canvassing. To us it appears that
all sincere Reformers will be driven to the Ballot.
They are indeed, now, almost universally, favourable
to it ; but they think they cannot carry it. Many
arc no doubt also a little intimidated by the cant
exclamations of those who profit by open
voting. We beg, however, to remind all
who really desire free and independent elec-
tions, Ist, that the Ballot is the method always
resorted to by respectable directors of companies,
clubs, and even dissenting churches, when they
wish for a perfectly independent election. 2dly.
That it may be added to all the other plans.
Bribery may still be made felony. Candidates
may still make declarations at the poll or in the
House of Commons. If the bribed or the personated,
&c., are proved, under the ballot, to be sufficient
to have turned the election, a new one can be ordered.
The ballot is compatible with all the laws we please
against corruption, though it would leave, we are
persuaded, but little need for them. idly. The ballot
alone protects the poor, and the dependent, against
the intimidating class, the most cruel bribers of all;
it even protects the poor man against the tyranny
of his own class. In short we know of no plan
which can supersede the simple, old fashioned, but
efficient one of absolutely secret voting. We find
that in Australia it has abolished canvassing al-
ready, and even made it dangerous for a candidate
to attempt it. We are pleased to see Reformers at
work in any way, but they will find no substitute
for the Ballot.

orders, is said to have again resigned his office ; and,
at any rate, Garibaldi addresses the Romagnese
divisions as authoritatively as if they and all the
troops of Central Italy were as much under his com-
mand as is the Tuscan division. Garibaldi elec-
trifies the soldiers with the announcement of immi-
nent hostilities. His programme is as simple and
conclusive as the schemes of French and Austrian
diplomacy are crooked and contradictory. If we
sum up all the pro and contra--if we consider what
Italy has to expect from goaded Austria, from
treacherous France, and from perplexed and inac-
tive England—l repeat, it must seem to every
generous-minded Italian that safety is only to be
found in the rashest and most irretrievable. step.
If the Neapolitans are still the men of
Velletri, the men to lease their King in
the lurch either from disaffection or arrant
cowardice, it is clear that the road to An-
cona, Arcoli, and Naples is open to Garibaldi. By
a fortnight's march the southern kingdom has in-
variably been conquered by all manner of invaders
from the days of King Manfred of Swabia to those
of King Ferdinand IV. of Bourbon. By a fort-
night's march Garibaldi secures the help of 9,000,000
of Italians to the national cause. Unquestionably
the stake is high, and all may be lost in the event
of defeat; but all seems to me lost at all events.
The Government of the States of Central Italy, and
even of Piedmont, is in young incapable hands. It
would be a great blessing, I believe, if Garibaldi
would begin his operations against the enemy by
turning doting dictators, drivelling Ministers, and
pedantic State Secretaries adrift, as Bonaparte did
in 1799, when he by a necessary coup d'etat
rid himself of the avocats. Garibaldi at the head
of all civil andmilitary powers in Central Italy, the
King asDictator in Northern Italy, with Cavour as
his sole Minister, and Cialdini as his sole general—
such is, perhaps, the only arrangement that could
bring Italy out of her present throes. Garibaldi sees
too clearly that the volunteers of the Romagnese
and other Central Italian divisions are not to be
kept to their standards without the prospect of
striking some great, decisive blow before the winter
sets in. What desperate course ought not Italy to
venture upon, sooner than allow these half-disci-
plined troops to disband, and enable thus even the
paltry Papal and Ducal mercenaries to march into
Bologna, Modena, and Florence with flying
colours ?
The 10 or 12 individuals who had been arrested

as implicated in a reactionary plot three or four
days ago in Florence, have been quietly set at
liberty. One of them, Busi, the Republican secre-
tary of Montanelli in 1849, was seen freely walking
about the streets of this town the other day. Most
of the others are certainly at large, and only some
doubt arises as to the release of Andreozzi,
Guerrazzi's republican agent in 1848, who is now
charged with plotting with the friends of the Lor-
raine dynasty. There must surely have been in-
considerate haste either in the arrest of these men
or in their dismissal. The effect of which measures
among the people here is highly unfavourable, and
the state of public anxiety is evidenced by the funds,
which have suffered a severe fall for the last 14
days, without any external or internal ostensible
reason.

I have often entertained you with my strictures
on the want of energy evinced by the Tuscan Go-
vernment in the promotion of the national arma-
ment. The simple fact that no horses are provided
for the Tuscan squadrons now forming at Florence,
while excellent cattle is purchased in the Grand
Duchy on reasonable terms, by purveyors charged
with the mission to mount the 1,000 hussars of
Piacenza, sufficiently bears me out in my asser-
tions. This poor fiddling-faddling Tuscan Govern-
ment seems only, in these warlike times, bent on
developing its energies in the arts of peace. The
scheme for the erection of monumental works put
forth for the welfare of distressed artists, was so far
from being called for by present exigencies, that
the deree to that effect fell dead and unnoticed by
the persons it was to benefit ; and it had to be
followed up by an official appeal of the Government
to the artists themselves, inciting them to lay aside
their modesty, and to come forward and avail
themselves of the public bounty by bidding for
the works. The commission for the drainage of the
Marerame, appointed at a very early period after
the 27th of April, has already long since reported
on their long and accurate study of the subject
made on the spot; and yet, as late as yesterday, we
have a urize of 1,500 f. offered is the author of
the best essay on the draining of those same
incurable marshes. On the same principle, after
working very hard at the reformation and extra-
vagant endowment of the two Universities of the
Gland Duchy, at Pisa and Sienna, till Tuscany had
more professors than students, our rulers here are
now—think of it, at this very crisis—busy at the
organisation of a High School in the capital, which,
under another name, is to become a third Tuscan
University, and the greatest of all. They are de-
termined, they say, that Florence is once more to be
" the Athens of Italy," and, oddly enough, the
Ministers of Parma are equally busy vindicating
that proud title for their city. It is painful to think
that Italy should have so many " Athenses," when
she is so sorely in need of Spartans or Thebans.
The Lombard 13ceotians and the Subalpine Mace-
donians are also beginning to squabble for pre-
eminence in a State which as yet rests on far
from safe bases. They find it difficult to reconcile
local interests with the well-being of a cen-
tralised State. The Milanese have raised a loud
outcry at the removal of the Mint, the Monte
Lombardo, and other metropolitan institutions,
which had their seat within their walls under the
Austrian domination, and which the Sardinian Go-
vernment proposed, or was supposed to contemplate,
removing to Turin. To gratify the new subjects
the Royal Mint, the tobacco manufactory, and the
Supreme Court of Cassation are to be established
at Milan, not without deep murmurs on the part of
the old subjects, who considered the loss of the Su-
preme Court as a very severe blow. Hints are also
thrown out that the King will hold his Court
alternately at Turin and Milan, all measures
which bid fair to discrown the subalpine capital in
a few years. The feeble men at the helm of a
State which was with difficulty held by Cavour are
evidently crushed by the overwhelming mass of
business brought upon them by the annexation of
a province hardly inferior to the hereditary domi-
nions in extent and more than equal in wealth and
importance. Miglietti, the Minister of Grace and
Justice, the ablest of the lot, has withdrawn into
private life ; the others are evidently irresolute
and discordant ; and even the strong, although
narrow-minded, Della Marmora seems to have
lost that peculiar aptness for military organiza-
tion which made the army the keystone of the
Piedmontese edifice during the most difficult and
calamitous crises. Of the new Lombard brigades that
were to be added to the fine Subalpine Corps hardly
a few hundred men are as yet under arms. Time and
money are lost in petty paltry alterations of the
collars, cuffs, and facings of the infantry uni-
forms ; and more of both is to be squandered in
spoiling four of the very best regiments of Lancers
to convert them into four regiments of useless, cum-
brous Cuirassiers. A greater proof of madness than
this scheme exhibits could be given by no living
man. Austria has 14 regiments of Cuirassiers in
her pay, yet she never sent one man with a steel
corset on his back into Italy since she first won the
Lombardo•Venetian kingdom in 1841. The nature
of that Lombard country is such that only the very
lightest cavalry can be of the bast use—and even
that of no great use. The soil and climate render
the wearing of heavy armour an impossibility, both
in the great heats and in the rainy season, and the
Government must look out for new horses and men,
as neither the troopers nor the chargers of the four
regiments above-mentioned arc equal to the task
appointed for film.
These internal disorders, the fear of mutiny and
desertion among the impatient volunteers, and the
dread of plots and conspiracies among the reac-
tionary parties, who gain fresh boldness and enter-
prize in the same measure as the hopes of the
patriots pale in sight of serious foreign difficulties,
make the" croakers," to whom I perhaps too often
listen, look rather blank OR the present prospect of ,
Italian affairs. Were the foreign part of the ques-
tion favourably solved, and the annexation of Cen-

tral to Northern Italy allowed and recognized by
the great European Powers, nothing would be easier
for the Sardinian Government and the patriots
strongly attached to the scheme of union, than to
overawe all adverse faction, and to organize the
army nd the State on firm ground. On the other
hand, were the Italians, at least the well-meaning
Italians, all of one mind, and were men of proper
energy and determination to take the lead of public
affairs, the national cause would laugh Villafranca,
Zurich, and even Brussels to scorn ; it would not
only triumph over such enemies as the banished
Dukes, the Pope, and the King of Naples, without
striking more than one blow, but it would also by
the unanimous will of 12 000,000 if not be able to
overcome all the might of France and Austria on
the field, at least have strength to wear out both
those and all other external foes, and to win friends
wherever there be hearts that beat for the most
sacred principles of justice and freedom.