The Sun.
London, England, 1861-05-11 00:00:00

AUSTRIA AND THE KINGDOM OF

ITALY.

The following is a despatch addressed by the
Austrian Minister for foreign Affairs to his Am-
bassador in London, as an indirect reply to the
despatch from Count Cavour to the Sardinian
Minister at the English Court, in reference to pro-
claiming the "Kingdom of Italy," and to the policy
of the Cabinet of Turin. The subjoined bears the
date of April 27 :

" The journals have recently published a despatch,
addressed by the Count de Cavour to the Marquis
d'Azeglio, on the date of the 16th of March last.
Though the publication referred to has, up to this
time, if I am not mistaken, no official character, it
has, notwithstanding, attracted our attention, and
it would be difficult for us to pass all the assertions
contained in that document in entire silence.
" I shall not undertake to discuss here the opi-
nions of M. de Cavour on the present situation of
the countries now submitted to Piedmoutese domi-
nation. The character and effects of that domina-
tion, the manifestations and events of all kinds that
have prece4d or followed the annexations, are facts
that enter into the domain of history. To history
it belongs to settle their value, and we have no wish.
to encroach on her rights. It will suffice us, for
the instant, to observe how marked a contrast the
disorders and sanguinary suppressions of which
Italy is every day the theatre, form to the brilliant
colours of the canvas painted by M. de Cavour.
" What it is important for me here to call atten-
tion to are passages of the despatch to the Marquis
d'Azeglio, that refer to Venetia. We must, above
all, give a categorical denial to the assertion that no
other regime is possible in Venetia than the state of
siege. Though habituated to see our adversaries
employ against the weapon of calumny, we are,
however, astonished to find a fact so notoriously
incorrect asserted in an official document. The state
of siege, raised almost immediately after the cessa-
tion of hostilities in 1859, has never been since re-
established at any point of our Italian provinces.
"As to the other reproaches addressed to the
Austrian administration in Venetia, I can but re-
vert to my former despatches on that head. They
long since placed at your Excellency's disposal ma-
terials sufficient for you to be enabled to rectify the
erroneous impressions that have been diffused
among the public, and to throw on whom it is due
the responsibility of a state of things that inter-
poses an obstacle to the complete realisation of the
generous intentions of the Emperor my master.
" We shall therefore dispense with once again
enumerating all the difficulties raised up against us
from without, all the provocative schemes of the
committee that are organised and working under
the eyes of the Piedmontese Government—in a word,
all the culpable manoeuvres brought into play to
paralyse and render impossible any conciliatory ac 4
tions, to excite and keep up ferment in the populations,
by representing them as groaning under an intoler-
able yoke. If the Italian subjects of the Emperor
do not share to the full in the benefits conferred
on other parts of the Empire, it must be attributed
to the effects of the perpetual instigations that come
from without.

" Moreover, we are surprised, that M. de Cavour
continues to affect so much consideration for the
so called victims of military rule, when the Pied-
montese Government shrinks from no one of the
severities of that rule as so vigorously applied by its
agents in Southern Italy. The echo of the fusil-
lades in the Abruzzi might now, it seems to us,
drown at Turin the cries of anguish of which so
much was said a little while ago.
" But the last complaint made against us by M.
de Cavour is that which appears to me the strangest
of all. If, to make use of the very words of M. de
Cavour, the position established by the treaty of
Zurich between the Emperor's Government and that
of King Victor Emmanuel is now sensibly modified,
and that the position is abnormal, difficult, and
dangerous, whose is the fault? If King Victor
Emmanuel signed the preliminaries of Villafranca,
and if, even before there was time for these pre-
liminaries to be converted into a treaty of defini-
tive peace, the acts of Piedmont were in formal
contradiction with the stipulations he had bound
himself to respect—if, lastly, in consequence
of those acts, more than one article of the Treaty
of Zurich accepted by Piedmont has remained a
dead letter, on whom should fall the responsibility
of the consequences ? If it be wrong in the
eyes of M. de Cavour to have for oneself
recognised rights—incontestable rights ; if it be
wrong to have consequently given proofs of modera-
tion, and of a sincere love of peace, by confining
oneself to reservations and protests against most
flagrant violations of right, then, indeed, we must
admit that we have been guilty of wrongs from
which we cannot discharge ourselves. It would
take too long to examine here in detail all the acts
of Piedmont, and to set her sins side by side of
those attributed to us. I shall content myself,
therefore, with adding that we can fearlessly appeal
to every impartial judgment, and boldly ask whe-
ther it be the acts of Austria that have, since the
peace of Zurich, stained Italy with blood and con-
tinuously menaced the tranquillity of Europe.
" Such, Monsieur le Comte, are the reflections I
have thought it my duty to communicate to you. I
beg you to be good enough to make use of them to
Lord John Russell when you have occasion to con-
fer with him on the affairs of Italy.
" Receive' &c.,
"COUNT DE RECIIBERG."

LITERATUBE.

BULWER'S LIBRARY EDITION.

The last two volumes added to this noble edition
have placed in the hands of the subscribers " The
Last of the Barons"—a gorgeous national historical
romance, which, it will be remembered, wag de-
signed by the author at the period of its original
publication, that is to say, at the dawn of 1843
(eighteen long years ago !) to be the last of Sir
Edward's prose works of imagination. In the
Romancist's " Dedicatory Epistle," prefixed to
the narrative, an epistle addressed by him to
some friend and critic whose name has never
yet been revealed, the writer, dating his remarks,
"London, January, 1843," alludes indirectly to
this fiction" as—quoth he—" probably the last
with which I shall trespass upon the public !" How
very little did Sir Bulwer Lytton, while penning
those words, foresee at that moment, how very
little, indeed, did he foresee, of his literary future
—he who was destined then, by means of three of
his finest poems, and of five of his noblest
prose fictions to crown his literary reputation.
For has he not within the interval which has since
then elapsed, produced his three happiest efforts
as a Poet ?—the brilliant satire of The New Timor;
—the ambitious epic, in twelve books, of .King
Arthur—the luminous and eloquent celebration of
our great parliamentary orators grouped together
in that national Walhalla of St. Stephen's.
Again, as a Novelist —is it extravagant
to assert that within the same lapse of time, within
that same interval of time flitting by since " The
Last of the Barons" originally made its appearance,
Sir Edward Lytton has given to the world about
the noblest prose products of his creative imagi-
nation ? It will hardly be pronounced an exag-
geration to assert as much as that, when it is re-
membered that four years after he supposed
he had for ever laid aside his pen as a Novelist, he
produced (1847) his wierd romance of Lueretza
That in the year following (1848) he published
what we have before now designated his prose epic
of _Harold, the last of the Saxon Kings
And that he has subsequently given to the
public his three
i great Caxton's Novels, ori-
ginally published n. a serial form in, the pages of
Blackwood's Alagazzlie, Remembering all which
the readers of Bulwer Lytton will ever turn back
not with diminished, but rather with increased in-
terest, to a reperusal of those pictured pages which
were intended, at the time they were penned, to be
at once Bulwer's "Last of the Barons" and the
144 Q hip Roraqugeo,