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

one.

THE SUN.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 1859

If a telegram just received may be relied on, the
hopes we have expressed below are fallacious.
LOUIS NAPOLEON is bad enough to urge the King
of SARDINIA not to allow Prince CARIGNAN to
accept the Regency of the Duchies, and VICTOR
EMANUEL wants courage to resist him. The in-
telerable despotism of our " ally" in Italy ought
really to come to an end. We should be
sorry to bring England into the affair by
urging her to offer advice she is not
prepared to sustain ; but as Louis NAPOLEON does
not mean to appeal to arms about Central Italy, he
has proclaimed that the field is open for diplomacy
merely. If so, why should not Lord J. RUSSELL
offer counter advice? Why should he not tell
VICTOR EMMANUEL that this country thinks he ought
to have accepted the crown of the Duchies when
offered, but that the least he can do is not to drive
them to desperation by refusing their last moderated
proposal. England will be almost insulted before
Europe if, after the repeated avowals of her wishes,
Louis NAPOLEON be allowed to play the dog in
the manger, in this style, with Central Italy. The
States, there, would not have his worthless cousin
for King; so they shall n)t have VICTOR
EMMANUEL'S cousin even for Regent ! FA RINI,
and FANTI, and GARIBALDI are now released from
every moral obligation whatever to regard any-
thing but their one great object—ltalian independ-
ence; and it is to be hoped they will not have got
their million of muskets in vain.

Two new incidents of unequal importance, but
both, we trust, destined to tell effectively on the
side of Italian independence, have occurred within
the last few days. We refer to Lord ELLENBOROUGEI'S
letter, and the news which immediately followed that
the Duchies and the Romagna have asked Prince
CARIGNAN to accept the Regency of those States.

We hail the domestic event as one of the most
favourable augury. Lord ELLENBOROUGH is known
all over the continent as one of the ablest of the
English Conservative party, and one whose abilities
always command deference even from oppo-
nents. He is known as the man whom, indeed, the
old ladies of the India House recalled from India, be-
cause he was too much their superior to be
endured, but who knew how to govern there,
and especially knew how to select the right
man for the right place ; witness his treatment of
Sir CHARLES NAPIER, the conqueror of Scinde, and
compare it with what he afterwards received from
a regular H.E.I.C. Governor and the Company.
This is the man who speaks for Italian indepen-
dence, and that notwithstanding his Tory predi-
lections for Austrian domination, which show
themselves, negatively, by his not inditing a single
-word against it, while he does not fail to indicate
his sentim•nts respecting Napoleonism.
This is the man who also subscribes to put arms
into the hands of the Italians and expects others to
follow his example, showing that he is in earnest,
and that his Toryism is of the kind which would
even fight for national independence. It is re-
markable that two staunch Tory lords of such very
different temperament, he and Lord SHAFTESBURY,
have been amongst the most earnest advocates,
here, of Italian independence. The latter, it may be
said, chiefly cares to get Bibles into Italy—good
ammunition, too, against despotim and priestcraft.
Those curses of humanity have rarely survived a
conflict with a free circulation and free exposition
of the Sacred Volume. Let Lord ELLENBOROUGH,
therefore, send his muskets, and Lord SHAFTESBURY
his Bibles if they like. Tyrants and priests dread
knows
both. And this is the man who, as in India,

how to point in Italy also to the man for the Hour—
the very man whom we designated the other dayin
the same manner ; and we cannot but be gratified to
find such an administrator as Lord ELLENBOROUGII
so entirely concurring with us—since we regard
him as possessing eminently that important fa-
culty for a statesman, the capacity for se-
lecting his servants well—his lordship says,—
" There is in Italy one man who has at once a head
to direct, a hand to execute, and a heart which
tells him what is right. That man is GARIBALDI.
Let the Italians follow where he leads, and they
will at least acquire the honour which has been so
long unknown to them as a people. He has no
measures to observe with France. If he should
obtain success, he will not consent to hold the pro-
vinces he liberates as a fief of the French Empire.
He will not lend himself to the carrying out of the
idea of the first NAPOLEON, that France should
be surrounded by week dependent States."
It must surely prove of the best augury for Italy that
such a man should so powerfully back the sincere
desires of the present Ministry for Italian freedom
—desires to which we trust they will be enabled
to give diplomatic effect. They will do so
in proportion as such a man as GARIBALDI
obtains the power "to direct, to execute, and
to do what is right." A patriot army in his hands
will be an argument which all the despots and
diplomatists north of the Alps would rather not
meet. Of course they could by combination crush
him ; but it must be in a cause so infernally odious,
and at such a cost of blood as well as obloquy, that
they will shrink from it. GARIBALDI and a strong
army is the chief hope of Italy, and Lord ELLEN-
BOROUGH has done something towards giving him

The unanimous election of the cousin of the
King of SARDINIA, Prince CARIGNAN, as Regent,
till the condition of Central Italy is settled, is again
a well-advised step. We can only hope that he will
not, like his Royal cousin, refuse the offer. The elec-
tion, on the part of the States of Central Italy, must
be received as the answer to the impudent
letter of the Emperor of the FRENCH. Impudent,
if we view it in any other light than as an honour-
able sequel to his folly at Villafranca. Louis
NAPOLEON is, of course, a man of his word and of
his oath> He has never violated either, and could
not now begin to do so merely to make Sardinia I
strong, when the NAPOLEON policy is, avowedly,
to surround France with weak nations, among
whom she may sit as a Queen. Should Prince
CARIGNAN accept the offer, it will be the next best
thing to actual union with Piedmont ; some even
suggest that it may be, in certain aspects of the
case, a better thing. That the old Italian jea-
lousies might revive if all the capitals but one must
renounce their pretensions. We cannot say we think
so. The Italians have suffered so much from dis-
union, they have had it so deeply burnt into
their minds, that thorough union is their only
hope of safety, that the present generation have
well learnt that lesson. Austria and her brutalities
have done that service at least, to the little states
south of the Po, and north of it too. The rising
generation will also learn it as a sacred maxim from
their own greatest historian that dum singuli pug-
nant universi Vincuntur—a maxim which every
father will give every son, as the first copy he shall
write ; and point him to the long periods subsequent
to Tacitus as its superabundant proof. Success is,
we know, but too apt to divide those who were
fused together in adversity, but we imagine that
with the great military hosts always so near them,
north of the Alps, the impending danger will al-
ways be such as to make union an obviously sacred
duty.
It certainly does appear that bold coun-
sels, are now the counsels for Italy. We
can fully comprehend the difficulty of VICTOR
EMMANUEL as an honourable Prince. He may feel
that, as he owes Lombardy to the gift of France,
and so far as the number of combatants go, to her
arms, he can hardly retain the gift, and refuse the
conditions. The world has not seen however, yet,
any conditions by which he is bound to refuse the
spontaneous offer of independent States. We should
like to know whether, if those States hadbeen will-
ing to throw themselves into the arms of Austria
or of France, we should have heard a breath of
opposition to the offer from either power. The
spontaneity of the act would have pleaded against
all diplomatic arguments, and soldiers, and a fleet
too, had it been France, would have been in readiness
to answer all military arguments. Why, then,
should Sardinia be debarred the course which the
" Great Powers" would most certainly ha-ye taken,
under the like circumstances ? But if
the King of SARDINIA feel any reluctance
either on the score of honour, or of
power, Prince CARIGNAN is at least quite
free from the former, and we trust nothing will in-
duce the King of SARDINIA to refuse his assent. It
is well understood that he has not accepted the ad-
vice of " Sire, my cousin," and it is time for him to
remember that he also is a king, an Italian king.
That if others, French or German, would not have
refused the proffered crown, much less ought he,
who is one with those who offered them in nation-
ality, in language, in sentiments, and in blood.

England has had reason to watch with jealousy
the recent threatenings of war upon the borders of
Morocco. The seat-of-war, supposing war actually
to result from those threatenings, immediately con-
fronts our own strong fortress at the mouth of the
Mediterranean. Supposing tho contest (if contest
there really is to be in that particular quarter of
the globe) actually commenced—it were idle to
suppose that it would be a mere border struggle be-
tween the troops of the Spanish Queen and those
of the Moorish Emperor. A far more formidlble

Power than either Spain or Morocco, or both
of them put together, is already directly, not in-
directly, but directly, involved in these transac-
tions. There is France, with a despotic ruler and
an army of 500,000 disciplined soldiers, and a
maritime armament second only to that of Britain
—France who has already the grand Archimedian
Standing-point in North Africa, namely, the mag-
nificent colony of Algeria. Were Spain and Mo-
rocco to come into collision upon the paltry matter of
the Riff pirates—that riff-raff of the human race—
the inevitable, the notorious consequence would be,
that France would participate with the former in
crushing the ancient power of his Imperial Majesty
the Moonisii SULTAN ! And out of that combined
enterprise on the part of the Franco-Spanish armies,
who can say what might follow! Could the probable
consequence be foretold, even by Mr. URQUIIART,
the author of the " Pillars of HERCULES ?" Might
it not rather be recognised, as the phrase is, with
even half an eye by the veriest tyro in politics, the
merest dabbler in the study of geography! Gib-
raltar might soon afterwards be confronted by
another sphynx-like and formidable pile of fortiti
cations—fortifications grimly confronting our own
permanently upon the opposite shores, the African
shores, of the Straits (better known as the Gut) of
Gibraltar. From one of the pillars of IlimetTLEs
the royal standard of England has long been
flying triumphantly. Is it desirable that from the
other there should speedily be unfurled the Impe-

rial tricolor of France, emblazoned with the Eagle
Of NAPOLEON ?
It is told of DOUGLAS JERROLD that when
some one was exulting over the then recent
arrangement of the glorious alliance between
France and England, the wit observed, with a
sneer,—" Glorious ? The Alliance between France
and England ?—The best thing I know between
France and England is—the Channel !" Even Sir
CHARLES COLDSTREAM could hardly have said of
this sarcastic mot that " there was nothing in it !"
Whatever any of us may think, or say, or write
upon the subject of the Alliance (wishing it all
the while with our whole heart and soul to be last-
ing, and, if possible, perpetual) there is something
in that witticism of JERROLD'S nevertheless ! The
Channel really and truly is, after all, about the
best thing there could well be—better even than
the Alliance—between France and England.
Granting which, as we must grant it, if we are en-
dowed with even the smallest modicum of the most
ordinary common sense—ho'w far can it be in any
way desirable that our advanced posts in Europe,
the advanced posts of France and England should be
divided henceforth not by the width of the Chan-
nel, but by the narrowness of the Gut of Gibraltar?
Yet that is precisely the prospect, the possibility,
the probability, we might even say, opened up to
view by this threatened war between the Moors
on the one side, and the French and Spanish sol-
diers on the other, along the borders of the olden
empire of Morocco ! No wonder England has been
on the alert. No wonder the noble lord, her MA-
JESTY'S Foreign Secretary, has felt himself con-
strained by the double dictates, we might
rather say by the synonymous dictates
of loyalty and patriotism to evidence
upon this point a peculiar degree of vigilance.
Because England has now, for a long period, held
possession of Gibraltar—that surely is no reason
why France should now be afforded the tempting
opportunity of taking forcible possession of Cueta.
The age of territorial spoliation, at any rate,
so close at hand, is, by general agreement
among the great Powers of Europe, understood to
be at an end. The French Empire, according
to the reigning Cmsar there, this third NAPOLEON,
is—Peace ! The Crimean war to the contrary, not-
withstanding—the Italian war ditto—yet the ruler
of France did utter those words at Bordeaux. It
is well for our diplomatists to recall the occasion as
often as possible to the memory of our imperial ally.
It is desirable that our Foreign Minister should
strive to pin the policy of onr ally, if possible, down
to that implied in his own programme—if nowhere
else upon the African coast, just immediately oppo-
, site Gibraltar.

During the last two or three months we have
heard through advices from that rocky fastness
nothing more audibly than the rumours of war
hard by it ! The Gibraltar Chronicle, if it has in-
timated it once, has intimated it dozens and dozens of
times, under date Gibraltar, September, under date
Gibraltar, October, under date Gibraltar, November,
that " from the upper signal station at [such an
hour] this day heavy guns were heard in the direc-
tion of Tangier!" Over and over again we have
read the same announcement. The Rock has been
continually"frighted from its propriety" by the same
intermitent sounds of firing. The English people, the
English Crown, the English Minister must look
well to it that the threat of war there shall, if our
influence can possibly prevent it, be ended, shall
be crushed out and precluded from the chance of
realisation. O'DONNELL may be bent upon pro-
moting the quarrel with a selfish view merely
to the acquisition thereby of some share of
military glory—but England has full and
sufficient reason to baulk the Spanish up-
start in his ambitious designs, and to put the
sincerity of the French Imperial alliance now
directly to the test, if only with an eye to the main-
tenance of her ancient prestige, and pride, and
power upon her grand rocky stronghold at the
gates of the Mediterranean.

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