The Sun.
London, England, 1859-11-17 00:00:00

TIDE ITALIAN QUESTION.

(From the Times.)
Italian spirit has not quite died out of the coun-
cils of King Victor Emmanuel. Under the influ-
ence of a too powerful ally the Pied montese Sove-
reign has given up a large portion of that authority
with which his countrymen has endowed him. lle
had been for ten years the leader of the Italian
people, the centre of their aspirations, the represen-
tative of their nationality. At a time when the
Western Powers, on the one hand, and Russia, on
the other, were soliciting the help of Francis
Joseph, the King of Sardinia still expressed the
enduring animosity of his race to the foreigner, and
joined the Western allianee, in the hope of some
day being strengthened against his enemy. This
position he has retained up to the present day ; but
some of the acts to which he has been forced by the
irresistible might of his late. ally have caused the
world to ask whether the son of Charles Albert had
not joined the compact by which the two Emperors
seemed inclined to crush the independence of his
native country. We are glad to believe that Victor
Emmanuel has acted only under compulsion, and
that with the countenance of other great European
Powers, he will take a firmer stand, and, while
acknowledging the benefits to Italy resulting from
the late war, will decline to allow any victorious
potentate to dictate to the Italian populations,
which are both in fact and by the law of nations
independent communities.
As our readers know, the Assemblies of Tus-
cany, Parma, Modena, and the Romagna offered
a few days since the Regency of their respective
States to the Prince of Savoy Carignan, the relative
of the King. There was, according to English ideas;
and according, we are sure, to the rights of nations,
no ground of complaint in this. European opinion
has long since pronounced against the right of any
State to force a discarded sovereign on another, and
the crowns of France, Belgium, and Greece have
been within the last 30 years disposed of by popular
election. Moreover, France had expressly sanc-
tioned and acknowledged the revolutions in three
of these States. While the British authorities very
properly declined to compliment a Government to
which their Minister had not been accredited, the
French Emperor•at once acquiesced in the Tuscan
revolution, and sent his cousin with a French divi-
sion to join the troops of the three Duchies. It is
evident, then, that both by international law and by
the express recognition of France the people of Cen-
tral It sly were free from their former rulers, and
competent to choose a government for themselves.
They chose the Prince de Carignan as Regent, to
exercise authority in the name of the King of Sar-
dinia until the diplomatic questions connected with
the Peninsula were fully settled. The interference
of France, which immediately took place, was cer-
tainly an unjustifiable stretch of power. Victor
Emmanuel was urged in the strongest terms to re-
fuse to his relative the consent supposed to be neces-
sary to his undertaking the office. The King, who
had yielded so much before, yielded once again, and
the Prince de Carignan took no step to place him-
self at the bead of the Government.

The proceedings, however, since the arrangement
of Villafranca, seem like a game of chess between the
Italians and the two potentates who claim to decide
on their destinies. We know not by what right the
King could forbid the Prince de Carignan to assume
the Regency, except the right of being Sovereign
of Central Italy himself. When the subject of one
State accepts the government of another the most
his own Sovereign can do is not to recognise him ;
if, then, he absolutely forbids him to accept, it must
be by some prior right of his own over the State
which hits elected the subject. Victor Emmanuel,
then, by the very fact of his prohibition to his cousin,
asserted himself to be the possessor of the crowns
which were offered him six months ago. This right
he seems in the present case to have exercised in
such a manner as to save appearances with his Im-
perial brother without compromising his own claims
or thwarting the wishes of the Italian populations.
The assemblies of the four revolutionised States have
created a Regency, and elected the Prince de Carig •
nan to it; the prohibition of the King is only per-
sonal ; he, in his right of Sovereign, objects to the
Prince dc Carign an, but leaves it to this latter to name
or recommend a substitute. The Prince has named
M. Buoncompagni, who will, no doubt, be at once
accepted by the Assemblies.
Thus the act by which the two Imperial Govern-
ments thought to neutralise the votes of the Italian
Assemblies has ended in what is really the asser-
tion of the King of Sardinia's sovereignty. M.
Buoncompagni is a subject of the King, and. will
exercise the Regency in his name. His greater
acquaintance with the state of affairs in Central
Italy will make him, perhaps, a more efficient ad-
ministrator than the Prince, while his position as a
non-Royal subject will make more conspicuous the
fact that his authority is merely delegated. This
event is certainly not the least important which has
marked the course of the Italian question. It is now
fully shown that the people have entirely broken,'
not only with their former Sovereigns, but with
their foreign deliverers. M. Buoncompagni is now
at the head of four Governments which before were
disunited. Unless interfered with by foreign troops,
he may proceed to do the work of amalgamation
promptly and effectually. He may not only bring
the finances of the Duchies into order, settle the
conditions of their union, and arrange the contend-
ing claims of their armies or their official services,
but he may endow the Romagna with a regular
Government after the pattern of the one free State
of Italy. He may complete the severance o f the
population east of the Apennines from the patrimony
of St. Peter; he may install lay authorities in the
place of priests and prelates ; and, by the exercise
of a wise authority, he may in a few weeks make
the independence of Central Italy a fact so fully
accomplished that not even the most unscrupulousdespotism will be willing to interfere with it.
No one will wonder that the French Govern-
ment should display some irritation at these occur-
rences. It is a signal proof how little at the
present day eveo the most overwhelming force
and the most brilliant victories are capable of

overawing mankind, that France, whose legions a
few months since marched from victory to victory,
now finds herself obliged to rely on the assistance
of the enemy whom she so lately conquered. We
are happy to believe that the majority of the
great Powers join in the loudly expressed sympa-
pathies of Europe that the Italian people should be
allowed the free choice of their own Governments.
From Lisbon to Moscow, and over the Atlantic,—

wherever there are free, and honest, and thinking
men, the desire is the same—that the petty tyranny
of the Ducal houses should cease. Even in France

is difficult to find an advocate of the presen

.
Imperial policy beyon.l the politicians wfio obey
every impulse of the Tuileries. We are told that
the King of Sardinia has incurred the auger of the
Imperial Government, and it is asked, how he can
presume to prejudge the decision of the Congress,
which, it is asserted, is about to meet ? But wo have
yet to learn what right a Congress has to dispose
of the destinies of the Italians, or why they should
be dependent on its sanctions. In a Congress vari-
ous States meet to deliberate and to settle their
own position with regard to any new events, but
they can in no way interfere with the proceedings
of States as sovereign as themselves. The Congress
may refuse to recognise a state of things diplomati-
cally, and it may advise an alteration; but it would
be the height of tyranny fir a more majority of
the great Powers to declare that nothing shall be
done in Europe without their consent. This, we
are sure, is not the conception which the British
Government has of a Congrecs, and we think that
these views will be generally accepted.

SUICIDE OF A MILITARY OFFlCER.—Yesterday
afternoon Mr. Bedford, coroner for Westminster, held a
long inquiry at the vestry-hall of St. Martin's-in-the-
Fields relative to the death of Captain Henry Dur can
Dodgin, aged 59, formerly of her Majesty's 20th Regiment,
Inspector-General of Police at Barbadoes, and member of
the Junior United Service Club, who committed self-de-
struction by blowing his brains out with a cavalry pistol,
at his lodgings in Pauton-street, Haymarket, on Saturday
morning last. It was prayed that the deceased had been in
pecuniary difficulties, and a document in his handwriting
was read, in which he complained bitterly of the treatment
he had received from the Government After many years'
service. It appeared from this document that the deceased
had been summarily deprived of his situation, and that he
considered he had been cruelly treated. The deceased in
this document spoke of having received sympathy, but said
that was not sufficient for a starving man. The jury re-
turned a verdict that " the deceased destroyed himself while
in a state of temporal, insanity."
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