The Sun.
London, England, 1861-02-08 00:00:00

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THE SUN.
LONDON, FRIDAY, FEB. 8, 1881.

We are, of course, pleased to see our Foreign

Secretary speaking the sentiments of his country
and of common sense, respecting the temporal power
of the POPE and the French occupation of Rome ;
but it should be remembered, the noble lord him-
self should remember, that if right now he was not
always so. The occupation of Rome by Louis
NAPOLEON, then President of the French Republic,
was undertaken with the express sanction of Lord
JOHN RUSSELL'S Cabinet. He appended the
requirement of reformed institutions from the POPE,
it is true, but it is notorious that the EMPEROR
tried every means short of the right one—that of
leaving the POPE and his subjects to settle their
own institutions—likely to effect the object. Saving
always the occupation, the EMPEROR has been un-
doubtedly in earnest in pressing on the Holy
Father the secularisation of his secular government,
and the Holy Father, in the hands of ANTONELLI,
as firm in resisting the proposal. Lord JOHN, we
fear, so intensely hated MAzzINI, Republicanism,
universal suffrage, and the ballot, that he sold the

liberties of the Romans to the man, who needed them
as the thirty pieces of silver, with which he might
and did bribe the turncoat French clergy to sell
their own Republic and to tear up the trees of liberty
they had planted and consecrated before they
began to sprout.

By the 22d of December, 1860, according to the
despatch of that date to Lord COWLEY, he had
learned to regard the French occupation of Rome in
a different light. By that time the inhabitants,
seeing no hope of gaining the admirably admi-
nistered Republic which Louis NAPOLEON and
Lord JOHN agreed to crush, although resisted to
death in so doing by the Romans, were ready to
throw themselves into the arms of a Constitutional

King; they, doubtless, also shared with all Italy

and the world, the opinion that unity was their
strength. The magic words Constitutional Govern-
ment, perhaps changed Lord JOHN'S views entirely.
The Romans were now as wise, as they were mad
before; they had adopted his Lordship's
watchword, and now they deserved liberation from
their secular Pope. Accordingly he can argue in
the despatch referred to, " regret that the French
occupation of Rome ever took place," can prove at
length its undesirable character ; can shew that
instead of obtaining what the Catholics ask, inde-
pendence for the Pope, it makes him entirely de-
pendent on the troops of a foreign sovereign ; and
as to the Romans, though they ought not to be
free to choose their form of government when
they were so crazy as to prefer Republicanism,
now, they ought to be left free to act.
" The French military force," says his Lordship,
"in the City of Rome occupies a most commanding
position, and the reinforcements now about to be
sent thither are a practical admission on the part
of the Government of France that if the subjects
of the POPE were left free to act for themselves,
with such assistance as they might receive

from their fellow-countrymen in other parts

of Italy, they would soon relieve themselves
from the oppressions under which they have
so long and so grievously laboured." He even
goes so far as to recommend the POPE'S being raised
to the Bishopric pure and simple of Rome under
VICTOR EMMANUEL. " If such," he says, " be
the POPE'S condition, it would be far better that
his troops should be protected by the troops of an
Italian sovereign, who would respect his spiritual
authority, and give relief to his temporal subjects."
In confirmation of which his Lordship quotes an
extract from a despatch addressed to him from
Rome by Mr. ODO RUSSELL. It is as follows :
" In Rome the population hope so ardently for
King VICTOR EMMANUEL and his army, that every
family in every house, from the poorest upwards,
has secretly prepared, on the chance of his arrival,
a national flag wherewith to welcome his Majesty.
The police detected, but too late, the sudden sale of
every bit of red or green stuff in every linen-
draper's or haberdasher's shop in Rome that could
be turned into a national flag ; but they could
not punish the offenders without putting nine-
tenths of the population into prison."
We are, as we have said, well pleased with this
great change of opinion on the part of Lord JOHN
RUSSELL in regard to the Romans, and that having
agreed to chose what his lordship thinks the best
form of government, he now thinks they have
arrived at the age of discretion in government
choosing. We hope he will insist upon this with
the French EMPEROR till he has convinced our
iron-frigate-building ally. But if he would con-
vince him it must be before he has built many more
Gloires. His speech on Wednesday was as sound
on the Roman Question as need be. After praising,
we believe sincerely, the personal character of the
POPE, and even his disposition towards Italy,
and referring to his liberal commencement of
his reign, he said—" I trust that the feel-
ings which then inspired him will recur to
his mind, and I do not at all despair of
seeing him again show his sympathies for Italy
and make some agreement with the King of SAR-
DINIA, who has been chosen by the almost unani-
mous voice of the Italians to be their temporal
Sovereign, by which, while resigning his secular
power, he shall retain the homage which is due to
him even from those who are not members of the
Roman Catholic Ghurcb, and the spiritual autho-
rity which must belong to one who is the head of
a faith which is professed by so many millions of
Christians. If he takes such a course he will not
buton only preserveywi
llat
the samehisdignity as a Sovereign Prince,
time establish a claim to be
considered the first of Italian patriots, preceding
even those men who have done so much for the
liberation of Italy."
On the rest of his speech we shall say but little.
Mr. FITZGERALD gave him the opportunity of an
easy defence before a liberty
loving nation,
for the honourable member attacked the despatch
in which all England exulted, and hardly cen-
sured the one which made us all ashamed of him.
That despatch (No. 63 in the Blue Book) of the
31st of August, we wish, for Lord Jotts's sake,
could be blotted out of existence. But Mr. FITZ-
GERALD spent the whole of his Conservative
strength in damaging his party, by trying all the
logic of a lawyer and all the sophisms of a special
Pleader, in controverting the principles of the
Recanting Despatch, as we have ever viewed it, of
the 27th of October—the one which asserted the
right's of peoples to
imitate what' we did in 44king

hither WILLIAM of ORANGE. Of course the Whig
Lord desired nothing better than to defend such
Despatch. And he treated Mr. FITZGERALD to a
homily on that subject, and on the long misrule of
Italy which the hon. member will not easily
forget.

One of the most important motions that could
well have been submitted to the consideration of

the House of Commons, was yesterday embodied
in the following resolution, by the leader of that
great assembly, and leader also of her MAJESTY'S
Government :—" That a select committee be ap-
pointed to consider whether, by any alterations in
the forms and proceedings of this House, the
despatch of public business can be more effectually
promoted." It might surely have been thought
by any one that the wording of this resolution was
in every respect sufficiently explicit. Not so, how-
ever, thought the most captious carper and caviller
in the House of Commons, the right hon, gentleman
the member for Stroud, himself conspicuous among
those independent members who are, above all
others, the principal delinquents in this very par-
ticular. According to Mr. HORSMAN'S view the
lion's share of the blame in regard to that annual
waste of public time, for which the popular branch
of the Legislature is every successive year
becoming more and more remarkable, appertains
especially and peculiarly to the members
of successive Governments. Not—observe—to
those who squabble with them at every turn, who
have objections to raise, amendments to introduce,
explanations to demand upon any and every con-
ceivable opportunity : not to himself or to his
brother independents !
" 0 wad some power the giftie gie us
To see oursel's as ithers see us—"
Not a notion evidently has the member for Stroud
of the figure he "cuts" only too frequently during
the session, as the systematic squanderer of that
public time he now affects to regard as so peculiarly
precious, and the responsibility of wasting which
he would now fain fasten exclusively upon the
successive holders of the offices of Government.
Why, for an example, it is only necessary to look
at the turn given by Mr. HORSMAN himself last
evening to the discussion provoked by the very
business-like resolution submitted to the house
betimes by Lord PALMERSTON. As we have already
insisted, the wording of that resolution was about
as terse, about as clear, about as directly to the point
surely as any reasonable man could well have de-
desired. Mr. HORSMAN, however, belong-
ing, we presume, to the very opposite cate-
gory, thought, as a matter of course with
him, quite otherwise ; and, so thinking,
acted accordingly. Hence, in point of fact, the
Right Hon. Gentleman must needs at once follow
suit, after his own fashion, upon the exceedingly
practical motion of the First Lord of the Treasury.
To the resolution of the Premier, the Right Hon.
Gentleman must perforce, as by necessity, raise a
distinct and point-blank objection. And by way
of turning this perverse objection of his to account,
he must tag on to the Prime Minister's resolution a
neat little amendment of his own. After the words
" business of the house," therefore, he proposed to
interpolate in Lord PALMERSTON'S resolution,
these particularly roundabout, excessively confus-
ing, and wholly unnecessary words,—" And by a
more careful preparation of measures, their earlier
introduction, a judicious distribution of business
between the two houses, and the order and method
with which business is conducted." Equally, as a
matter of course, with the introduction of an
amendment at all by Mr. HORSMAN—the amend-
ment he thus sagaciously decided upon introduc-
ing to the consideration of the House, came to
nothing whatever in the end—it was withdrawn
(quite a matter of course), and might consequently

just as lief, after all, never have been introduced.
Only in obedience to his favourite guiding prin-
ciple, the "rule of contraries," Mr. HORSMAN,
we are left to conjecture, spoke upon the matter
of Lord PALMERSTON'S resolution last evening,
objected to it as not altogether satisfactory, and
suggested his usual pro forma amendment to be
afterwards, according to custom, withdrawn as
bootless—by way of illustrating how little he
himself had to do with the waste of the public
time by needless harangues The discussion, in
fact, yesterday, was in this particular just a case
in point. If the Leader of the House had wanted
to have an illustration of the evil complained of
patly introduced at the very tail of his resolution,
he could not by any possibility have had his wishes
more opportunely fulfilled than they were upon
the instant by the member for Stroud, and his

ridiculous little amendment —that amendment
which was only made to be destroyed.
Every one, we may safely say, without excep-
tion, recognizes the need for economizing the time
of the session—just as every one without exception
is conscious of the awful and solemn necessity
there is for reducing the amount of the nation's

annual expenditure. The only difficulty is—How
either the one economy or the other, the economy
of time or the economy of money, is really and
truly to be accomplished. The financial economy
the House leaves in the first instance, of course, as
in duty bound, to the sagacity of the Chancellor of

the Exchequer. The economy of timo, aimed at
by Lord PALMERSTON'S resolution for the better
regulation, for the greater facilitation, and for

the clearer systematization of the business of the
session, the House—now that the Premier's motion
has been adopted—refers (as a difficult problem
urgently requiring solution) to the collective wis-
dom of a Select Committee. A Committee to be
framed of course without even the smallest refe-
rence to mere party considerations, or rather with
only such reference to these considerations of mere
party as may result in equipoising the represen-
tation in the Committee, of the " ins" and the
"outs" of her Majesty's Government, and her Ma-
jesty's Opposition. The right hon. gentleman the
loader of the latter—strange to tell—is for leaving
this wished-for economy of time to the patriotism
or the conscience, to the civism or the forbearance
(or however it may best be expressed) of the
House generally, of the representatives of the
people collectively and individually. One might
have thought that the nation had had sufficient
experience of the futility of any such fondly
confiding anticipations. Civism, patriotism, con-
science, forbearance, all go for nothing when
weighed in the balance against—what shall we call
it ?—vanity ? perversity ? ambition ? A love of
oratorical display ? A wish to be listened to of
nights by the hour, and to be read of mornings by
the column ? An overweening anxiety to have
ones thoughts entombed in that vast and increas-
ing parliameutary mausoleum, the stupendous and
appalling _Hansard ? Whatever the inducements
held out by patriotism, or by any other lofty and
evmotive to keep silence, to practise the high
leelgisaltgaitniN-e virtue of reticence, to restrain in some
degree that perillous flux of words which, but too
often, swamps the action both of the Administra-
tion and of the Parliament as disastrously as the
development of harvest and vintage would be
reduced to nought by the devastating influences of
an inundation—whatever noble incentives night
be.expected to exercise a wholesome power over the
Tolubility of individual members in the Rome of