The Sun.
London, England, 1859-08-11 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, THURSDAY EVENING, AUGUST 711, 1859,

beds ? If, on the other hand, he should prefer to
use new sand at each renewal of the process, then,
as we said before, he will be obliged to cart away
the old sand, and with it every atom of filth which
he has drawn up from the bottom of the lake, re-
deposited upon fresh sand, for the mere purpose of
finally removing it when all is done.
With regard to expense, it is to be feared that
Mr. Fitzroy has been equally misinformed. The
£17,000 which he has obtained from the house will
not even suffice to set him up in business as a water
filterer. If he will take the trouble of visiting the
works of the New River Company at Stoke New-
ington he will find just such another " pellucid
cascade" as the one of which he speaks. This re-
sult, however, is brought about by the use of two
200-horse power engines during the day, and of
four of 150-horse power engines during the night.
This is a very different story from the little con-
cealed engine which Mr. Fitzroy conjured up be-
fore the imagination of his hearers. More than
this, many acres of filtering-beds are employed to
produce the result, and, finally, there is a steam-
engine used for no other purpose than that of
pumping up clean water to wash the beds which
have been polluted with the impurities of the
stream. Mr. Fitzroy, as we are informed, would
have done well to ask rather for £170,000 than for
£17,000, if he is resolved to proceed by means of
these filter-beds. There is another consideration
which has been pointed out to us of which Mr.
Fitzroy does not seem to have taken account. It
is, that a great portion of the pollution of the Ser-
pentine is due to the presence of organic matter,
and that his filtering-beds will wholly fail to purge
this away. They will not even touch it. As there
is a concurrence of professional testimony against
him, the wisest plan for Mr. Fitzroy would be to
surrender his judgment to the guidance of those
who have devoted their lives to the consideration
of such questions. If he cannot make up his mind
absolutely to retrace his steps and to ask the house
for a fresh vote to carry the matter through from
the first in a simple and workmanlike manner, at
least he would be doing his bare duty by the public
if he postponed action until he had made further
and better inquiry. He will bring more unpopu-
larity upon the Ministry of which he forms part by
erecting a permanent nuisance in Kensington-
gardens than by almost any blunder which a
Minister of Public Works can commit.

THE EUROPEAN COUP 1Y ETAT.

(From time Times.)

As a people we are not alarmists ; we want to be
quiet and to take things as easily as we can. More-
over, the intense interest that we take in our own
domestic squabbles tends to satisfy our love of ex-
citement without sending our minds abroad. When
a stand-up fight between an " ex-" and an " in-"
Commissioner of Works, or an " ex-" and "in-" First
Lord of the Admiralty, or a First Lord of the Ad-
miralty and anex-Admiral of the Baltic, or between
any somebody and somebody else, who are privileged
persons and qualified by their greatness and
patriotic services to make a row any day that
they please, engrosses the attention of the whole
nation for two or three days, and when, fortunately
for us, this gentle excitement, which physicians
say is so conducive to health, is repeated at such
regular intervals, it is impossible to expect that we
can often seriously trouble ourselves and get up an
anxiety about foreign occurrences. And yet our
determination to be comfortable must be more than
usually strong if we can see the great black Italian
thundercloud now in the sky without a little sub-
dued thought as to what it may forebode. We
will allow M. Mazzini so much as this—he has
a right to call our attention to the ominous
position of affairs in Italy, and to require that we
look at the phenomenon, and look at it seriously.
What is this gathering at Zurich to end in
Is it to end in simply reimposing the old families,
with a substantially unaltered policy, upon the
States of the Peninsula ? After a few ceremonial
recommendations of reform made to the returning
sovereigns are matters to relapse into their old
state again; and is Italy expected to forget every-
thing that has taken place during the last six
months, and to wake up out of a trance of liberty
to the sober reality of Grand Dukes and Cardinals
without a touch of discontent ?
It is absurd to expect this. It must be remem-
bered that the Italian idea of liberty is not of
merely Mazzinian growth. It is not even a new
idea at all. It is an old idea, rooted in the soil of
Italy, and embodied in its history and literature.
No Italian can read the books that are put into
his hands when he is educated, or which he takes
up on his library shelves, without meeting it. His
classics—even his schoolbooks put it before him ;
they speak of days when the country had its own
rulers, and the fundamental spirit of the litera-
ture is national ; it is one which has naturally
been derived from a state of political self-govern-
ment, or at any rate from a state in which that was
the natural expectation, and in which the contrary
was only regarded as an exception to a general rule.
It is quite true that the Italian Republic was a
mischievous, faCtious, quarrelsome affair, barren of
all the fruits and pleasures of liberty except that
of the noisy sport and game itself. Our idea of
liberty now involves all kinds of the most solid
advantages,— physical progress, development of
national resources, and the like. This was not the
least involved in the Italian idea, but that is
nothing to the purpose in arguing with the
Italians. It is not of the slightest use telling them,
even were it true, that they are better off, and have
a more prosperous and easy time of it under
Austria than they had before. What they naturally
want is to govern themselves, whether they govern
themselves better or worse. If worse, how does
that concern* you ? They will run the risk, and
they want to run it. They do not thank you a
bit for your benevolence in wishing to relieve
them of it. The gentleman in the play who found
himself under the despotic spell of a second wife's
admirable temper, which somehow or other con-
ceived that he should never have one fragment of
his own way in anything, longed for his old scold
back again, who could rail but could not manage
him. Liberty with the Italians is a return to old
associations, it is an ancient historical idea, which
is bound up indeed with a good deal of mischief',
but still there it is, and they appreciate it is an old
right, and do not feel themselves catching at it as a I
new experiment. But this is not all. 'They have
imbibed sounder ideas of liberty of late years. Con-
stitutional as opposed to wild democratic principles
have decidedly gained ground. The example of
Sardinia has had its effect. They have before their
eyes an Italian State flourishing under a Con stitu-
tional Monarchy, in which Representative Govern-
ment and liberty of the press are combined with the
privileges of a Crown. Ali this has greatly strength-
ened and compacted the Italian idea of liberty, has
united it with the consolidating principle of com -
mon sense, by which it has gained in substance
and power what it has lost in froth ; for there is
nothing which givessuch power as a sense of reality
when people see that what they are pursuing is not
a phantom or idea only, but something which works.
It is this political conviction which has been grow-
ing in Italy lately—a conviction which has been
formed upon facts.
The question then is, what is to be the decision of
the Zurich Congress ? Is Italy to take back the
Grand Ducal families, with their traditions and
policy, and to be told that not only must the dream
of the last six months be forgotten, but that all this
solid growth of thought must be undone ? Are
French and Austrian influence to combine to restore
substantially the old state of things ? If so we can
foresee but one result. If Italy is weak and must
give way for the time, it is utterly impossible but
that she must show the loathing with which
she submits. A very dangerous state of things
must ensue. It is folly to think that Italians
'cvill return even to their former state of subter-
ranean disaffection. They will be maddened by
disgust. If overt revolt is not open to them, we can-
not but expect that the dark.abyss of the Italian mind
will cast up terrible matter of some sort or other to
the surface. These manifestations must produce
fresh severities, and from such action and reaction
a desperate political whirlpool must arise. It is
impossible to tell the sort of feeling which may
ensue when the rage of the people—and those
people Italians—has been excited to the utmost,
and at the same time every natural expression of it
is suppressed. We know the Italian character,
we know its good points,—its gravity, suavity,
fine feeling, intensity, susceptibility, reserve. We
also know its dark points ; it is a peculiar dramatic
type of character, and not at all unlike what some
of our own great dramas portray.
to conceive any state of things It is impossible
virltich would rouse
this character to its very dept:ns more effectually
than a forcible reimposition of foreign rule after
the recent rapturous visfion of liberty. But what
can it do ? Yes,—thrst is the question which may
naturally be asked. But unfortunately there is an
answer to it, and we all know what that answer is.
There are old classical tyrannicide theories which
have been revived of late years, and if a foreign
monarch has been thought a suitable and legiti-
ma to victim of such a theory, still more may we
fear that a domest?c despot, restored by foreign
farce, will be thought so.
Let the Constitutionalists of Italy, 'then, reflect
before they allow themselves to be at all won over
by any plan which restores the old Austrian
families against the will of Italy. If they cannot
help themselves they cannot ; but do not let them,
such
scheme'
at any rate, be entrapped into any consent. Let
them wipe their hands altogether of such a scheme.
The Mazzinian theorists have lost ground now a
time,aslonc(aigdant i
annldtalConstitutionalism
ly
resultbeenhaof in
c
hthe
thl4, it it come in sit all with the consent

of the Constitutionalists, can be to throw Italy in
despair upon Mazzini and his party again. Con-
stitutionalism will be set down as a mere Doctri-
naire theory whioh yielded to the first temptation,
and nothing hitt wild democracy will have /the
credit of fidelity.

TILE NEW FOREIGN OFFICE.

203,383 tons in this branch of manufacture. The
value of the pig-iron at the furnace (the estimated
mean value being £3 per ton—the mean average
price deduced from all the sales of the year was
£3 25.) was £10,368,192. The present return
gives a more exact and detailed account of the pro-
duction of iron ore than any former one, and Mr.
Hunt acknowledges the assistance which has been
rendered by several gentlemen largely connected
with the iron trade.

COALS.—Owing to the continued depression of
the iron trade in 1858, the production of coal has
somewhat declined. In 1858 the quantity of coal
produced was 65,008,649 tons, against 65,394,707
tons in 1857.

The present return contains a vast amount of
highly valuable information (from which we shall
make very ample quotation) and an attempt has
been made to collect additional statistics, suggested
by persons connected with our mineral and metal-
liferous industries, such as the manufacture of tin-
plate, bar iron, &c.; but as yet the success has not
been such as to warrant any publication of the re-
turns.—Mining Journal.