The Sun.
London, England, 1859-09-13 00:00:00

in Mr. BRIGHT himself, and in politicians like Mr.
BRIGHT, the true and heinous delinquents. But
for their preposterous clamour for peace at any
price ; but for their ridiculous reliance upon the
efficiency of arbitration ; but for their insensate
folly as the very falsest of all false economists, in
causing those periodical retrenchments which left
England at last with a mere shadow of an army,
with the ghost of a navy, with no channel fleet, no
gunboats, and scarcely any ordnance worth bringing
into the field in case of emergency—but for the
palsy they gradually brought upon all branches of
the public service, including even the diplomatic
department—we should never have drifted into
that disastrous, expensive, and sanguinary war with
Russia ! We should have been enabled, at the out-
set, to have effectually awed back the aggressive
policy of the autocrat—MENSCHIKOFF would never
have adventured upon that insolent mission to Con-
stantinople—the Turkish Fleet at Sinope would
never have been subjected to that diabolical razzia
and massacre ! And Mr. BRIGHT—as if he had
had nothing at all to do with it himself—would
never have uttered that rhetorical rhapsody about
the " Angel of Death being so near to us all that we
might hear the very beating of its wings !" Yet it
is notoriously because our warlike prestige has been
diminished by these peace-at-any-price ravings in
and out of Parliament that wars have broken out
latterly in Europe ! causing us—in order to meet
these abrupt emergencies—to create an army on the
spur of the moment, and to call a new navy suddenly
into existence—involving all this increased taxation,
and enormously enhancing the aggregate of our
annual expenditure ! Bright ideas certainly—this
false economy—followed by the peace-at-any-price
ravings about the all-sufficiency of Arbitration,

No one can guess the precise game which Louis
NAPOLEON is playing. His general object, on the
other hand, no one pretends to doubt. Sometimes
his sudden moves appear like the results of long

premeditation and cunning ;—we think we see
what he must be driving at ; but, immediately
another move, or another revelation in the Moniteur,
confounds all your guesses. Sometimes you almost

come to the conclusion that the EMPEROR of the

coup d'etat is half conjuror, half statesman; and
that he delights quite as much in something like a

political gun-trick on the theatre of Europe, as in
some really able political combination ; or, at
least, that he thinks snubbing an Austrian ambas-

sador, proclaiming the emancipation of Italy from
the Alps to the Adriatic, a Villafranca Peace after
a Solferino victory, an amnesty and the like, a
proper series of surprises to fix in the minds of all
Europe the idea that he is an unaccountable man.
It is well for all the nations which surround France
to understand, that no one knows what his Majesty
the Emperor NAPOLEON 111. will do next. That
one thing only can be sure; to wit—that the next
thing will be something no one had thought of.
His last has been partly a revelation, partly a
miserable attempt at self-defence, which reads
poorly enough now, and will read worse in history.
We take the statement in the Moniteur as we find
it ; and what does it disclose as to the terms really
made at Villfranca ? that with the exception of re-

signing the conquered territory of Lombardy, Aus-
tria was to keep substantial power over Italy. The
Emperor of AUSTRIA was to be, if the parallel with
Luxembourg be correct, Grand Duke of Venetia,
with two Viceroys in Modena and Tuscany, and
perhaps something like deputies in Parma and the
Romagna. The Moniteur pretends that in this way
Austria would have been no longer " the dreaded
power hostile to all national aspirations, no longer
a German power on that side the Alps, but a friendly
power to develope her Italian nationality to the
shores of the Adriatic !"

Austria develope HER Italian nationality ! Yes,
much as she has developed her Hungarian, her
Polish, her Croatian nationality. The inhabitants
of Central Italy were, happily, too wide awake to
believe in the developement of their nationality
under rulers who ran away and fought against the
Victor of Solferino himself, to the last moment that
he was believed to be engaged in the liberation of
Italy. They knew one power and its lieutenants
who had been engaged, ever since 1815 in endea-
vouring ',to crush Italian independence, under
whose brutal sway the blood of her noblest patriots
had stained her soil, and the lives of her SILVIO
PELLICOS been wasted away in felons' dungeons,
and the bared bodies of even her females
held beneath the brutal stick ; they knew

this power, and they could put no faith
in her. Their only safety lay in being ab-
solutely free, as far as they could under the condi
tions. If the whole body could not be liberated it
was so much gain to knock the fetters off every
limb possible, waiting for the time when the freed
members might be able to liberate the rest. Austria
develope her Italian nationality ! Yes, indeed—an
Au stro-Italian nationality would of course have been
a despot nationality; a federation of petty monarchs
against their subjects with one great tyrant as the
strength of the federation—another Holy Alliance
of the selfish dynastic tyranny against Italian
liberty and progress.
One of three suppositions. Either Louis NA-
POLEON never intended to give real independence to
Italy, and his proclamation was hypocrisy; or he
did not understand the essentials of Italian inde-
pendence; or he understood them and failed in the
attempt. The first supposition would brand him
with the most odious of reputations ; and we may
well suppose that he did not wish for it in the shape
so often rumoured, and which after all his shuffling
will be readily believed, of creating a kingdom of
Central Italy for a NAPOLEON. An Italy indepen-
dent of Austria, but dependent on a BONAPARTE
enthroned in the Tuileries was, after all, a notion
thoroughly Napoleonic. As to the second supposi-
tion, the truth doubtless is that he understood
too well what Independence means in Italy and
everywhere else ; and to this must be attributed
the perplexity he finds himself in, now that Central
Italy only asks what he himself promised, and
adroitly, at the same time, thanks him for his pro-
mises and his battles. But the third supposition
is, no doubt, also partly true. He failed. He was
beaten by what he ought to have taken into ac-
count before. He knew the temper of Germany ;
though Germany would have never interfered for
the Italian quadrangle. He knew the strength 6of
the fortresses which cost his uncle no little effort,
but which he mastered. He knew the resources of
Austria in men and money—either, therefore, he
failed in his calculations, or he has failed to tell us
all the reasons for his hasty peace. The latter is
surely very probable. He had not reckoned on
the difficulty about the, old Pope, for whose well
government he is morally responsible, nor on that
of the priests all over France, who would have set
against
he w
him that peasantry
so
asantr3ogreaNt whose
his election, oseilliterarieearid
superstition and
who would turn round at a word from the men who
hold their everlasting welfare in pledge. This, as
Mr. MATTHEW ARNOLD shows, was far more ter-
rific to him than all the nonsense about Germany
in arms on the Rhine. It was the Popish clergy,
the arms of whose superstitions had been once
wielded in his favour, and who he now
feared would turn them against him, which
he really feared. The artillery of Popery