The Sun.
London, England, 1844-08-15 00:00:00

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LONDON, THURSDAY, AUGUST 15, 1844.

The aspect of affairs in Italy is calculated to
arouse the liveliest emotions of regret, the profoundest
sentiments of indignation, in every European bosom,
whose pulses still throb to the recollections of Italian
greatness. It is not enough, it seems, that she
should have expiated, by the political humiliation and
moral debasement of ages, the magnificent crime of
having usurped in the Roman Empire the dominion
of the known world, and for many years maintained
it against all antagonists. It is not enough that she
who, for centuries, marched at the head of civilisation,
letters, and refinement, should in these latter times have
fallen far into the rear of that social progress which
in more northern kingdoms is so rapidly extending
itself. Italy is parcelled out into territorial sections,
one only of which, Tuscany, is blessed with anything
like sound political institutions and guarantees for life
and property. In all the others, she is once more
exposed to the same sanguinary and vindictive
tyranny which desolated her fairest provinces through-
out the eventful struggles of the Middle Ages; that
is to say, to the supersession of the laws by the arbi-
trary mandate of the Sovereign—not palliated, but
rendered more intolerable, by the intervention of arbi-
trary Commissions, whose functions, for the most
part, are limited to the mockery of passing sen-
tences on political offenders, always in servile confor-
mity with the will of the powers from whence the ju-
risdiction is derived, and to the recording their own
decrees, always irregular, generally iniquitous. But
with the tyrannous excesses, the various communities
of unhappy Italy inherit nothing of the chivalrous
grandeur, derive none of the political advantages, of
the conflicts that distinguished the Middle Ages. For
if these latter too often affirmed the power, and con-
solidated :the ill-gotten acquisitions of her petty
Princes and her brigand Barons—her BORGIAS, her
MANFREDS, her CAST
privileges RorretZellmlSu—nitchiepyal gdraedmuoaclrlyaceiexs:
dt eenv de
leodp tehde
the resources of industry, cherished and
rewarded mercantile enterprise, and finallyinfluenecleevaatnedd
to the highest pinnacle of political
authority, that mercantile opulence whose great-
ness was destined so soon to absorb their
own. Under the protection of such commercial
Republics as Genoa, Venice, and Florence, the Italian

Commons, at least, were taught the secret of their
own strength; and the popular voice in the councils
of those States, on the most memorable occasions of
domestic interest, was usually raised to temper the
ferocious cruelty of their oligarchical members. In
the same spirit, the general policy of these Republics
was usually to mitigate the savage resentments of
their allies—such as the Dukes of MILAN, FERRARA,
&c. But since the Spanish line of the BOURBONS
was installed after the execution of JOACHIM MURAT,
in its hereditary throne of Naples—and from the
moment that the Papalty, after the close of the
last war, was reinstated in the full sovereignty
of the " States of the Church," those fair
and beautiful portions of Italy have once
more become a prey to those imbecile and
lawless schemes of Government which seem to be the
destined scourge of the land. The dominion of
Austria over her Milanese and Lombard territories,
however open to objection on the score of its
arbitrary pretensions and its obnoxiousness to the
wishes and nationality of a vast section of her Italian
subjects, is yet, upon the whole, under the Emperor
FERDINAND, exercised in a mild and paternal spirit.
The Imperial Government has repeatedly remon-
strated with the Government of his Holiness on the
dangerous and impolitic system of persecution and
intolerance, religious and political, enforced in the
Papal States by the Ministers of his Holiness. These
remonstrances have been disregarded, but the political
troubles to which it was foreseen, in Vienna, the perse-
verance in such a system must inevitably lead, have long
since broken out. The Papal Government, instead of
dispassionately inquiring into the political, municipal,
and social grievances, which have for years so cruelly
harassed and insulted its subjects, seems occupied with
no other schemes than those which may aid it in the
accomplishment of the most bloody and unchristian
vengeance against the unhappy Italians who have been
induced to attempt an insurrection against its autho-
rity. A handful of these unfortunates (for we at
once avow that we cannot altogether withhold our
sympathy from men whom rank and obsti-
nate and bigoted misgovernment has driven to
desperate courses) having made at Corfu some
ill-matured arrangements for their meditated move-
ment, landed on the coast of Calabria, under circum-
stances marked by so much disorder, precipitation,
and temerity, that it is almost impossible to avoid the
suspicion of treachery on the part of those who in-
vited, or who conducted them thither. With the
Calabrese, on whom they appear to have anticipated
that they should make a proselyting impression, they
had no time for even communicating. In an instant,
as it were, like the dissipation of a dream, the insur-
gent movement was made, met, defeated, terminated.
Before all their party had disembarked, some were
wounded—all were prisoners. They were taken by
the forces of a Government perfectly prepared for their
attempt. The discomfited, disarmed, unresisting
prisoners, consisted, for the most part, of men (says
the Morning Herald) "of birth, fortune, and educa-
tion; two of them sons of that Admiral BANDEIRA
who commanded the Austrian squadron which as-
sisted the English fleet on the coast of Syria in
1840." Such men had given, at any rate, an earnest
of their sincerity and good faith in this abortive
effort to rescue their countrymen from the thraldom
of their political misery and debasement, by the
greatness of the stake which they were content to
sacrifice on the very threshold of the enterprise. Of
the whole band, some 17 or 19 strong, nine were
presently shot, like dogs, in cold blood, by order of the
Neapolitan Government. Another confederate, one
GIUsEPPE GARDINGRI, having escaped from Bologna,
took refuge in the territories of the Grand Duke of
TUSCANY. The Minister of the POPE demanded his
extradition ; and this demand, though at first strenu-
ously resisted, was at length acceded to by the Tuscan
Government, but not without the express condition,
agreed to on the part of the POPE, that his life should
be spared. But, alas ! this condition was made in a
bad faith, which history associates instinctively with
Papal diplomacy. GARDINGHI was re-conducted to
Bologna ; tried there, and shot !
We must refer to the accounts we have given of
the barbarous cruelty which the PorE has manifested
towards VIOLA and MINILLI (other two State offen-
ders) for proof of the hopeless and sanguinary into-
lerance with which his holiness (1) pursues the victims
of their political opposition to his mode of governing
Bologna and the Legations. In the meanwhile, we
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cast and sagacity which distinguish the Cabinet of
Vienna, and in consideration of the deeply endangered
interests of his own Italian dominions, the Emperor of
AUSTRIA may be induced to interpose for the future
pacification and tranquillity of the whole Italian penin-
sula. Let his Imperial Majesty, by vigorous and
emphatic negotiations, restrain this prurient appetite
of the King of NAPLES and the POPE for the blood of
political mal-contents. Let the EMPEROR'S powerful
influence be exerted to secure the adoption, by
these weak and arbitrary Princes, of institutions
more conformable to the mild and tolerant spirit of
the age, of his own reign, and of European Govern-
ments in general, in the place of the antiquated, un-
certain, undefined, and despotic pretensions which they
would uphold with the reckless violence of the darkest
ages of tyranny and superstition. Into the strange, but
startling theory, of these insurrectionary movements
in Italy having been fomented by a Russian intrigue
for erecting a new Italian monarchy for the Prince
DE LEDCDTENEURG, the Roman Catholic son-in-law
of NICHOLAS, and son of the late Viceroy of Italy,
EUGENE, we do not enter. The story rests on the
asserted purport of an intercepted letter from EMILIO,
one of the noble brothers BANDEIRA, who has just
been shot at Cosenza. Should the letter again come
under public notice, and in some better authenticated
manner, we may probably recur to it.

In a morning Contemporary of this day appears the
following interesting paragraph relative to Louis
PHILIPPE, which is taken from a Swedish journal :
"On the 2d inst., Vice-Consul Buaic celebrated the
eighty-second anniversary of his birth-day. On the
same day he received a letter from the King of the
FRENCH written with his own hand, and accompanied
by a gold medal. The letter which was dated from
Neuilly, was in these words :—‘ It is always agreeable
to me to find that the traveller MULLXIt has not been
forgotten in a country which he visited in simple
guise and unknown ; and I always recal with plea-
sure this journey to my mind. Among my recollec-
tions, I give the first place to the hospitality so frankly
and cordially granted me, a stranger, throughout
Norway, and particularly in Norland and Finmark ;
and at this moment when a lapse of forty-nine years
since I made this journey into Norway, has left me
but few of my old hosts remaining, it is gratifying to
me to be able to express to all, in your person, what
grateful feelings I still entertain.'" In the absence of
themes of more immediate political interest, we may
perhaps be excused if we venture to make a few re-
marks on the above passage, which is suggestive of
in infinite number of deeply interesting historical
recollections. At the time the " traveller MULLER"
'low the KING of the FRENCH, and the preserver
)f the peace of Europe—made the journey to which
he here so simply and feelingly alludes, he was an exile,
friendless and almost pennyless, from his native coun-
try; his father was in a prison which he was destined
never to quit but for the scaffold; all his nearest and
dearest relations were on the list of the proscribed;
and he himself, notwithstanding that but a year or
two previously he had fought with signal skill and
success under the Republican banner at Jemappes
and Valmy, was hunted ,in all his wanderings by the
agents of the Convention, and from one hour to an-
other could never call his life his own. Like
CHARLES STUART, after his flight from Culloden, the
lisguised, humble, sorrow-stricken, and persecuted
traveller MuLLEa"—he whose childhood had been
passed in the palaces of Royalty—was glad to take
refuge in the meanest peasant's hovel; to eat of
the coarsest viands; associate with the humblest
classes ; and accept the smallest alms offered him
by the hand of Pity. It was at this period of his
life that he encountered the gentleman whom, after
the lapse of forty-nine years, he remembers with
such grateful vividness. Startling as had then been
the vicissitudes of his lot, how many more startling
changes was he to witness ere the cycle of his for-
tunes was finally completed! We say nothing of his
subsequent wanderings, and unexpected re-union with
his brothers, in America—of his providential escape
from a French cruiser on his return to Europe—of
his residence in Switzerland, where he picked up a
scanty subsistence as a teacher of mathematics—or
of his strange adventures in Italy, where he was at
one time the companion of Royalty, and at another►