Weekly national intelligencer., 1848-10-14

just truth is the capital error of hat whole mass
and multitude of errors that forms he modern theo-
ry of Freedom, the system of voent Revolution |;
which supposes the faults or crims of Govern
ment (no matter how indigenous o. old and settled)
to be purely its own, in no manne to express the
vices Of its people, and thus always meriting and
capable to be cured by subversDn which sub
version, after all, seldom effects any thing but the
substitution Of some other form of the same social
defects for that shape of mischief which seems to
have been overlhrown. Take Fralce for an exam
ple her people had, from the tine of Louis XI,
been allowing themselves to be lred to the endu-
rance of despotic sway and to theove of Military
Glory the ruler who gratifed tieir passion for
the one might always indulge his own for the other
the two are natural and inevitable companions for
each other, in the Prince Tor PreslenD and his peo
pie. Well, the form Of the Government was totally
changed by the Revolution of 1889: every thing
Of organized was overurned-tie throne which
had tyrannized the mobiles who lad led, the priest
hood which had beguiled the naton. 1t set up to
have no master but its own will: equality became
the sole supremacy, the people he only sovereign.
Were they freer than before I! Not an atom. OF
power, they retained the old idea. Held over
them they had always suffered it TO be arbitrary !;
held by them, they had, OF course, still less the
willingness to limit it. They gave loose to pub
lie enormties far bloodier and more fatal than the
preceding ones of their monarchs-to passions more
brutal and blind, which made the name and the au.
hority Of the sovereign people Of France more de-
testabls than that of Mary de Medici for cold
blooded cruelty, of Charles TX. ior the fanatical
butehery of his subjects, or of the Regent Of Or
leans for his depravtes. They, in Short more
:han re-enacted all the worst crimes that they had
ever before permitted their Kings to commit; and
this most naturally: for slaves and tyrants are
made Of just the same stuff; and the people that
has long bowed its neck to bad masters will be an
exceedingly bad master in its turn. Not long,
however, did the French people remain their own
masters: they who have never learnt to govern
themselves soon find always some one that wiA
govern them In this case. it was at first popular
favories, horrible demagogues, who, by every fiat
terry of the popular passions, captivated the multi
tude's wild will, and led it as they listed, by pre-
tending an unbounded devotion to its fures or fol-
lies, no matter what. These were the first mas
ters; terrible ones but in the peoples name, and
by fraud, which, amidst the reign of public pas
sions against preceding authorities and Institutions,
always easily governs, until those passions exhaust
themselves in civil commotions. Such commoons
always ensue, from the reign of contending dena-
gogues and their factions. Then follows an ap-
peal to arms and the frauds of mere demagogues
are swept away by the force of superior order of
men-able soldiers who vanqush all their rivals,
possess themselves of the terror of arms and the
popularity of enforcing that public order for which
all have now begun once more to sigh, and seize
under some new name upon all or more than all the
old powers of sovereignty. Such was the history
Of the French Revolution down TO the fall Of Ma
poleon; whose whole career exhibits the Gaul
ever, in spite Of every outward change Of laws,
orders, and even property, the same in his social
instincts, in all that genius which determines what
a peoples government shall be- let its name or
theory be what you like. For Government is
moi what Kings can impose or what Conventions
have planned but what the sense and virtue of the
citizens en(orces. All this may be traced down to
the present day in France. She may pull down
Kings and set up Commonweaths as she likes ;
but the monarch, while he does reign, must be a
despot and the Commonwealth presently has to
take dictator.
We say, then, with little hesitation, that Italy
cannot combine the force, nor command the policy,
nor muster the men that can emancipate her vari-
Gus regions, and reform her into that freedom which
the fond credulity Of those who love her and all
liberty-ourselves included-but lately for a while
expected. The several Governments are too di.
vcrse-too unlike in spirit, policy, stuation and peo-
pe-for confederacy, and, of course, not homo
geneous enough for any thing else. For wild at
tempts at Democracy, subverson of all established
order--a thing requiring no virtue nor counsel
she has material but none for a real permanent
Repubcanism. What could the degenerate Ro-
man, the robber Caabrian, the sybarite Scilian the
Neapolitan lazzarone, do with Republic What
the long-oppressed Lombard, or the soft Venetian !
Sunk in ecminacy, where, in the land OF the dolce
far niente, Of the supreme delight Of Incidence, is
to rise up that heroism which must liberaie, that
austerity which can fix country into the stern and
rigid forms of true Commonwealth! II cannot be.
We resign the unthinking hope which for mo-
ment we entertained: we resigned it from the in
slant we saw the Austrans beginning TO recover
their ground and hardly fresb I,al;o, ar,, ov,ord