The daily press. (Cincinnati [Ohio) 1859-1859, 1859-06-01

CrNorNNATb WEDNESDAY, JUNE 1,
Austria and France.

These tive nations are the great repre-
sentatives, on the Continent of Europe, Of
ancient and modern political and relig-
ious ideas. France has been o revolu-
tionary volcano for three-quarters Of
century, acting and reacting, advancing
and retrograding by turns, yet making
steady progress in liberalism. Of course,
despotic authority was and is indispensa-
BILE, in such troublous times, to social
safety. Nations long sunk in the depths
of servile degradation, are qualified by
severe discipline only to enjoy rational
freedom. Perseverance and sacrifices are
necessary, and evils are the most success
full combatants of other evils. 1t is idle,
therefore, because France and Napoleon
are not as republican as the United States,
10 place them on the same level as Aus
tria, the champion Of the PRINCIPLES of
absolutism in Church and State. Every
intelligent person is familiar with the
history of modern France let us look at
Austria a moment
Austria is composed of the most incon-
gruous elements Her people are divided
by six distinct languages--by five ranoor-
ously conflicting faiths: Mahommedans,
Jews, Greek, Protestant and Romanist.
Her races are just as diversified and an
tagonistic: Hungarian, Bohemian, leu
tonic, Slavic, Latin and Oriental; and
some of these, as Hungary, are again sub
divided by irreconcilable antipathies
Without those two great provinces, Bo-
hemia and Hungary, held by chains not
more calling than the recollections of
ancient constitutional liberties trampled
under foot by Austria, intermiAgled with
broken treaties and violated oaths, what
would Austria be2 Bohemia, once pop
ulous Protestant kingdom, passed by mar
riage under the sway of Papal Austria,
and her people, then numbering over four
millions, by gibbet and fame, exile and
slaughter, was reduced to less than one
million, in a century, in the process of
converting them from Professionalism to
Catholicism
The Austrian empire is a patchwork, u
collection Of States, by inter-marriage,
consolidated by the blood of martyrs and
Jesuitical intrigues; as powerful by her
concordats as by her armies and fortress
ses. Her sanguinary policy belongs to a
consummated age, and her weakness is
the effect of popular enlightenment The
astonishing vitality of Austria during the
past, was in the immobility Of her mental
character. Turks, Huns, and Gauls,
within century, have desolated her fields
and occupied her capital Bohemia rose
against her to vindicate her independ-
ence, and restore the reformed faith; and
Gustayus Adolphus, King of Sweden -
I" the lion of the North and bulwark of
the Protestant faith" = ravaged her terri
tories and exhausted her energies but
Austria rose again, and renewed her
strength. In '4S the Hungarians alone
scattered her legions, and occupied her
capital ..-.-....... F.
Nations learn most in the school of ad-
versity. If progressive civilization is ripe
enough to bear fruit, il will throw off all
hindrances. A power which has accu-
mulated by astute matrimonial specula-
ton, without any heroic and magnani.
nous element, consolidated by cruelties
and crimes; without afinities, and kindly
sympathizers to bind it together, must
fall, or eternal justice has lost its retribu.
tive force. Her time seems to have come,
for Austria has now no friendly ally in
Europe; her policy is repudiated by en-
ightened reason as untitled to the age
che is the fomenter of revolutio onary wars
-an incubus for "her policy is abso-
lutism, her oracle the Papacy, her mis-
sionary the Inquisition, her arguments
cannon and cavalry; her discipline il
plumber and desolation, her baptism blood
and her cure-all death" rI
But great changes progress slowly.
The first act of the drama now preparing
IN italy, viii be the shortening in of Aus.
d, trian rule, the virtual overthrow of the
temporal power of the Pope, and conse.
quent sequestration of the reverence Of
the papal hierarchy. Then will come the
founding of modern dynasties, yielding
to and constructing by the spirit of the
age despotic in reconstructing society
destructive only to the crushing consery
atism that makes martyrs Of every noble
aspiration of humanity. ,@