The Express. — 1856-07-09 (London, England)

ITALY.  ITALY AND PIEDMONT.  BY AN ITALIAN WHO IS NOT A NATIVE OF PIEDMONT.  LETTER 111. Sta,—The only way of reconciling the Italians to their princes, and eatablirhing every where that order and peace which have made Piedmont a model state in Europe, is to leave the governments alone with their subjects. I certainly never entertained such sanguine hopes from the issue of the war in the East, never had so great a faith in the cordial understanding between England and France, as to look for the complete deliverance of the Litho peninsula from Austrian thraldom u one of the pribable results of the late great European movement. I know very well that it is much easier to overthrow the whole empire of Austria than to wrench from it the whole or even part of its Italian provinces; and I know, moreover, that, were even thu Vienna statesmen prepared to re. linquish their hold, especially of Vance and of her territory as far aa the Adige or Minot°, the whole of Germany would rise in detence of her' natural from. tier," and France itself, no matter under what govern. ment, would with all its might oppose anything like the unity, or even union, of a state, or even of a federation of truly independent states, inl, he north of Italy. But I really thought, since the Crimean war had at least succeeded in crippling Russia, and de. privieg the great northern league of despots of its main stay—l thought that the least England and France could achieve at the Paris Conferences would have been a return to the ideas and principles of 1815; that south of the Po, as well as west of the Ticino, there would be—as there was to be—an independent Italy. I thought that the rights of Austria with regard to the non-Austrian provinces and states of Italy would be clearly defined—that strong and decisive measures would be taken , first to undo with a.l practicable speed all that Austria had done Circe 1815 in sheer violation of the treaties of that year, and then to put an end for ever to all her further progrers in that direction. Titers is not a men living that can flitter himself that peace is really restored in Italy, or in Europe either, till tree° matters are brought to a clear understanding, for there would reeky be infinitely less danger to Europe, and infinitely tees suffering iet Italy, it all the &tenter', the Roman State'', and the Two Sicilies, were reduced to the condition of the Lombardo-Venetian kingdom, and incorporated with the Austrian empire, than if they continue under a specious independ. nce which makes them groan under two yokes inst. ad of one. Take, as an instance, the little duchy of Firma, A man of the most worthless and abindoned character, Carlo Lodovico, "runs away with the spoons," desecs in the moat cowardly and ignominious manner, after a great deal of blustering and bullying, his small state of Lucca. and picots over to Parma, where he is entitled to reign by right divine; that is. because three hundred years ago a Pope, Pant ILL, disposed of the free mate of Patois and Piamoza in favour of his hostel d, Pier Luigi Farness; and because after the nacentines had murdered that hideous monster, other bastards and hideous monsters of the same family were set over the same people and kept there by the combioed might of the Empire and the Popedom, and continued to reign and govern the duchy, while they crushed its nobility by wholesale murders, prosoriptions, and confiscations, and ground the people, shocked and degraded them by the example of the most unblushing profligacy ; till they at last all died off by sheer bodily impotent* brought about by indulgence in the must shameful vices. Well, that first race of Pope's bastards being happily extinct, their sacred rights passed over to Spanish Bourbons, towards the middle of the last century, and by virtue of the same sacred rights 1 that Carlo Ludovico who had been hissed out of Lucca, that Carlo Ludovioo, cine-tenthe