The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser. — 1838-09-07 (Liverpool, Merseyside, England)

THE EMPEROR OF AUSTRIA. ( From the Morning Herald.) There is something exceedingly touching in the kind, heartfelt, and paternal tone of eloquence in which the Emperor Ferdinand of Austria addressed, the other day, the states and deputies of the Tyrol. In language that borrows its interest from its simplicity he speaks without reserve, and without the cold complaint of the formality of courts, the emotions of the father of his people. "It is with joy," says the Emperor, " that I have come among you, my dear people of the Tyrol and Vorarlberg. The solemn oath of fidelity which you are desirous of swearing to me, through your states and reprosentatives, proceeds, as was the case with your fathers, from tried and faithful hearts. My heart receives them with the same emotion as did my ancestors—as did my father, who now reposes in God. And so it will continue to be. The Lord, who governs the destinies of empires, has hitherto, on every occasion, blessed such a bond with increased prosperity, and times of severe trial have only made it more firm. I will, therefore, my beloved, be your father, even as my father has handed you over to me as his children." The closing passage of this interesting and pathetic address is particularly beautiful—" Carefully preserve your religious spirit—your simplicity of manners—your ancient truth, vigour, and endurance—your filial reliance on the care of your Sovereign, and with these be assured, assembled states and representatives of the Tyrol and Vorarlberg, of my imperial and paternal grace and favour." These are not empty words, coming as they do from .the lips of so good a man—so just and benevolent a monarch as Ferdinand of Austria. A sovereign who is as incapable of exercising absolute power to grind and oppress his subjects, like Nicholas of Russia, as he is of practising the low artifices to catch a hollow popularity—the clap-trap contrivances for public stageeffect, which distinguish Louis Philip, who is only the "Citizen-King" in his speeches, but the despot ill his Mac He who has taken care that the liberties of Fiance should not endure much longer than the "three days of July," in which so much blood flowed to se. cure them, who has been the incessant unrelenting persecutor of the press ever since it helped to raise him to a throne, is, in the tropes and metaphors of the artificial eloquence of courtly deception, a clever and not unsuccessful actor. But one sentence of the simple truth—the truly paternal kindness which the Emperor Ferdinand addresses to his people is worth all the flourishes of rhetoric that ever obtained for Louis Philip the momentary acclamations of the most theatrical people of the civilised world. - During the time that Ferdinand has now been on the throne of his ancestors, the blood of not one of his millions of Austrian subjects has flowed upon the scaffold. One man was condemned to death for murder in the second year after his accession; but his heart revolted against the barbarous punishment which the law still retains for that offence, and he commuted the sentence to imprisonment for life—a punishment equally coercive with death, but which gives the offender opportunity and inducement to repentance, and does not destroy in the minds of the people the salutary notion of the sacredness of life which princes and legislatures should ever cultivate and guard. The spirit of religion which breathes the Emperor's speech—the entire and unqualified dependence which it expresses and inculcates upon the will of the allruling Providence in whose sight nations are but "dust upon the balance," while he cares for the meanest of his creatures, might shame the "enlightened liberality" of many of our British "reformers," who would achieve for the people the melancholy— the fatal triumph of emancipating themselves from the "yoke of religion," and exalting their free natures to a level with those of the beasts that perish" by blotting the name of Divine Providence from their acts and their remembrance. But the true British patriot will say to the English people in nearly the words of the Emperor Ferdinand, " Carefully preserve your religious spirit—your simplicity of manners—your ancient truth, vigour and endurance—your filial allegiance to your sovereign, and hereditary regard for the ancient institutions of your country." In these things your highminded and glorious ancestors found the elements of empire, and as they are preserved or abandoned, so inspire will be maintained or lost."