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    September 8 * 1855 . J THE LBADBR ., gaa

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    THE HOPE OF ITALY . The presages of an Italian movement are multiplying , The governments admit the fact by preparing to encounter it . Never did the Popedom exhibit more convulsive energy , never were the Bourbons more savage in Naples , the Austriaus more insolent in Lombardy . "We count these circumstances among signs of hope . Before the great war of liberty , when eighty cities and towns within ten days threw off the yoke which oppressed them , Europe was shocked by tbe bloody assize of Faenza , as it is now shocked by the fantastic atrocities of Castellamare . Moreover , the liberals of all countries discuss the issue , as of an event near at hand . Even the lingering relics of Muratism reappear , as though every nephew of the Napoleonic race were destined to grasp a revolutionary sceptre . No one who is possessed of the faculty of vision can doubt that an Italian catastrophe is gradually approaching . The Pope , oppressed by fear , knows that the judicial sword cannot rid his holy throne of its enemies . The King of Naples , a mad Damocles , exhibits the cowering fears of Clauuius and the ferocity of Domitian ; Eadetzkt , armed witli the proxy of despotism , parades his troops in Lombardy ; but in Turin as in Rome , in Vienna as in Paris , in Naples as in London , the rumour grows that these things are not to last . In a word , Italy , at the right moment , will make one more effort to free herself from military domination . It is time , then , that Italians of all classes of opinion should be reconciled to a common policy . The wars of independence , in which Italian blood has been shed like water , have too often been checked by precip itate action , by the premature rivalry of cities , and by the selfish asperities of factions . This is the danger which the patriots must avoid . It has been their curse ; it is the encouragement of their enemies ; indeed , it has boon the perpetual fruit of foreign intrigues . No sooner is the political motion of Italy manifest to the diplomatic arbiters of Europe , than points are raised concerning the interests of the reigning families . Is Princo MintAT , the nephew of his uncle , to bo ignored ? Can diplomacy create a sovereign to govern a united Italy — an Orno , perhaps , the royal blossom ofii national warr But , amid all their controv ^ u-H , I he ItuhunB —the small Munitmt hit ! ion y ^ f 1 ^ a £ pear to l . avu one fixed poi" < - <> ' U " » j J" ° quarter < l » we find rolled t \ w oldnppudB to friends i .. one country or . no . h . And those liberals are perfectly right who inani-

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    We applaud self-raised merit . But Louis Napoleojs did not raise himself at all , much less did he raise himself by merit . His own attempts ended in failure and ridicule . A freak of fortune and the sinister aid of disappointed politicians , whose names will always be tarnished , raised him to a place of high trust , and put into his hands the power of destroying tbe liberties of his country . He used that power with more than common perfidy , with more than common atrocity , with accomplices more than usually infamous . He triumphed by merit in his political career just as a man who steals a deposit , who murders his sleeping friend , who debauches a woman under his protection , triumphs in commerce , in combat , or in love . The Coup d ' etat did not even show the physical courage which a brigand ' s trade requires . Its hero sat safe in the Elysee while his bravos and his janissaries quenched liberty in blood . But all is cured by the seven millions of votes . The Observaieur Beige has dealt well with this part of the argument . How can Euglish good sense be deceived by that fictitious condonation ? Supposing that the returns of the poll , given b y convicted perjurers , were true , on what issue was the vote taken ? What alternative was offered to those who voted No ? Will the lowest sycophant of the Empire maintain that Trance was offered a free choice between the domination of Louis Napoleon and a free constitution ? Will you submit , or be coerced into submission ? That was the question asked of France . And France , panic-stricken , deprived of all her statesmen , cowed by the vast army which her military vanity has raised up to be her scourge , answered that she chose submission . If the approval of France was really given , it still exists ; nay , according to Imperialist writers , approval has risen to enthusiasm . Why then is not the universal gratitude allowed to find decisive expression in a free press ? Why is not liberty of speech at least allowed to both sides ? Cannot La Gueronniebe , backed by the court and its bayonets , make the cause of order , truth , and beneficence , victorious in free discussion ? If the chief magistrate of a free country may use its army to destroy its liberties , and then plead the submission of the people as his justification , what liberty is safe ? Are these the lessons which the English people wish to be instilled into the heir of their crown by his sedulous host and affectionate companion ? Let us remember that the moral law is the same for all . Let us remember that we too have violent factions , rancorous debates , popular aberrations , and that these have not passed unnoticed in high places . If we kneel for France , we must be prepared to kneel for ourselves . Many Englishmen who would be ashamed to applaud the erection of a dewpotic dynasty save their consciences by calling it Empire . A writer in a courtly journal ( which once gave a picture of Louis Napoleon framed in chains and scourges ) speaks of France as having , for the sake of peace , submitted to a temporary loss of liberty . This writer seems a little dazzled by the fireworks of Versailles , when he speaks of the throne of Louis Napoleon as having risen in a blaze of glory out of the Revolution . Let him ask hia howt whether he is a dictatorate or the founder of an hereditary despotism . W ^ o do not see despotism yet . Tho fire still smoulders in tho aahes of liberty . Honour and morality still throb . Tho selfrespect of froeborn citizens still lives . The fetters still gall . Tho memory and tho effects of free discussion tttill remain . Deference to public opinion and the affectation of popular airs nro still necessary to the utnurpei * . lie is still obliged to cog tho press , and force

    dramatists to illustrate the Empire . The next generation will be born under the yoke ; they will have seen no public morality but that of Mobnt and Fould , read no politics but those of the Mbniteur ; and they will be trampled on without fear . The third generation will be hereditary slaves . The popular beginnings of tyranny , and the moral abyss to whicTi they lead , are no " new sort of despotism , " as the Examiner , ~ transported with the fetes of Versailles , supposes . They are as old as the age of Tacitus and Suetonius . Under Augustus , as under Louis Napoleon , caution , condescension , hypocrisy were the order of the day ; servitude was veiled under the forms of the republic , and court poets honoured the name of Cato . Under Tibebius began that moral prostration , that lust of self-abasement , that train of infamies and horrors , which the judicial pen of the historian of the Empire has recorded , but for us , it seems , in vain . Many men are profound political philosophers till they come to deal with real events , and the tritest lessons of history cannot save them from the most puerile aberrations . A sycophant of the Empire compares it to the reign of Louis XIV . Under Louis XIV . thought -was more free , and sycophant writers were less protected and patronised . But to what did the reign of Louis XIV . lead ? If Louis Napoleon represents the honour of the French nation , why cannot he get a single man of honour to join him ? Has the type of heroism and virtue become so repulsive to the heroic and the good ? Why could he find no instrument wherewith to work out the salvation of France but a soldier who ( as lie was told by an honourable veteran whose swordjje took away ) might have had his own sword broken in disgrace ? Wliy can he find no ministers but men whose personal infamy is as unquestionable asTiheir political abasement ? Why have not the great generals of France been at the head of her armies instead of the St . Aenauds and the Caneobeets ? A certain outward magnanimity is easy , to those who are triumphant . But we could prove that such magnanimity may hide a depth of meanness within by examples drawn out from very remote times . The magnificence which dazzles fools is easy to one who has an unlimited command of the public money . Such magnanimity and such magnificence look mean to God and to good men compared with a single effort of self-denial , or a single act of duty . We all saw these things clearly enough after the Coup d'etat , and since then nothing is changed . Nothing is changed but our diplomatic interest . We have sold morality for a diplomatic interest and for a show . We have never refused Louis Napoleon the credit due to him for the alliance ; we have always held up his conduct in this respect as a lesson to the constitutional statesmen of France . But alliance with the nation does not involve complicity with the ruler . These transports of sycophancy are gratuitous and useless . They will not cement a lasting friendship between the nations . They are ecstacies as evanescent as delirious . They are Windsor Castle in fireworks at Versailles . The origin of the war ( to whatever good ends it may turn ) was Louis Napolicon's intriguing selfishness . For his electioneering interests he—a believer in nothing but his star—row to red tlte Papal despotism at Rome . For Ihm electioneering interests ho agitated tho quotation of the Holy Places , and thus brought on tho embarrassments which led to war . If wo aro to redress tho wrongs of tho world wo must collide with Louis Napoleon in tho end ; for the greatest wrong in the

    world is tbe occupation of Rome—Rome , which our friends of liberty unaccountably forget to mention , though the reign of terror there is as bad as at Naples . We are fighting against the Czak , who is ¦ the centre and support of military despotism in the East ; we are at the same time enabling Louis Napoleon to become the centre of another circle of military despotisms in the West . Spain will be drawn in ; a Mubax dynasty will be created at Naples ; the Pope is a French Viceroy . Sardinia , Bavaria , Wurtemberg will move among the Satellites . What will then be the position of England ? We are sanctioning , we are worshipping , i the principle of military despotism , and we shall not sanction and worship it in vain . ? There are lessons which all kings easily learn , which they will learn with double ease under so polite a tutor as Louis Napoleon , and in so splendid a school as Versailles . Dishonour , however politic it may seem , is always folly in the end ; and England will find before long that it has been her folly as well as her dishonour to stifle her own conscience and betray the cause of liberty and duty .

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Sept. 8, 1855, page 863, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2105/page/11/