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    THE EXPOSITION" OF 1856 AT CHELSEA . A German paper reports that 'while Count Walewski was entertaining the plenipotentiaries at a banquet to celebrate the Peace , the " gentlemen " of the Plenipotentiaries were entertained by the Count ' s " gentleman " ; and the newspaper writers are witty on the "high life below stairs . " But why should not the valets rejoice at peace ; why not celebrate their triumphs and reconcilements 1 Is there

    any vast difference between the dinners , or the diners . Depend upon it Count WaIiEwskz does not understand the relish of champagne better , or the nice conduct of a pateiat corkscrew , than MascarilijE . Masoarille knows the personages who rule Europe as well as Walewski knows them ; he can tell you the combinations of statesmen and of stateswomen ., knows the ancient Schwarzenberg feuds , and the immortal Lieven intrigues as well as Walevtsk . ! knows . MasoauilTuE can as well

    judge the fair price of French stock as of Monte Video stock or Nicaragua Accessory Transit Stock ; he is as well up in the quotations as any Count that has the entrde at the Tuileries ; ho can purchase as well as the Count , and can as well calculate the future rise or fall , from the probability of partnerships , or dissolutions of partnership between London and Paris , Paris and Vienna , Vienna and St . Petersburg , St . Petersburg and Paris or London , as the shrewdest of the Counts or Countesses , or Princesses . Why should not MASOAitiLLis , then , give a banquet on the

    strength of tho latest triumph to the Bull party on fcho Paris stock oxohango 1 Masoa-RiMiB has his clay , why should he not " , drink , and bo merry ; for to-morrow we die ?" It is tho Maboaiullb class that is triumphant , and do not let us say that it is in Franoe alone . LeicGster-square may be enthroned ic Paris , but is not Bolgravo-squaro onthroned it Downing-strcet 1 and what is BelgraTe-squaxc but Leicester-square prospering "i It is not th < advontur os or the ups and downs of life tha make the difference botween tho jjontloman ar » the vagabond for Franoissoo Novello of Cat rara waa a gentleman from first to last , an <

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    nor France , therefore , can prefer despotic governments and poor populations to free and flourishing states- harmonising with themselves , naturally addicted to commerce , opposed to war and to political aggression , and systematically hostile to Austrian and Russian dominion . The statesmen of the West are beginning , we are told , to understand that the perpetuation of the present state of things in Italy is

    had not Austria interfered . In 1821 she crushed the rising liberties of Piedmont ; in 1831 and 1832 she invaded the Papal states , and her Italian policy then caused all but a general war , which was only prevented by the combined intervention of the four great powers—an intervention successful so far as the peace of Europe was concerned , but abortive as it concerned the liberties of Italy . The liberal reforms of Pitts the Ninth were interrupted by the counsels of Austria ; the efforts

    of Piedmont and Tuscany , in 1847 , were resisted by her , in concert with the satellite states of Naples , Parma , and Modena . In Lornbardy she fills the public offices with Austrian officials , invades every house and family with her spies , enforces German law on a people ignorant of German language and customs , discourages native manufacture , restricts the Lombard commerce by prohibitive tariffs ; does all , in effect , that can . exasperate an intelligent and spirited population ; and , when they fret more violently than usual ,

    silences them by martial law . This is the bane of Italy , and it is this that the Congress dare not touch . But the Lombards and Venetians would , without jealousy , witness the establishment of a better system in other parts of Italy ; for , were Austria prohibited by the public decree of Europe from occupying the Legations , or Tuscany , or Naples j were a French army no longer to prop up the paralysis of Rome , every free Italian would be an ally ofLombardy and Venice , to aid them in restoring the nation of

    Italy-An analysis of this scheme of intervention hypothetically attributed to Sardinia — suo-gests some points of difficulty . If the Sardinian Government assumes to represent the hopes and the rights of Italy , it must accept a large national interpretation of the Italian claims . What inducements , then , does it offer to the French Emperor to engage his interests in the political settlement of Italy 1

    If the Legations are to be bestowed on a new hereditary prince , he must be of the Italian blood , or he is a seed of discord '; and where is such a prince to be found ? If Naples is to be relieved from the bewildered bigot on the throne , who is to be his successor 1 If the greater portion of Italy is to be placed under guarantees , and freed from military occupation , and the Lombards and Venetians rise to assert

    their claims , and the Italian people join the national crusade , would the Congress stipulate that they shall be suppressed , or would it leave the revolution to develope itself , and to set free and unite the twenty-seven millions of the Peninsula ? For this is the real Italian question , —how may the Italians possess Italy for themselves , and restore it , under a liberal constitution , to independence , and to industrial and commercial prosperity .

    Some Italians believe in the fallacy that Great Britain and France would be jealous of a united and powerful Italy . The idea is totally without foundation . The British Government , false as its policy lias been , has not been false because it hates or fears the Italian people ; but because it identifies their cause with that of the general Revolution , ever impending in Europe . To the aristocracy , and to all the timid , this revolution is a phantom and a bugbear , stifling their sympathies ,

    inspiring them with the cruelty of cowardice . That a great liberal nation should rise in the Italian peninsula , opening its ports to British trade , exchanging its corn , and oil , and wine , for British manufacture , is the desire of every class in England ; only the governing class does not understand how this object could be attained without convulsing Europe / and

    alarming the friends of order and property . The trade that has already entered the port of Genoa —which an Englishman might now mistake for one of his own nourishing emporiums—is a slight illustration of the commercial advantages that must accrue to a manufacturing and commercial country from the existence of a kindred community spread along that rich line of territory between the Adriatic and

    Mediterranean seas . So far from France being jealous of Italians , the first impulse of France , whenever slie has acted for herself , has been to set the Italians froe . The Republic of 1848 would have accomplished this generous work , and risked a collision with Austria , had not British influcnco , representing the alarms of the aristocracy , interfered . No doubt the egotism of the Napoleon dynasty is opposed to tlie free development of a national Italy , but it is

    avowed "by our chief organ of opinion , that the government of the Coup d'Etat is not representative of France . Franco—the nationstill " represents" liberty , intelligence , selfgovernment ; and this France , cclipsod for an hour by an usurper's purple , still continuos to form in tho West , with Great Britain , a balanoo to tho military absolutism of tho

    North , against which tho scale might be turned by the erection in the South of an united and liberal Ituly . A fifth of our industry is employed by tho . United States of America . Some persons appoar to forgot that Italy contains a larger population , and is yet so ibtterod by monopolies and prohibitions , that hor trade with Great Britain ia comparatively unimportant . Noithor Groat Britain

    impossible . The question is , What remedy can be applied 1 Who can hope for a positive and liberal solution from the Congress of Paris ? A principle rules there that cannot favour broad and liberal projects , for it is never forgotten that , though France is said to lead the movements of Europe , Italy , in 1847 , gave the signal to France . But the complication has reached a point at which some decision must be arrived at . Certain " friends of

    Ihxly " ask the negotiating powers to judge between them and their rulers , and if judgment is declined they will pronounce it themselves , and Sardinia may be forced into a war of independence which inay set Europe on fire . The Congress professes to establish a general peace ; and what policy could be more infatuated than that which would leave a menacing difficulty without a solution 1 We repeat ,, nothing more than a partial and selfish decision can be expected ; but the stagnation will be at an end , and the claims of Italy will have obtained , at least , a recognition .

    The Congress of 1814 pretended to give peace to Europe , and , with perverse contempt of justice , ratified a settlement which was in itself the cause of inevitable commotions . It was then urged , as clearly and as forcibly as possible , that differences of race , language and religion , made it impossible that the Belgians should continue united with the Dutch ; . that the Polish nationality must be restored , or suppressed after a cruel conflict ; that the Italians would never be reconciled to an

    Austrian sway ; that Spain and Sicily could enjoy no peace under Bourbons ; and that the elder Bourbons could not be forced on France . The pacificators relied on military force , on police , on policy , and declared eternal a system against which Europe has ever since been struggling . The flight of Lotus XVIIL , his second restoration , the dethronement of his successor , the expulsion of the Bourbon line , the transfer of the throne to an " elected " dynasty , the fall of that dynasty , the

    proclamation of a republic , a war m the streets , a Coup < £ Etat and a praetorian regime , have illustrated , in France , the futility of the " arms , police , and policy , " on which the Holy Alliance relied ; and the protest of Europe has also been signified by armed interventions in Spain and Portugal , by a war between Belgium and tho Netherlands , by a terrible conflict in Poland , by forty Italian insurrections within

    forty years . No nation has been won to loyalty by the policy of the Holy Alliance ; conspiracy has nowhere been eradicated by its police ; absolutism , has nowhere boon rendered secure by its arms . It is a gigantic failure ; yet the pacificators of Europe imagine that , when they have protected Turkey , and " regulatod" a part of Italy , tho old world has been settled , tranquillised , and moulded into permanent political forms .

    In Italy the people suffer from two groat evils , bad government and foreign domination \ the foreign domination being the prop of tho bad government . The Austrian rule is the most hateful and tho most oppressive . If that curao wore removed , the nation would havo no diflioulty in reckoning with tho King of Nai'Les and the corps of Grand Dukes . Tho JNoapolitan constitutionalists would havo destroyed tho Bourbon absolutism in 181 G and in l # 30 ,

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    April 12 , 1856 . ] THE LEADER . 347

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), April 12, 1856, page 347, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2136/page/11/