THE SUPPRESSED DESPATCH.
A SQUIB has been plentifully distributed in London, headed
"The ' Suppressed' Despatch," and purporting to be a circular issued by Cardinal Antonelli to the Papal nuncios at foreign courts, with his account of what really took place in connection with Lord Russell's offer to the Pope of hospi- tality at Malta. The squib is not a bad one, and its author has every right to be content with his success. The joke of his concoction was for a while taken seriously by others even than Lord Normanby and Mr. Darby Griffiths, while, in France, it has been commented upon by the press as a document of the very highest importance. On this occasion the critical keenness of our neighbours has certainly allowed itself to be gnassly hoodwinked by the broad humour of Irish impudence.
The reception given to this squib is, however, the indication of a want. Had people been completely satisfied with the accounts furnished them in regard to the proceedings of the English Go- vernment they would have been no more open to be gulled by this than any other manifest hoax. What makes us all to be easily led astray is the want of light—the being left in darkness how the land really lies about us. However much we may feel disposed to believe in the judgment of a statesman, yet when, on the one hand, we have bruited about nothing but accounts of strange eccentricities on his part., with a publicity which is invested with all the characteristics of autho- ritative communication, while, on the other hand, he furnishes mere scraps of explanation, it is impossible but that the general public should not feel puzzled to arrive at a conclusion, and should not be in the very frame of mind which is the most suitable for being duped. This, we hold, is just the position in which the public has been left in the matter of Lord Russell's invitation to the Pope, by the papers laid before Parliament. After lookin5 through them, we are, indeed, the richer for an eloquent essay by the Foreign Secretary on a very hackneyed subject, the benefits which the Papacy would derive by a change of policy ; but we find ourselves without the least -scrap of evidence calculated to convince those who might he disposed to doubt whether Lord Russell had been really prompted to make his proposition by something more tangible than a hallucination. It is precisely because we are firmly persuaded that the Pope, last year, did meditate, for a while, the propriety of seeking British protection, and did accordingly express his wishes on the subject, as Lord Russell affirms, that we regret to see the Government case not: stated with that clear fulness which alone can impose its well-deserved refutation upon the spite- ful effusions of the French Foreign Office. For it must be borne in mind that the public never could have learnt anything about this sup- posed little underhand attempt to decoy the Pope within the British Empire, but for the French Governments love of publicity. That portly romance in yellow covers which it has become a standing part of the Emperor's solicitude annually to furnish for the sessional di version of his legislators, was this year spiced by a fable, scratched in in the best style of M. Drouyn de Lhuys' skilful pen, of the ways and doings of the notorious old vixen, perfidious Albion, when she tried treacherously to steal out of the hen- coop of the Vatican that very glorious bit of poultry the Pope, which France is so tenderly fattening for—the Bay Catholic table of the- Church's Eldest Son. It was a good story well told, and the hit it made was so great that perfidious Albion, nettled at the buzz, has seen fit to come forward and plead in self- defence against the charge of larceny. Now, all we can say is, that if we absolve the accused party—and we do this most cordially—it is entirely due to our inward conviction as to its character, and not at all to the cogency of its pleading. The whole gist of the question at issue lies in the foundation of the charge of clandestine and self-prompted action on the part of the English Government, for the purpose of enticing the Pope into betaking himself away from French protection in Rome. This, and this alone, is the point of M. Drouyn de Lhuys' charge. He would fain represent himself as having detected Lord Russell in the very act of busily trying to play off a sneaking trick upon the generous nature of France, by insidiously inciting her stultified victim to break out of bounds. The only way of at once, satisfactorily rebutting this ingenious
piece of Old Bailey practice is by producing the application which in response elicited the assurance of protection. It is a singular instance of official blindness not to have perceived that the collec- tion of papers now published not only afford no defence for Govern- ment, but actually, through blundering omissions, give a colour to what otherwise would be at once swept away. While in the despatch of the 25th October, which is the criminal document, Lord Russell enters into an elaborate argument in support of his invitation to Malta, unaccompanied, however, by any reference to advances having been made by the Pope, and calling for a re- joinder,—we find him, after the publication of the French Yellow Book, instructing Lord Cowley to inform M. Drouyn de Lhuys, that the former despatch had by no means sprung from his indi- vidual inspiration, but in direct response to an inquiry by the Pope. It is very intelligible how the requirements of the service might seem to demand that these communications should not be made public ; but it is not intelligible why secrecy having once been broken by the French Government, because it saw an ad- vantage to be derived from talking to the injury of a neighbour, the English Government should practise the absurd virtue of taking upon itself the weight of a false charge, rather than rebut by publishing what on other grounds might have seemed more proper to suppress. We cannot have a moment's doubt that the only motive for such suppression is to be found in a desire not to wound other people's feelings. The whole policy of England in Italy is so disinterested that it would require the Marquis de Boissy's distempered imagination to fancy some occult plot on our part in the case. If, therefore, there be anything objectionable to France or the Pope in the nature of those communications which Lord Russell tells the world he received, and replied to by his now famous offer, the weight of this publication at this date will fall solely on M. Drouyn de Lhuys, who, byhis hastyand intemperate assertions, put the English Government under the necessity of defending itself. The Pope and the Emperor would just have to thank their own wilfulness for it, if they should find themselves in the position of having to eat up a bitter mess with which they had jocosely meant to do an ill turn to a friend. Aftei the reticency of the English Government, as long as it was not stung into speaking, the whole responsibility of inconvenient revelations must fall on those whose ill-tempered tongues provoked them. We, in England, would, at all events, claim to know what our Government really is about, and in the present state of parties it cannot be expected that Mr. Disraeli and the Tories should be allowed the opportunity of gibbeting our Foreign Minister as a wanton meddler, only because the Pope and the Emperor of the French might so far forget themselves as to take each other by the ears, were he to bring forward the documents for his signal ex- culpation. We shall be, indeed, sorry to see these two august personages stand to each other in an indecorous position ; we shall profoundly grieve at having to contemplate the scandal of such exalted individuals being caught in an exhibition unbecoming to their grave natures ; but really, at a moment when our Liberal Ministry is in anything but a flourishing condition, we cannot afford to aggravate its prospects by allowing it to bear undeserved ridicule for the sake of preserving the varnish on that fresh suit of courtly good fellowship, which it has suddenly suited Pope and Emperor to don for their particular interests on public occasions. We appeal to the well-known disinterestedness of the " Great Nation " itself, and to the often tried single-mindedness of the College of Cardinals, whether even their self-forgetfulness could be made to stretch to such a pitch of self-immolation. Really it can be no part of the essential duties of a British Foreign Secretary meekly to stand out before the world as a tolerably sorry figure in a shower of ridicule, for the sake of tenderly keeping a wrapper about the shoulders of Pius IX., to the absolute detriment, mean_ while, of his own credit.
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