The French Government will soon be made to feel how
awk- ward is the position of any power that undertakes to keep the peace between contending domestic factions in a neighbouring -state. The mediator is sure to be heartily hated, if not actually cuffed, by both parties. At Rome, two soldiers of the Roman army have been shot by the sentence of a French court-martial. As the city is no longer in a state of siege, such an execution would in any circumstances have produced irritation; but the angry feelings of the Romans are aggravated by the reflection that the offence of their countrymen who have suffered was that of wounding, not mortally, in a casual street affray, some French soldiers who had grossly and without provocation insulted them. With the Austrians advanced to -Spoleto, this quarrel between the Romans and the French garrison may lead to grave complications.
The military authorities of Austria contrive to give as much offence in Germany as the French in Rome. At Hamburg, several citizens have been killed in a fray with the Austrian soldiers, begun by the insolence of the latter. In Hesse Cassel, the Govern- ment has been compelled to grant immunities to the Roman Ca- tholic clergy, scarcely compatible with the institutions of a Pro- testant country, under the compulsion of Austrian bayonets.
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