THE SITUATION OF ITALY.
Tax time seems to have come when the question is tangibly laid before Europe, whether Italy shall be independent or extinguished ? That she retains in herself sufficient strength, mind, and capacity, for the conduct of an independent state or federation of states, would appear from all the documents connected with recent affairs in that country ; but that she is incapable of effecting her inde- pendence by herself, would equally appear from the same set of documents. Circumstances render her case an anomaly amongst nations. Since 1815, the conduct of Italy, a reluctant and passive party to the settlement of Europe at that date, has been a sustained protest against the European system which sub- jected her to alien control. Nevertheless, the repeated attempts since 1815 have been failures of that kind which we in England are apt to construe as proofs of incapacity. But the case of Italy is so complicated, so entangled with extraneous matters, that it can scarcely be judged by a simple rule. These reflections, not new to the present week, have been recalled to our mind by a bundle of documents handed to us by a friend who has recently travelled through the Italian Peninsula, and has come back laden with proofs of the patriotism and capacity of the Italians, but also with a conviction of the helplessness of their cause. One of the fascioulus of papers is a résumé of the events in Milan immediately following the attempt of the 6th February 1853. It is a plain recital of documents issued by the Austrian officials, Count Strassoldo, Count Radetzky, and Count Gyulai, the history of which is well known; but it would need perusal of this paper fully to appreciate the sustained disregard of truth, the consecu- tive augmentation of tyranny, and the studied and overt working of the Austrian officials in Lombardy so to shape their public pro- ceedings as to bring certain persons within range of their penalties. In the first of these proclamations, dated the 7th of February, Count Strassoldo recognizes the general peaceful and orderly con- duct of the whole of the inhabitants of Milan, a small party ex- cepted: nevertheless, the cruel enforcement of the law of siege, the enormous fines exacted from the body of the citizens, the quar- tering of the soldiers the imposing of pensions for life in favour of soldiers who had been wounded, to be paid by the city of Milan —were acts which succeeded that recognition of the peacefulness of the citizens. It needs no minute examination of these documents to show that they contradict each other; but the contradiction is evidently disregarded by their authors. After the series com- mences, a hint is thrown out, that the disturbers, originally a fraction of the people, but ultimately a crowd of the populace, had been seduced by persons in foreign parts ; and then comes by de- grees the announcement that the property of exiles will be confis- cated unless they can prove their non. complicity. We have al- ready explained that the exiles were persons who had, with the authority of the Austrian Government, transferred their allegiance to Piedmont. But to judge from the internal ev.idence of this series of public acts on the part of Austria, the main objects ap- pear to be fourfold,—a striking of terror, by threatening the in-
habitants of Austrian Italy with death and destruction for the of- fence of merely speaking or thinking against the Austrian Go- vernment, or not speaking or thinking always in its favour ; secondly, an attempt to destroy confidence in every party, except the one attached to the Government through thick and thin, by promoting espionage, information against citizens, and treachery ; thirdly, the attempt to cut off all relations between Lombardy and its citizens abroad, by ruining the latter ; and fourthly, a pretext for establishing a quarrel with Sardinia. To attain these objects, the Austrian Government proceeds by a course which repeatedly infringes public order, good faith, and public law. Its excesses are illustrated by the treatment of Scannini' a scholarly tutor in the family of Count Antonio Greppi. The Count is known for his deference to the Church and to the established Government ; but the Italians must not even presume to approve—it implies opinion. His representations in favour of Scannini were treated with the ut- most contempt ; and the Milanese Dominic Sampson was put to death for the offence of having been in the streets during the dis- turbance with "an iron bar "—a little walking-cane of iron in com- mon use at the time.
Another document is a volume by Massari; a résumé of events in Naples from the 29th of January 1848 to the same date in 1849, which is an exceedingly plain statement, and, but for its tho- roughly Italian style, might have been written by an Englishman. Its perusal recalls the impression which all the detailed accounts of Neapolitan affairs suggests,—namely, that the people of Na- ples (we are not now speaking of any particular class, but taking the whole body of all classes) possess in themselves a considerable amount of capacity for the conduct of public affairs ; that the mis- takes of their public men are not greater than the mistakes made by our own public men ; that in the eventful year in question they really carried on affairs with good faith, and with considerable dis- play of ability. If there were discords amongst them—if there were pedantic and impracticable men, like the Minister Bozelli—if there were able men with too little of pliancy, like Saliceti—there was a full share of public spirit all round. The Court, however, too low in spirit to feel the responsibilities of good faith, backed by an external power, and trained in the habit of defeating the Italians by intrigue and treachery, lay in wait to take full ad- vantage of every mistake. The Italians, who were on the point of uniting in a great confederacy to expel "the Stranger,"—a con- federacy which bade fair to include Piedmont, Tuscany, Milan, and the body of the Italian people,—were divided in their councils on the ulterior question of Monarchy or Republic ; it became easy for a royal family to defeat its own Ministry, to defeat its Parlia- ment and its people ; and the history of Massari is finished in Mr. Gladstone's pamphlet, which recounts how the Ministers of the King of Naples were consigned to imprisonment for the crime of having faithfully served him during that critical period.
To these documents might be added the summary which Prince de Granatelli continues from Palmieri, showing how the Sicilians have repeatedly used opportunities to stand up for their inde- pendence; how in times of trouble the Kings of Naples have granted all that the Sicilians demanded ; how at the same time Eng- land has acted with a show of supporting the Sicilians ; how the Sicilians have agreed to the terms of the English Government, in the last case by accepting the Duke of Genoa as King ; and how England has invariably backed out just at the critical point. The spirit of the Sicilians, their indomitable courage and strong na- tionality, are indelibly recorded ; and in like manner, their uni- form sacrifice to the intrigues or caprices of great foreign powers.
The hopelessness of the Italian endeavour does not lie in the want of spirit or capacity in her people, corrupted as they have been by long oppression ; but it lies in the gigantic scale of the forces arrayed against them, and in the facility which the allied powers have of suppressing every effort in detail. The mistakes which would merely enfeeble a movement in another country be- come fatal by the organized system which enables the enemy to take advantage of every mistake. That organized power has been gaining ground since 1848. The kingdom of Sardinia still affords a living centre and a territorial position for the Constitutional party of Italy; but it is evidently too feeble for the contest which awaits it, and before many years it must give way. With the destruc- tion of Piedmontese independence, the flood of the waters of Abso- lutism will have overleaped the last dike and Italy will be thoroughly submerged. The extinction of Italy, however—the verification of Metternich's prophetic phrase, "Italy is a geogra- phical expression "—would be a fact not without interest for Eug- land ; whose power in Europe has been steadily declining since 1820 at the latest, and who would thus fairly hand over the so. long coveted balance of power to the opposite influence.
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