ARTICLE VII.-ITALY AND THE WAR.

History of Piedmont. By ANTONIO GALLENGA. London: Chapman & Hall. 1855. 3 vols. 12mo.

The Sub-alpine Kingdom, or Experiences and Studies in Savoy, Piedmont, and Genoa. By BAYLE ST. JOHN. London: Chapman & Hall. 1856. 2 vols. 12mo.

ONCE more, after so many disappointments, the Italians are encouraged to hope for the independence and regeneration of their country. And there is an auspicious omen for the realization of their hopes, in the fact that they are so nearly ananimous upon the great essential point-the necessity, first of all, of breaking the yoke of the Austrians, and expelling them from their borders. We believe their cause to be a just one,none the less just indeed, because it happens to have been espoused by so selfish and ambitious a man as the present Emperor of the French. And though they should be again doomed to disappointment, even though the struggle now going on in Italy should only result in a change of masters, still we should hail such a change as a decided improvement upon their present condition. For the Bonapartes in our estimation are better than the Hapsburgs; and the despotism that springs from the present age, that takes note of its progress and breathes though reluctantly its spirit, and which appreciates the existence and rights of nations, no less than of dynasties, is far preferable to that monstrous mediaeval thing, which sits enthroned upon the heart of Europe, and lives upon the dismemberment of Poland, the disorganization of Germany, and the subjugation of Hungary and Italy. There is a strong bond of sympathy, too, between the French and the Italians. This sympathy springs from affinities of language and manners, if not of race, and from historical associations, and it much better fits the French for exercising the supremacy in the Peninsula, than the Austrians, against whom the

hearts of the Italians have been poisoned, by so many years of misgovernment and oppression, such as they never experienced, even under the rigorous rule of Napoleon the First.

It has been very much the fashion for those in power at Vienna, to deprecate all discussion of the mode in which the Austrian government treats its Italian subjects, as an unwarranted interference with the sovereignty of the Emperor over the possessions secured to him by the treaties of 1815. But it was the infraction of those treaties by the Austrian government itself, that precipitated the war. It flung those treaties. to the winds, when, on the 26th of April last, it sent to the government of Sardinia the menacing summons to disarm. This ill-advised step called forth a protest from the cabinets of London, Berlin, and St. Petersburg, while the Sardinians and their allies girded themselves for the trial of the great question, as to the further continuance of Austrian domination in Italy.

Let us look, a moment, at the Italian policy of Austria and see what there is about it that makes it so odious. By the treaties just mentioned, the Hapsburgs were restored to the sovereignty of that part of Italy held by them previous to the French Revolution, with the addition of Venice and the adjacent territories.* The wars and convulsions that followed the Revolution had shaken the Italians out of their lethargy, and kindled among them the national spirit, and the desire for free institutions. But the policy pursued by the Austrians, on their restoration, was not at all suited to this change in the Italians. The Emperor Francis, a weak and timid creature, gladly gave up the reins of government into the hands of Prince Metternich. Metternich was the guiding spirit of absolutism in Europe, until finally, in 1848, his day of reckoning came. He ruled Lombardy and Venetia with a rod of iron. He ground the Italians into the dust, by his forced loans, his military conscriptions, and his unequal and unjust taxation.

The population of the Lombardo-Venetian Kingdom, according to the Gotha Almanac, 1859, is 5,503,473. The population of the kingdom of Sardinia, which comprises the island of Sardinia, Savoy, the cradle of the reigning house, situated on the French side of the Alps, and Piedmont, is 5,167,542. The entire population of Italy is estimated at about twenty-five millions.

He introduced a system of espionage, more mischievous and odious than that of the Medici or the Venetian aristocracy. His spies were everywhere-in the churches, the courts of justice, and the schools. They made their way into social circles, and reported to Vienna the private views and opinions of those who were suspected by the government. Spies were set to watch over spies, and worthless and abandoned men were hired to inform Metternich against the censors of the press and the police agents. Men were arrested on suspicion, without knowledge of the nature or source of the charges against them, and confined months and years in prison, before they were brought to trial. The inhuman method adopted for the conviction and punishment of persons of liberal tendencies, has been made known to the public, in the narratives by Silvio Pellico, Andryane, and Maroncelli, of their trial and subsequent sufferings in the prisons of the Spielberg. Places of honor and emolument were filled with Germans, to the exclusion of the Italians, who were treated as a conquered and outlawed race. "These Italians must be Germanized," said the men in authority at Vienna. No wonder that the Italians, in their satires upon the Germans, placed them by the side of the monks and the typhus, as one of the three pests that cursed their country.

In the consternation produced by the escape of Napoleon from Elba, the Austrian government, like most of the governments of the Continent, promised free institutions to its subjects. It forgot those promises, of course, as soon as Napoleon was conquered. It was proclaimed from Vienna, in 1815, that Lombardy and the Venetian territory should be erected into a single kingdom, with an independent administration and an organization suited to the character and customs of the Italians. Instead of this, however, separate governments were formed for these territories. Every artifice was used to loosen the bonds of union and friendship between their inhabitants, and in 1822 a tariff was imposed upon merchandise passing from the one to the other. The governors of Lombardy and Venice, in utter disregard of the viceroy, reported themselves directly to

the Emperor at Vienna. Thus the Lombardo-Venetian kingdom existed as a kingdom only on paper, and the archduke Rénier, brother of the Emperor Francis, bore for thirty years the title of viceroy, without authority or responsibility.

We cannot here omit to state what sort of a contrivance it was that the Austrian government imposed upon the Italians in the place of legislative assemblies. These are the so called Central Congregations. There are two of them, one for the government of Lombardy, consisting of twenty-nine deputies, and the other for the government of Venetia, consisting of twenty-five deputies. They were first established by an ordinance of the Emperor Francis, dated April 24th, 1815. They are called "Central," in order to distinguish them from subordinate bodies of the same character, organized in the provinces and denominated provincial congregations. They are altogether secular in their character. They are simply bureaus of financial and economical administration. Artificial distinctions were introduced among the deputies-distinctions borrowed from the provincial assemblies of Germany, in which the different estates-the nobility-(Adelstand,) the peasantry(Bauernstand,) and the burghers (Bürgerstand) were separately represented. The Italians have always regarded the establishment of the Congregations as an effort to force German institutions upon them. The people have no voice in the election of the deputies. They are selected by the Emperor from a list of candidates made up from the secret reports of the police. They may be dismissed by him, at his pleasure. The Congregations have no initiatory power. The president of the government, who is always a German, is also president of the Congregation. He convokes the deputies and indicates to them what they are to do. Their advice is to be listened to when it seems good to the government-a case which has happened only once in thirty years. In 1825, the Emperor, while on a visit to Milan, refused to allow the Central Congregation of Lombardy to be presented to him, for the reason that they had taken it upon themselves humbly to make known to him the desires and wishes of the country. The Central Con

gregations were swept away by the revolution of 1848, and were restored again in 1856.

Availing herself of her Italian possessions as a basis of operations, and a pretext for interference, Austria has gone on extending her power, partly by force and partly by intrigue, until she has acquired a fatal preponderance over all the rest of Italy, except Sardinia. A treaty of alliance between the Emperor Francis and King Ferdinand of Naples, concluded in July, 1815, stipulates in a secret article, "That His Majesty the King of the Two Sicilies, shall not admit changes which cannot be reconciled either with monarchical institutions, or with the principles adopted by his Imperial and Royal Majesty for the internal government of his Italian provinces." True to the spirit of this treaty, Ferdinand, in 1816, abolished the constitution which England had secured to the island of Sicily in 1813. In 1820 his throne was shaken with revolution. But little blood was shed, however, and no violence done to the king or his family. A constitution was promulgated, to which he took the oath of obedience. A parliament assembled, and things went on peacefully. But Austria was offended. In January, 1821, the Congress of the Holy Alliance assembled at Laibach. Ferdinand appeared before it, like a malefactor, to receive his sentence. The changes made at Naples were pronounced null and void, and an army of eighty thousand Austrians traversed the Papal States, subdued the Neapolitans, and restored the despotism of the Bourbons. The course of events was much the same in Piedmont; only there, the king, rather than sign his name to a constitution, chose to abdicate, and he was succeeded by his brother, Carl Felix. But the revolution was crushed by Austrian bayonets, and the Congress of Verona decreed in 1822, that twenty thousand Austrian troops should continue for the time being to occupy Naples, and that they should not evacuate Piedmont before the expiration of ten months. Again, in 1831, an Austrian army invaded the Papal States, where they remained encamped until 1838. Still later, Austria followed up her remonstrances against the reforms of Pius IX, by the military occupation of Ferrara. The duchies of Parma and Modena have become substantially fiefs of the