TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE NEW KINGDOM.
Tun present generation scarcely need Mr. Kingsley's poetry to tell them that "the world is young." If boiling life and activity, incessant change and portentous incident, be the signs of youth, then was the world never younger than it is this day. All around us the fabric of the old world, the edifice we have come to regard as durable as nature, is visibly breaking up. The air is choked with the dust of the crum- bling of rotten thrones, vivid with the light which heralds the birth of new nationalities. The electric telegraph can scarcely keep pace with the speed of accomplished facts. Events, each of which would once have illustrated a century, are crammed into a week. The existence of the Austrian empire probably depends on the resolves of the next few days. On the 2nd of March Mr. Lincoln will be installed at Washington, and the great republic, to which men pointed as the ultimate hope of mankind, and which in a century has risen from a colony into a first-class power, will be filially rent asunder. On the 3rd of March, a nation of serfs, more numerous than the population of any European state, will be solemnly pronounced free. And now, already on the 18th instant, a nation, for eight hundred years parcelled out among citizens and strangers, has resumed her place in the European family, and once more recommenced her national life.
It is scarcely possible to write of an event such as this, without falling unconsciously into a tone of exaggeration. Men who, like Mr. Bright, consider the new birth of Italy a small event, overlook in their shallow philosophy all that human freedom may produce. The freedom of Italy means, among other things, the addition of twenty millions of brains to the intellectual reservoir of the world, and those brains Italian. It has been the function of the "party of order" all over Europe to decry the Italians, to assert that the only race among whom genius is endemic, is exhausted aud effete. So long and continuous has been the cry, that it has imposed even on men who do not, like Mr. Cobden, hold the Times more valuable than Thucydides. Yet it would not be diffi- cult to prove that Italy under all its degradation, has always asserted its right to a front rank in the war of thought. We need not speak of literature, of the poets whose words have become a European treasure, or even of the artists, for whose works States still jealously compete. The English middle class scarceir feel the value of Dante, and would probably pro- nounce Michael Angelo improper. But cotton-spinners may surely allow that the Genoese whom Englishmen call Colum- bus was of some slight service to the world. Science alone may recognize the rank of Galileo, but a thought of Galvani is to-day paying dividends in the City. Is there a name in physics more honourable than that of Volta, in economy than Beccaria, or in learning than the last of the Della Scalas ? Or is it that practical intellect has worn out, that, like the intel- lect of Greece, its absence only proves the utter degradation of the Greeks ? Modern Europe honours many generals, and Lord Clyde and Marshal Pelissier, General Benedek and Col. Todtleben are doubtless practical soldiers. But the one Italian of pure blood who in these days has commanded a great army, mastered Europe in ten years. Soldiership is epractical faculty, but an abler than Napoleon, son of a pure Ro- anagnese family, would be hard to seek. Revolution is practical work, but the solitary successful leader of revo- lution has been an Italian. What argument is it by which we are to place Lamartine, or Kossuth, or Proudhon above Garibaldi ? Statesmanship is practical, but where is the statesman in Europe who believes himself the superior of Cavour ? When England is in despair for a statue, she com- missions Baron Marochetti. When a French Emperor would regenerate Paris, he calls on Visconti for a plan. Genius, we may be told, is universal and unfettered by race, and it is in the people alone that real strength is to be found. So be it. Which is the nobler, the French revolution or the Italian ? Or, if we must introduce the question of race, which is the greater, the people who, unable to produce a statesman, are suffering a successful republic to shatter down, or the people who, in the face of hostile Europe, and in spite of every in- ducement to disunion, are welding the states of Italy into one harmonious whole ? Compare Congress with the Parlia- ment of Italy, Buchanan with Cavour, Governor Pickens with Ricasoli, General Floyd with La Marmora, and it is not the Anglo-Saxon which has reason to be proud of its "practical" capabilities. It is useless, however, to run over a bead-roll of names. With men who can forget that one and the same race built the Roman Empire, the Catholic Church, and the Kingdom of Italy, argutnent on national capabilities is but a waste of time. The Italian Parliament met in a building strangely typical of the new kingdom. Hastily constructed, and altogether of wood, it still extorts the admiration of the spectator by its beauty and, completeness of design. The scene must have presented to Italians a strange jumble of things old and new. The bran new Parliament thronged into the bran new building as representatives of provinces which bore the same names under the Roman Empire, and cities whose history extends to the limit of human record. They assembled to organize a new monarchy under a King whose race was ruling during the brief revival of the Em- pire of the West, and from that day to this has struggled for the position Victor Emmanuel has attained. The King's first speech, like all his public acts, was dignified and re- served. In a few words he indicated to Parliament its most pressing duties, to organize municipal government without impairing the unity of the State, and to aid the sovereign in strengthening the national armament. The absence of the French representative was deplored ; but "France and Italy have riveted at Magenta and Solferino ties of amity- which will be indissoluble." The good offices of England will be preserved "in imperishable remembrance ;" and for the rest of the hostile world, for the princes intriguing for their thrones, for Austria still menacing Italian rebels, and Russia still refusing to acknowledge Italy, there is only a proud silence. The solitary allusion to Germany is a note of welcome to the new sovereign of Prussia. The King concludes by a simple appeal to the courage with which he has risked his crown, as the best argu- ment for his honesty, when he urges patience and mo- deration. In the whole speech there is not a word of undue exultation, not a sentence implying vindictiveness against the clouds of enemies with whom the new monarchy has still to contend. No allusion is made to annexation, not even to the accession of the Two Sicilies. The King accepts Italy, "almost united," as a fact, and urges Parliament to advance, in words which an English sovereign might have employed. It is on this determined reticence, this grave, deliberate preference of strong action to high phrase, that Englishmen found their confidence in the political future of the State. When the people of the South are content with measures such as Victor Emmanuel recommends, and a Par- liament such as that now assembled at Turin, there is little fear that their future will be sacrificed to a turbulent im- patience of delay. The first duty of the new Parliament will be the organiza- tion of a force adequate to the necessities of the time. The extent, and in some degree the character, of this force must be dependent on the weight of taxation to which the people are willing to submit. Fortunately, they have not been ac- customed to cheap government. Italian statistics form the most complex of arithmetical puzzles, but the population ought to be able to contribute at half the French rate, or 35,000,0001. a year. With that revenue the king may keep on foot a standing army of 400,000 men, backed by a na- tional rifle organization, and the largest park of artillery in Europe. With such a force Italy might treat for Venice on terms of equality, and reply to a French demand of more territory by the calm assertion that Italy is prepared to defend the unity she has secured. It is this which will be the testing point of the capacity of Italians for self-govern- ment. They have demonstrated the possession of high mili- tary qualities, of the self-restraint which is the first essential of civil freedom. They have yet to prove that they will sub- mit voluntarily to the searching taxation modern armaments so imperatively demand.
Previous page
