NEWS OF THE WEEK.
THE intelligence from Italy is calculated to raise at once expec- tation and apprehension. If we were to trust the published re- ports apprehension would prevail ; but there is good reason to suppose that the-official proceedings have not been stated with -any accuracy in the published reports. The acts authentically stated are momentous enough. The Tuscan .Representative Go- vernment, acting in concurrence with those of Modena and Parma' though quite substantially, has passed a resolution pro- .Losing the annexation of the province to the kingdom of Northern Italy. The decision was adopted in a full meeting of the body, and without a single dissentient voice. Amongst the members . present were the most eminent men of Tuscany,—men, indeed, of qualities to distinguish the age to which they belong. Some short time will elapse before this proposal can be duly forwarded to Turin ; but in the meanwhile we undoubtedly have the settled resolve of the Tuscan representative body.
After the not very explicitly related mission of Count Reiset, we have that of Prince Poniatowski, a cosmopolitan nobleman who is naturalized in France, and who appears in.the Tuscan capital, not, it is said, without high Imperial sanction, as a mes- :senger from " Ferdinand the Fourth," of Tuscany. It is said that the messenger is charged to convey the abdication of Leo- pold' II., with an offer on the part of his son Ferdinand, that if he be accepted as Grand Duke, Austria will enlarge her con- cessions to Italy, by severing Venice from the Austrian empire, and placing it under the independent government of an Austrian Grand Duke. The bearer of this proposal is said to carry with him some kind of recommendation from the Emperor Napoleon ; . but all the reports upon this subject must be accepted with the greatest reserve. That the Prince conveys some proposal from the Grand Ducal family of the kind indicated is most probable ; how far Austria has committed herself to endorse it we do not know with any accuracy ; and although the Emperor Napoleon may not have withheld a certain conditional approval, we have no evidence that he has substantively endorsed the proposition. ,The Tuscan Government is said to have received it, not without consideration, but with manifest reserve ; and we do not expect to find the representatives of the Tuscan people deviating from the proposal which they had before so deliberately debated.
