of an independent state or federation of that the exiles were persons who had, with states, would appear from all the documents the authority of the Austrian government, connected with recent affairs in that country; transferred their allegiance to Piedmont. but that she is incapable of effecting her inde- But to judge from the internal evidence of pendence by herself, would equally appear this series of public acts on the part of from the same set of documents. Circum- Austria, the main objects appear to be fourstances render her case an anomaly amongst fold a striking of terror, by threatening the nations. Since 1815, the conduct of Italy, a inhabitants of Austrian Italy with death and reluctant and passive party to the settlement destruction for the offence of merely speaking of Europe at that date, has been a sustained or thinking against the Austrian government, protest against the European system which or not speaking or thinking always in its subjected her to alien control. Nevertheless, favor; secondly, an attempt to destroy confithe repeated attempts since 1815 have been dence in every party, except the one attached failures of that kind which we in England are to the government through thick and thin, apt to construe as proof of incapacity. But by promoting espionage, information against the case of Italy is so complicated, so en-citizens, and treachery; thirdly, the attempt tangled with extraneous matters, that it can to cut off all relations between Lombardy and scarcely be judged by a simple rule. These its citizens abroad, by ruining the latter; reflections, not new to the present week, have and, fourthly, a pretext for establishing a been recalled to our mind by a bundle of quarrel with Sardinia. To attain these obdocuments handed to us by a friend who has jects, the Austrian government proceeds by a recently travelled through the Italian Penin-course which repeatedly infringes public sula, and has come back laden with proofs of order, good faith, and public law. Its exthe patriotism and capacity of the Italians, cesses are illustrated by the treatment of but also with a conviction of the helplessness of their cause. One of the fasciculus 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 consecutive augmentation of tyranny, and the studied and overt working of the Austrian officials in Lombardy so to shape their public proceedings 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 conduct of the whole of the inhabitants of Milan, a small party excepted; nevertheless, the cruel enforcement of the law of siege, the enormous fines exacted from the body of the citizens, the quartering of the soldiers, the imposing of pensions for life in favor 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 commences, 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 degrees the announcement that the property of exiles will be confiscated unless they can prove their non-complicity. We have already explained CCCCLXXVIII. LIVING AGE. VOL. II. 12 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 favor of Scannini were treated with the utmost contempt; and the Milanese. Dominie Sampson was put to death for the offence of having been in the streets during the disturbance with " an iron bar" a little walking-cane of iron in common 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 thoroughly 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 Naples (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 mistakes 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 display 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 advantage of every mistake. The Italians, who were on the point of uniting in a great confederacy to expel "the Stranger," a confederacy 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, defeat its parliament 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 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 independence; how in times of trouble the kings of Naples have granted all that the Sicilians demanded; how at the same time England 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 nationality, are indelibly recorded; and in like manner, their uniform sacrifice to the intrigues or caprices of great foreign powers. The hopelessness of the Italian endeavor 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 inistakes which would merely enfeeble a movement in another country become 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 destruction of Piedmontese independence, the flood of the waters of absolutism 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 geographical expression" would be a fact not without interest for England; 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. From the Examiner, 28th May THE NEW BATTLE FIELD IN FRANCE. A FRENCH journal, the Union, describes very truly the new stage upon which the affairs of France are transacted: been subject to fluctuations, the rapidity and For more than a year past the Bourse has frequency of which exceed anything hitherto seen. What is the cause of this phenomenon? Under preceding régimes public attention was fixed upon the parliamentary chambers; they determined the movement of opinion; their votes made the Bourse rise or fall. Now-a-days people pay no attention to anything except what goes on at the Bourse. The Bourse takes no account of the debates or votes of the Corps Legislatif. This observation is so true, that the presentation of a budget in equilibrio, which, at any other period, would have been an event that could not have failed to have had a salutary influence on the public funds, found the Bourse this year completely indifferent, not to say incredulous. We have seen under the parliamentary régime journalists installed in the tribunes, in the lobbies of assemblies, and collecting the rumors of the day, to be afterwards retailed at the Bourse, and subsequently throughout France and Europe. Now it is at the Bourse itself that these journalists have established their head quarters. There it is that they learn, not only the diverse reports but the influential opinions situation and its eventualities. In consequence of the day the opinions of speculators upon the of the changes effected now nearly eighteen months ago, in the position of a considerable number of writers, it has even happened (and this is a characteristic feature of the present régime) that men of letters, poets and journalists, have become, some partners with agens de change, and others brokers, doing business in the coulisse, until better days, when France, recovering its taste for productions of the mind, shall again have a literature and literary men. The Bourse is everything, and everybody goes to the Bourse. You may meet there not only our financiers by profession and all the occasional administrators, our magistrates, our writers, and speculators, but our political personages, our late, any more than they all went formerly to our artists. They do not all go there to specuthe Assembly to vote, but the Bourse having become the grand centre of opinion, the regulator of the situation, all those go there who are interested in knowing what they formerly learnt from the chambers and a free press. The following observation has been lately published: Formerly, people used to set their watches by the clock at the Tuileries, now they go by the clock at the Bourse. This change of habit completely expresses our new situation. Alas, who can dare to boast of it? What is true of our watches is but too Politrue of politics. Bourse is all in all, because all is speculation, tics are only regulated by the Bourse. The and everything is based on speculation. There is no room for astonishment at the rapid and frequent fluctuations which we have pointed out. We have said that there is no speculation But if there be a deplorable decadence of public | for their heads, owing to the inconsiderate morality in this sovereign reign of the Bourse, abruptness and extent of the work of demolithere is also a great danger - a danger which tion. But what of that? Speculation must has not escaped the attention of serious and far- have its course, not excepting the speculation seeing financiers. When a political situation in a new Paris. depends exclusively upon a feverish activity of material interests, this situation is continually in liberty. There is none either in the downchanging with the rise and fall of the Bourse. Now what can be more uncertain than this, and what incalculable consequences would result from a financial panic? It is the fashion in certain quarters to be facetious about the chances and passions of a parliamentary vote. May God grant that we may not one day be driven to ask what we have gained by substituting for parliamentarism the hazards and passions of Bourse speculations! fall of the government. It is hated and borne. The common sentiment is, nothing can be worse, but nothing better is to be had. People make no secret either of their profound discontent, or of their hopeless, helpless submission. They leave it all to the Bourse, where the fall of a franc in securities is what a huge majority against the government was of old in the superseded parliamentary system. It is curious to mark what the effect has been of the suppression of opinion, or rather of the attempt to stifle its expression. The expression of opinion is at this inoment almost as easy and distinct as in the best days of liberty, the only difference being that it has been driven to a new vocabulary. People write and speak in half-words; neutral terms have come to signify a great deal; a doubt amounts How true those words, "The Bourse is all in all, because all is speculation, and everything is based on speculation!" The coup d'état was a speculation, the empire is a speculation, the leading speculation which sets all other speculations going; the Duc de Chambord's pretendership is a speculation; the Orleanist is a rival speculation. Liberty is the only thing in which there is no specu- in meaning to a condemnation, a mild misgivlation. Mercadet is the type of Imperial France. As gambling is the order of the day, a reckless extravagance is its concomitant. Never was there so much luxury in Paris as at the present time. The enjoyment of the present hour is all that is cared for, and there is no heed for the morrow except for a stroke of speculation. The government sets the example of improvidence. When the municipality of Paris ubjected to the gigantic plan of the emperor for rebuilding a sixth of the old city, that the funds could not be provided, his majesty answered, "You must go in debt; no municipality thrives well till it is deeply indebted." By these works an artificial stimulus is given to industry, but no one cares to ask what will be the effect when the completion leaves 50,000 laborers without employment. The views of speculation do not extend so far, the present effect being all that is thought of. House-rent is enormously raised for the time, and for all classes, but especially for the poor, who have been dislodged in thousands by the demolition of the old buildings they inhabited. Nothing could be more filthy and unwholesome than these abodes, but we question much whether the laboring classes will find the lodging-houses proposed by the government a change for the better, for they were accustomed to their styes, and they grovelled in them free from the eye of the police. But whether the new lodging-houses under police regulation be acceptable or not, they are not yet constructed, and while the grass grows the steed starves, and the poor are put to grievous inconvenience and expense to find a covering ing is despair. Formerly allowance was mado for exaggerated expressions; now the allowance is for the opposite, and not to praise an act of the government is to blame. The language of moderation is susceptible, indeed, of very immoderate excesses, and will, perhaps, soon be arraigned for its licentiousness. Big words are no longer in the field; they are as much out of existence as giants; the war is carried on now with the little words, and the gentlest phrases carry an incisive edge. Every one knows what is meant, and what is short of a panegyric reads as an invective. The laws of suppression are thus practically futile. They cannot touch opinion, nor can they stifle the expression of it; all they do is to drive it to a language new but perfectly intelligible. All coloring is forbidden, but Indian ink shading serves as a substitute. So much is this felt that when there is an occasional return to the old freedom of language, it does not give more offence than the new minor key; and so with impunity M. de Flavigny made his bold and noble speech in the legislative chamber against the proposed restoration of capital punishment for political offences, reprobating such a measure under a prince who has thrice owed his life to the abeyance of that very law. And here we must take occasion to observe that the charge of inconsistency does not attach to this proposal under such auspices, however objectionable it may be in other respects. For the emperor may well feel conscious how many evils would have been spared to France if he himself had undergone the penalty due to his criminal attempts either at Strasburg or Boulogne. Seeing in himself a flagrant example of the impolicy of clemency, he with perfect consistency proposes to restore | the rigor of the law of treason, so that there may be no future 2d or 4th of December. He virtually says, "See what has come of sparing me, and spare no more. probably at this moment in possession of the country which recently constituted the Chinese Empire: "Those who are rich among you must according to your wealth contribute to the support of our troops; and those who are poor must select swell the ranks of our army. the youngest and stoutest of your number to "Whoever can take alive one of these man ever can bring in one of their heads shall receive 3,000. But should any dare to disobey our commands, we have resolved to pillage their cities; let them not therefore lay up cause for future regrets; for which purpose this special proclamation is issued." The example reminds us of an anecdote of a late bankrupt duke, who was a very rigid game-preserver. Walking through his covers he happened to tread on the wire of a spring darins, whether military or civil, shall be regun, which went off without hitting him.warded with 10,000 pieces of money, and whoHis grace immediately mustered his gamekeepers and helpers, and asked who set the gun. Seeing that the duke had escaped, one of the men came forward with great alacrity, saying, "Please your grace, I set that gun.' "You did, did you?" answered the duke "then, sir, you shall never set another in service, for the gun was so badly set that it did not hit me, for which you are discharged." Louis Napoleon, like the duke, instead of congratulating himself on his escape, thinks only of setting the gun more surely for those who may follow in his footsteps. The Orleans family are discharged for not having set the gun with a truer deadly aim. my From the Economist, 21st May. CHINA AND THE TEA TRADE. WE derive from China the materials of our breakfasts, and commercial circulars refer to the condition of China. Messrs. Moffats and Co., for example, say in their circular, dated Fenchurch street, May 17: : The chronic rebellion, which for the last ten years has existed in China, assumes at length the formidable character of a revolution. To hear of this rebellion and its partial hindrances to trade had become so much a matter of course, that the English residents in China seem to have been content to remain in practical ignorance of its cause or progress, until a formidable force obtains possession of the great river Yang-tseKiang, levies contributions on its wealthy and populous towns, and invests Nanking, the ancient capital, and the most important city in China. By the mail which arrived yesterday, we receive the first indications of the insurgents' pretensions, accompanied by intelligence indicating the strong probability of the dissolution of the Chinese Empire, unless the urgent appeals of its tottering authorities for exterior aid are successful. The rapid and extraordinary progress of the insurrectionary movement, and the accounts brought to Shanghae of the conduct and exactions of the insurgents, appear to have induced the British Consul to transmit such information to his Excellency the Governor in Council, at Hong Kong, as to induce him to proceed with all speed from that colony to Shanghae, accompanied by his diplomatic staff, and all the available naval force then in the Chinese waters; his example was speedily followed by the American Plenipotentiary, Colonel Marshall, in the Susquehannah, and the French resident authority in the Cassini; but the letters from Shanghae, under date 12th March, which reached Hong Kong after the Governor's departure, describe the immediate surrender of Nanking as certain, while the Overland China Mail states the Governor's intention to be "to carry the force to Nanking, and, upon conditions to be specified beforehand, to assist the Chinese government against the insurgents." Should this be the case, the American cooperation will doubtless be invited. Both in a political and commercial point of view this intelligence is extremely important. The possible, if not probable, dismemberment of a vast and populous empire, which has reached the highest point of oriental civilization, can scarcely fail to create much interest among the maritime powers of Europe; while, in the extensive commerce of the English and American merchants, the confusion and anarchy which appear to be generally anticipated in China, afford ample cause for anxiety and caution. In Shanghae the terror is described as extreme. Gold had advanced in value upwards of twentyfive per cent., being eagerly sought for hoarding; silver had so far disappeared, that none could be obtained to pay the Chinese dues on the British vessels requiring port clearance; and in The leader of the insurgents, styling himself consequence of which Mr. Consul Alcock had. the Emperor Thae-ping (Great Tranquillity), and consented to become responsible to the Chinese spoken of in the private letters under the name authorities for the payment of these dues, on reof Teen Tuck, appears recently to have "devel-ceipt of East India Company's bills, or other oped his policy" by the publication of three proclamations, the first inciting the people to rise against the existing dynasty—the second denouncing the Tartars-and the third inculcating theological tenets; but each threatening those who will not join in arms, or send contributions. The following extract may be taken as a fair illustration of the views of the loader, who is approved securities. The scarcity of the precious metals is one of the most unfavorable features, when viewed in reference to the immediate future of commerce, as this abstraction occurs precisely at that period when their use is most needed, to enable the tea and silk buyers to go into the interior and effect their purchases, for which a large portion of bullion is paid in advance, to mean enable the producers to carry on their opera-] rewards for all the mandarins, alive or dead, tions. who serve the present government and that Should foreign interposition be happily success- it seems both an insurrection of the people ful in maintaining order in China, a highly favorable opportunity will occur for extending friendly relations with that vast empire, and opening its untold commercial resources to Western enterprise; but this we fear must be viewed as a somewhat remote contingency. In the time, considerable doubt and anxiety must naturally arise as to the future supplies of tea; for although the successful leader of the insurgents is said not to be inimical to foreign trade, still it must be obvious that in the total disruption of such a government, the safeguards of property, and the security of commercial transactions, beyond the pale of British protection, would be virtually destroyed. Should this disaster occur, the customary supplies of tea must of course be limited and uncertain; this also happens at an un against social oppression and of one dynasty, have on trade. fortunate moment, when the reduction of duty at home makes a considerable increase in the importations a matter of urgent necessity. We are disposed to think that this disadvantage will Now, one of the features of the Chinese charmainly apply to the finer descriptions, which are acter, as contradistinguished from the characcomprised in the early gatherings, and which teristic of all the Tartar tribes and their Tarare usually obtained by the transmission of tar rulers, which has in latter times been bullion. With a people so ready and inventive made conspicuous, is a communicative or as the Chinese, and so dexterous at manufac- trading spirit. They are found in various tures, we do not apprehend any scarcity of the parts of the Indian Ocean. Their junks go to low descriptions, usually manufactured near the all the islands in their vicinity. They are, to place of export, and which advanced quotations the amount of many millions, an industrious generally bring forward; but the course of nature heeds not the progress of revolution, and if the means are not applied to secure the leaves in April and May, the early crop, which includes all the finer descriptions, both of black and green tea, will be as much lost as unreaped wheat at Christmas. Our merchants, our tea and silk dealers, our manufacturers of woollens and cottons, almost all who work, and almost all who drink tea or wear silk or are concerned in trade, are deeply interested in the consequences of the rebellion in China. Closely connected, how ever, as we are with that empire by trade, from the difficulties of the Chinese language, and from our having access to a very small portion of the empire and scarcely any cominunication with the rest, we are ignorant of the object of the rebellion and of the nature of the support it receives. We know nothing of the history of the individuals who head it or of their claims on the people. We learn, indeed, from the proclamation referred to by Messrs. Moffatt, that the heads of the rebellion claim to be of the Myng dynasty that they are opposed to the Mantchou dynasty or Tartar conquerors, "the roamers of the barren desert and the inhabitants of the bare mountains, who have taken possession of their halls" that they appeal to the people for the restoration of the old virtues, that is, the old usages of the country that they claim, by one burst of the anger of their leader, to have pacified the people that they offer great and trading people. The Tartars are the robbing horde. It is with the people of the south more than those of the north that we and other European nations have traded, though the Chinese of the north are also very industrious and great traders. Already the present emperor making concessions to the demands of the people, and in order to pacify them— has legalized the importation of opium, and shown a disposition to open and extend trade. We are not inclined, therefore, to suppose that the present rebellion is likely to be hostile in any way to trade. If it be successful it will be the success of the trading part of the great nation; if it fail, and the Tartar dynasty remain on the throne, the attempt will impress on the monarch and his counsellors the necessity of conceding more to the China or trading portion of his subjects, and of extending the connections of China with the nations of the west. It is our belief, however, though political disturbances may temporarily derange trade, that it is so securely founded on the laws of nature, particularly where great numbers of people are concerned it grows so certainly from that territorial division of labor, which is as much a portion of human society as the division of labor in a tribe or a single political community that it cannot be permanently checked, nor even permanently deranged, by mere political convulsions. In our judgment the course of trade will equally overrule the schemes of hot-brained enthusiasts and the |