House, that it was my deliberate belief, that before the end of a
few weeks there would be an end of the Sardinian monarchy. On that
occasion I was, indeed, a true prophet. Almost while I was speaking,
the King of Sardinia broke the armistice, again attacked the
Austrians, was again defeated, and then abdicated his crown. That
monarch was much to be blamed for the former part of his conduct, but
was much to be pitied for its close; he was driven on by the fear of a
mob--the most paltry and the most perilous of all fears. He was urged
on to his ruin by the worst of all advisers, those fears. He threw
himself into the hands of the Red Republican party of Paris and of
Turin, and, worse than all, of Genoa; and he has paid, in consequence,
the penalty of giving ear to evil counsellors. Then there was more
of negotiation, although one would have thought that, when Radetzky
stopped in the full career of victory, there would have been an end
of all resistance on the part of Sardinia. The negotiation which then
began has been continued from day to day up to the present hour,
and, if common fame can be trusted, there is less chance now of that
negotiation leading to the pacification of Northern Italy than there
was three or four months ago. I deeply lament this, my Lords. Every
friend of the true policy of England, and every friend of the peace of
Europe, must lament it. I hear it said, our Foreign Office lends its
aid to the delay of peaceful measures in Turin; and I hear it with
wonder, considering what has passed within the last two years. But I
am afraid that there are some natures far too sanguine--some whom no
failure can cure of the most extravagant hopes--who, while they
are sinking, cling to the feeblest straw, and derive hope from the
slightest change, and who, because things are not just as they were
twenty-four hours before, expect that better times are coming, and
hope even against hope itself. I think that what has recently taken
place in Hungary, in Croatia, and in Transylvania, has been the
foundation of the hopes recently entertained by the friends of
Sardinia, and that some parties in England, but still more in Turin,
have conceived expectations that Austria, if these negotiations are
allowed to drag their slow length along, will be frustrated in her
designs of--what? Aggrandizement? Oh, no. If that were all, the
difficulty might easily be removed. For look, my Lords, how the matter
stands. Here is craving ambition on the one side, against a steady
adherence to a pacific policy on the other; here is a desire to
enlarge dominion against the solemn faith of treaties on the one part,
and a resolution not to swerve a hair's breadth from that faith on the
other, even when tempted by aggression the most unjust, and crowned
by success the most absolute and complete. Here is good faith
unsurpassed, almost unexampled moderation in victory, met by incurable
thirst of aggrandizement, and reckless love of change under the most
grievous disaster.
Thus stand the rival powers of Sardinia and Austria opposed to each
other. I hope that I view these matters more gloomily than the real
state of things warrants; but I certainly feel not a little uneasy
when I reflect on the great length to which these negotiations have
been sedulously spun out. And here, my Lords, I must observe, that
this brings me, among many of the views which I now, anticipating
somewhat, have taken of the present state of the Powers, to the
conviction that the various matters now in dispute can only be
settled by some general congress. This would at once close the Turin
Conference. I have before mentioned to your Lordships that the favour
which the Government of England has shown to Sardinia, and the
prejudice against Austria, has exhibited itself--indeed, I may
say, has broken out very conspicuously, in two portions of these
transactions. First, it was displayed in the general difference of the
language used to Austria and to Sardinia. To Austria we have held out
everything short of threat--we have addressed her in language gentle
indeed in outward appearance, but amounting in substance to downright
menace. 'You had better not go', we said, 'into Italy--you had better
not invade any ally of ours--you had better not think of going to
Turin or to Rome, for if you do, we shall consider it a matter
deserving of grave consideration.' That was not the language in which
we addressed the other party. To Austria we were _suaviter in modo,
fortiter in re_. But Sardinia was gently and amicably told, 'If you do
so act, it will be very much against your true interests. It will be
wiser not to do anything of the kind. Pray don't for your own sake.'
But no threat, nor anything like a threat. Sardinia was not told, as
Austria was, that it would be matter of great importance if she budged
a foot out of her own dominions. And all this diversity of treatment,
all this reprimand of Austria, was designed to be made known, and to
gain credit and popularity with the republican rabble. For then came
that proceeding--so ludicrous at once, and so mean, that I have never
read anything like it in the whole course of history. While we were
anxiously advertising to all Europe, and more especially to the rebels
at Milan, and to the red republicans in Paris, that we had held out to
Austria this menace, we had at the very time in our pockets an answer
from Prince Metternich to our menacing dispatch, saying, 'What is the
matter with you? It is not yet the month of November, when the malady
of your gloomy climate prevails, but it is the cheerful month of
September. What ails you? Are you distracted in your brain to talk
of our going to Turin? We have no more thought of going to Turin or
Naples than we have of going to the moon. On the contrary, if any one
presumes to disturb the security of any country, above all to threaten
Sardinia, we will stand by you to defend Sardinia, and to maintain
inviolate with all our forces and all our resources all the
arrangements of the Treaties of Vienna.' Not one word of this answer
from Austria did we suffer to be known while bragging of our threats
to her, threats which assumed her having the design of attacking
Sardinia. Then, when the impropriety of keeping such a document in
your pockets was mooted in this House, my noble friend opposite (Lord
Lansdowne) said, 'Oh, we were ready to give you that dispatch as soon
as you asked for it.' Yes, when I did ask for it I got it; for, on the
18th of last September, my noble friend (Lord Aberdeen) was not at
that time in the House, but in Scotland. I said, 'I have that dispatch
in my hand, and I will read it, every word, if you do not consent to
give it to the public.' _Non constat_ that it would have been given
if I had omitted to give that direct challenge to Her Majesty's
Government. I don't blame my noble friend opposite for all this; he,
good easy man, knew nothing at all about it; he was not instructed;
the Foreign Office let him remain innocent and ignorant; but the sum
and substance of all this is, that every indulgence was extended to
Sardinia, whilst threats, downright threats, were held out to Austria.
Now, for one moment stop to recollect the language which we used
in the dispatch addressed to the Court of Austria on the 11th of
September, 1847. It was as follows:
Any aggression on the rights of independent States will
not be viewed with indifference by Great Britain. The
independence of the Roman States is an essential element
in the political independence of Italy; and no invasion of
that territory can be attempted without leading to consequences
of great gravity and importance.
The answer which we received to that note from Austria was, 'We never
dreamt of any such thing, but are ready at all times to stand by the
integrity of all Italy.' That declaration brings me, my Lords, from
considering the affairs of Northern Italy to the subject of Central
Italy, and more particularly of Rome itself; and I naturally ask, in
the words of my first resolution, whether that full and satisfactory
explanation which we have a right to receive has been given of 'those
recent movements in the Italian States which tend to unsettle the
existing distribution of territory, and to endanger the general peace
of Europe'? First there is the occupation of Ancona by an Austrian
army, then there is the occupation of Bologna by the main force of
another Austrian army. I say nothing of the occupation of Tuscany. I
put Tuscany out of the question, as it is a sort of family estate of
the House of Austria, in which she has a right by treaty to interfere.
But that is not all. There is also in the heart of Italy, in its very
centre, in its capital, an army, not Roman, not Austrian, not Italian,
not composed of its native soldiery, but a French army, consisting
of 40,000 or 50,000 men, and with a park of artillery consisting of
120,000 guns. I crave your pardon, 120 guns. [_Laughter attended this
mistake_.] This army did not fall from the clouds. The troops advanced
on the surface of the earth. The Eternal City was invaded with all the
usual pomp and circumstance of war. Some thousand men with a few guns
were in the first instance sent from Marseilles to Civita Vecchia,
and some explanation was given why they were sent, more or less
satisfactory. But if any man has seen that explanation, stating that a
force of 16,000 men and a strong fleet had been sent to Civita Vecchia
by France, and has been told that the army was to stop there and to
do nothing further, and that their sole object was to rearrange the
balance of power--such was the Government explanation--to adjust
the balance of Europe at that port; if any man, having seen that
explanation, can take it as satisfactory, all I have to say is, that
he is a man very easily satisfied. It does not satisfy me--indeed it
seems very like treating us with contempt to give such explanations.
Be that, however, as it may, the other events which followed, plainly
demanded full explanation. That army, sent in the first instance to
Civita Vecchia, afterwards marched onwards, and in three days arrived
at Rome. What was it doing there? To an unskilled observer, to a
non-military man like myself, who could not tell the difference
between 120,000 and 120 guns, it did look as if it were going to make
an attack upon the Eternal City.
Well, then, there is another question, still more apposite, and in
answer to which I think that we should have had some explanation, and
it is, 'What shall be done, supposing that this army should attack
Rome, and, as is most probable, carry it?' Up to this hour I, for my
part, do not know whether such a question has been put, or, if put,
whether it has received an answer. 'What are the French doing before
Rome, and what will they be doing after they have gained possession of
it?' is the question that should have been put.
To say that they are there for the cause of humanity, or for the sake
of maintaining the balance of power, these are words of which I cannot
understand the connexion with the undenied facts, and with the
march of 40,000 or 50,000 troops with 120 guns, which does require
satisfactory explanation, because such proceedings are not an
adjustment, but a subversion, a destruction of the European balance. I
must forget all that I have ever read of the rights of nations before
I consent to admit that circumstances like these can be allowed to
pass over unnoticed. Here, my Lords, I should be doing injustice to my
own feelings if I did not express my entire admiration of the conduct
of the French army before the walls of Rome. What the French army had
to do there--whether the French Government were entitled to send
it thither--is another matter, and on this men may have different
opinions. Whether or not it was in perfect consistency with the
professions of the new half-fledged French Republic to send an army to
put down another nascent, a newly-hatched republic, whether that step
was in harmony with the views of the statesmen who had ruled France
ever since the unhappy 24th of February--a day which I must ever
consider deplorable for the peace of Europe, for the institutions and
thrones of Europe, and, above all, most unhappy for the improvement
and tranquillity of France itself--whether that step was in strict
keeping with all the professions of all the parties who had been in
power since that event had changed the face of France, and arrested
the progress, the rapid, the uninterrupted progress, to comfort and
happiness which France was making under the constitutional monarchy,
by the development of her prodigious resources--whether it was in
harmony with their professions of peace to send an army to overthrow
the infant Republic of Rome--I will not stop now to inquire. Suffice
it to say, that the assistance of France was invited by the Pope,
as he says in his allocution from Gaeta, but not severally or
distinctly--it was invited in conjunction with that of Austria, Spain,
and Naples; and it is one of the very few criticisms which I am
disposed to make upon the French Government, that the second
difficulty in this question is the manner in which the French army
went alone to Rome when the Pope asked them to come conjointly with
the forces of the other Powers; for it, seemed as if they meant to
anticipate others, and to gain a footing in Rome before the Austrians
could take the field.
But all my unfavourable remarks touching France are now at an end, for
no Government, no army, could have acted more blamelessly--I should
rather say, more admirably--than that French army and its commanders.
In the first place, can any man doubt that they could have taken Rome
long ago if they had not been averse to the effusion of blood? Little
do they know the gallantry of French troops who entertain a contrary
notion. Then they were strongly impressed with the idea that it was
not right the innocent should suffer with the guilty. Again, they felt
that they were not going against the Romans, but against those who had
usurped and exercised an intolerable tyranny over the Romans, properly
so called. They were marching against Mazzini and Garibaldi, that
Garibaldi for whom a noble friend of mine (Lord Howden), whose eulogy
is really praise, bespoke your sympathy so strongly a few evenings
ago. But my noble friend, perhaps, is not aware that this person--a
clever man, undoubtedly, of great military talents--was, like Mazzini,
a professional conspirator; that the object of his first plot was,
like that of a great conspirator in our own country (Guy Fawkes), who
was not, however, quite so popular, to blow up the Royal Family of
Sardinia in the theatre of Genoa; and that the discovery of that
gunpowder plot drove him out in exile, first to Brazil, and afterwards
to the Rio Plata, where he began to act as a partisan, and afterwards
acquired considerable influence. On the breaking out of the last
revolution in France he returned to Europe, and shortly afterwards
agitated the provinces of Italy, repeating in their northern
districts, and in Rome itself, those valorous feats of arms which
gained him reputation in the New World. Mazzini is a man of less
courage, though of great ability, for few men are so bold as
Garibaldi; but Mazzini, in conjunction with Garibaldi, got possession
of Rome, the one eminent for his civil, the other from his military
qualifications. There they established a dictatorship under the name
of a Triumvirate, and disciplined several thousand soldiers, of whom
scarcely one was a native Roman. Among them were Frenchmen, Monte
Videans, Poles, Italians of the north, but Romans few or none.
Therefore it was, I said, that General Oudinot was cautious how he
bombarded Rome, as he could not direct his hostility against one class
of men, and yet entirely spare all. Lastly, my Lords, I cannot shut my
eyes to the merits of the French army, of which all ages must testify
their sense as long as any regard remains among men for the precious
remains of antiquity and for those more inestimable treasures of
modern art which form the pride and glory of the Eternal City. General
Oudinot had carried on the siege of Rome as if he would avoid the
effusion of a single drop of human blood, and as if he were anxious
not to expose the great monuments of art to the injuries of shot and
shell. In this state of things, the delay of the capture took place,
while many at Paris were impatient at the suspension of their triumph,
but whilst many more were anxious that in future ages the French
should not be ranked with the Goths and Vandals of past times; and I
feel that the greatest gratitude is due to the French general and to
the French army for the humane and generous spirit that tempered the
valour which they displayed before Rome. What they are to do now there
is a very different question. I believe that their difficulties are
not yet over. I believe they are only now begun, and that is one
reason why I urge to my noble friend opposite, the propriety of
calling a general congress for the settlement of the disturbed
affairs of Europe. The difficulties of the French army and the French
Government at Rome are so great that an acute people, like that of
France, cannot shut its eyes to them. They must see how little they
have gained even of that for which the Red Republicans of France are
so eager--military glory. If that was the aim of the Paris multitude,
which I more than suspect, of their rulers it could not be the
purpose, unless they yielded up their better judgement to the
influence of the rabble, for assuredly, while exposing them to every
embarrassment in their foreign relations, and augmenting their
financial difficulties, they must have seen that it was an enterprise
in which success could give their country little glory, while failure
must cover it with disgrace. But what signifies to France the loss of
such renown as victory bestows? What to her is the forgoing of one
sprig of laurel more in addition to the accumulated honours of her
victorious career? The multitude of Paris rather than France, the
statesmen of the club and coffee-house, the politicians of the salons,
the reasoners of the Boulevards, may retain their thirst for such
additions, such superfluous additions, to the national fame. The
sounder reasoners, the true statesmen, have, I trust, learnt a better
lesson, and will teach her gallant people to prefer the more virtuous
and more lasting glories of peace.
But whatever the Paris mob, in the drawing-rooms or in the streets,
may have desired, I am confident the Government, if left to itself,
had one object only in view, the rescue of Rome from the usurpation of
a foreign rabble, and restoring the authority of the Pope, whom that
rabble's violence had driven from his States. And here let me say a
word which may not be popular in some quarters, and among some of
my noble friends, upon the separation of the temporal and spiritual
authority of the Pope. My opinion is that it will not do to say the
Pope is all very well as a spiritual prince, but we ought not to
restore his temporal power. That is a short-sighted and I think a
somewhat superficial view of the case. I do not believe it possible
that the Pope could exercise beneficially his spiritual functions if
he had no temporal power. For what would be the consequence? He
would be stripped of all his authority. We are not now in the eighth
century, when the Pope contrived to exist without much secular
authority, or when as Bishop of Rome he exercised very extensive
spiritual authority without corresponding temporal power. The progress
of the one, however, went along with that of the other; and just as
the Pope had extended his temporal dominions by encroachments of his
own, and by gifts like those of Pepin and Charlemagne, the Exarchate
and Pentapolis, uniting the patrimony of St. Peter, and adding to it
little by little until he got a good large slice in Italy, just in
proportion as his temporal authority increased did he attain so
overwhelming influence over the councils of Europe. His temporal
force increased his spiritual authority, because it made him more
independent. Stript of that secular dominion, he would become the
slave now of one Power--then of another--one day the slave of Spain,
another of Austria, another of France, or, worst of all, as the Pope
has recently been, the slave of his own factious and rebellious
subjects. His temporal power is an European question, not a local or a
religious one; and the Pope's authority should be maintained for the
sake of the peace and the interests of Europe. We ourselves have
7,000,000 of Roman Catholic subjects, Austria has 30,000,000, Prussia
has 7,000,000 or 8,000,000. France is a Catholic country, so is
Belgium, so are the peninsulas of Italy and Spain; and how is it
possible to suppose that, unless the Pope has enough temporal
authority to keep him independent of the other European Courts,
jealousies and intrigues will not arise which must reduce him to
a state of dependency, and so enable any one country wielding the
enormous influence of his spiritual authority to foster intrigues,
faction, even rebellion, in the dominions of her rivals? Probably, as
General Oudinot has sent the keys of Rome to the Pope at Gaeta, it is
his intention to restore the temporal authority of the Pope. There are
difficulties in the way of the French General remaining at Rome, the
inhabitants of which naturally do not like to see an army of some
thousands encamped in their town, and there are difficulties in the
way of his leaving Rome; but there is no way so easy of overcoming
those difficulties as a general congress to settle the affairs of
Europe; and I do not consider that a clearer course can lie before
France than to propose it, or that she can find a safer and a more
creditable way out of her present embarrassments in Italy.
I now come to a part of the subject which I have only originally
glanced at, the state of our relations with the southern part of the
Italian peninsula. On the 16th of December, 1847, the noble Lord at
the head of Foreign Affairs (Lord Palmerston) wrote to Lord Minto,
directing him to request an audience
for the purpose of conveying to his Sicilian Majesty the
strongest assurances of the earnest desire of Her Majesty's
Government to maintain, and if possible draw still closer,
the bonds of friendship which have so long united the
Crowns of Great Britain and of the Two Sicilies.