and destroyed, and some thousands of the Tartars or Chinese have been killed in fight. Never was there a more treacherous and foul murder—never has a murder been more severely expiated. It is to be hoped that when the Emperor’s advisers see clearly the consequence of San-ko-lin-sin’s crime sharp punishment will fall on the original offender. What more can be done now? We must store away this sad thought with our recollections of Hango and Cawnpore, and endeavour as well as we can not to confound the guilty with the innocent.
Last Week brought no solution of the Italian difficulty. The fleet of the French Emperor still blocks the Sardinians out of Gaëta. The troops of the French Emperor are still in occupation of Rome, and intervene between the desire for Italian unity and its fulfilment. Shrewd guesses are made at the true meaning of the riddle propounded by the Sphinx at Paris. Let the guessers beware; for the fate of all who have hitherto presented themselves, and have failed in finding out the true solution of the Napoleonic riddle, has not been very promising! All we know is, that for the time being it is not the will of the most powerful Sovereign on the continent of Europe that Italian unity should become a fact. Had the fleet and army of Sardinia—in other words, of Italy—been permitted to act in concert before Gaëta, that stronghold would long since have been reduced. The prolongation of the siege tells with terrible effect upon the future destinies of the Italian Peninsula. Time is given to the agents of the young Bourbon to organise insurrectionary movements throughout the various provinces upon the terra firma lately subjected to his rule. The military power of the North of Italy is exhausted in these operations in the South: what if fresh hostilities should break out between the Italians and the Austrians during the coming spring? There is no colourable pretext for the French occupation of Rome: for the interference of the French Emperor before Gaëta there is not the shadow of justification. It seems to be admitted as matter of notoriety that the partial realisation of Italian unity hitherto achieved has been most unacceptable to Louis Napoleon, and that Gaëta is the answer to the various acts of annexation. This may be: it is also possible that he shrinks from finding himself face to face with the Roman difficulty. As long as Gaëta is besieged—but not captured—any extreme decision upon the Roman question may be adjourned.
We probably give the French Emperor credit for more forecast than he deserves. One of his especial qualities—and surely a king of men could scarcely have a higher one—is his faculty of deferring action, or even significant speech, until opportunity is his own. Thus it was he acted when he was President; thus he acted when the Pope refused to crown him Emperor; thus he acted to the Czar Nicholas, who turned the cold shoulder upon him as an Imperial parvenu; thus he acted with regard to the Austrian Court, which shrunk from a close alliance with him. If we look at his antecedents, we must consider him as the most expert fisher in troubled waters of our time; and now he is in a position when he can keep the waters troubled, and wait the event. It is much to be feared that, during the coming spring, we may receive intelligence of events in Italy which may give us all sufficient cause for anxiety. This Gaëta business has an ugly look. Not only has the assistance afforded by the French Emperor to Francis II. given time to his partisans to organise resistance, but it has also enabled Mazzini and his party to obtain such a hold over Lower Italy as may seriously affect the character of the next elections. Already it is rumoured that Count Cavour meditates a temporary retirement from power under the convenient pretext of illness. Taking matters at the best, it seems likely that Louis Napoleon is resolved that the Italian nation shall not receive independence from other hands than his own.
But it is not only in the Old World that the ancient land-marks are tampered with. Already from the other side of the Atlantic we have received strange reports of such excitement in the United States, that a dissolution of the Union is spoken of as a possible—almost as a probable event. Italy is seeking for unity—the North Americans for a rupture of the band by which the various states are held together. The work of George Washington, and of the original founders of that great Northern Confederation of the American States, which was one of the greatest political and social experiments ever tried upon the surface of the planet, appears for the moment to be in shrewd danger. It is scarcely credible that the thunder-cloud which is just now hanging over the heads of our transatlantic brethren should not disappear without inflicting the threatened mischief. Both sides have so much to lose by separation—so much to gain by union—that they will surely find some compromise which may reconcile their minor and adverse interests. The bone of contention is this wretched, and ever-recurring question of slavery, and the immediate pretext for the dispute is the election of Abraham Lincoln to the Presidency of the Union. Were the States separated to-morrow into a Northern and a Southern Confederation—the Northern Section would be to the Southern, even as the Canadas are at the present moment to the entire and undivided Confederation. What would become of the Fugitive Slave Law when the slaves might make good their escape into the Northern States, even as they do at the present moment, through a thousand dangers, across the British frontier? If the Southerners would set this matter to rights in the only manner which they judge to be in accordance with their interests, they could only do so by open war, and actual conquest of the Northern States—upon the supposition that the Union is dissolved. Men now in middle life are well aware what the invariable termination of the American tornadoes has been, after an infinite amount of threatening and bluster. Great Britain has had Boundary disputes, Oregon disputes, Fishery disputes, and Right of Search disputes with the United States; and although hostilities from time to time appeared to be imminent, common sense in the long-run has ever obtained the mastery in the United States. The only wish of Englishmen must be for the prosperity and happiness of the great Confederation.
