chises.

Colonist, Volume III, Issue 269, 18 May 1860, Page 3

chises.

While our Foreign Secretary, in a desultory discussion on Nice-and Savoy, was expressing his entire reliance on the moderation of Louis Napoleon, that inscrutable potentate was dictating the whole project for settling Italy, and annexing the French slopes of the Alps, to a Council of his ministers. The result was made known to the world on the Ist of March, when the Emperor appeared at the opening of the Chambers, and in a speech, singularly free from the startling enigmas in which he usually indulges, informed the Assembly that, having failed to accomplish the aims of the peace ofVillafranca, he had made other propositions in the interests of peace—the substance of which may be thus explicitly described: —the Duchies to be annexed to Sardinia, under whose government the Romagna is to be placed, paying a certain tribute, by way of suzerainty, to the Pope, the whole to form a kingdom of Italy; Tuscany to be erected into an independent State; and Savoy and Nice, under the softer deseriptipu of the French slopes, to be annexed to France. Such is the proposal submitted to the' Great Powers by the greatest Power amongst them—a proposal which falsifies all the pledges he made when he went into.ltaly, and which cannot be put into execution without risking the not remote contingency of an European

war. Savojr'and Nice must be followed by the left bank of the Rhine, as an inevitable corollary; and what then becomes of the peace which the Emperor declares it is his highest ambition to maintain and consolidate?

The policy of England on this question, although surrounded by difficulties to which it would be idle to affect indifference, is sufficiently clear. The country is against the annexation. All parties are against it. The Government is against it. Ministers have communicated their objections to the great Powers, and they have laid upon the tables of both Houses of Parliament the whole of the correspondence respecting it that has passed between them and the French Cabinet. In the debates, incidental and otherwise, that have been raised upon it, no restraint whatever has, been observed in the expression of the universal opinion. Having given free vent to public opinion, there our present responsibility ends. That the English Cabinet should do anything more in this matter as it stands at present than they have already done, would be utterly inconsistent with the line of their policy. The Emperor of the Frencn says that he will use neithsr force nor intrigue to obtain the territory he seeks, and that he will submit his claims to the justice and good sense of the Powers of Europe. There is nothing, therefore, to be done, but to wait till he puts his project in motion. If we were prepared to go to war for Savoy, we might, and, perhaps, ought to act differently. But we are not prepared to do anything of the sort; and we have, consequently, nothing to do in the affair just now but—to do nothing.

Austria and Prussia, more directly interested than England, appear to adopt the same course. Switzerland alone has protested, as she is entitled to do, and the French government has declined to negotiate for the' cession of Chambery and Faucigny to Switzerland, disclaiming at once to be bound by any old treaty obligations. It is in. reference to Switzerland and Rhine that Austria and Prussia are likely to be moved out of this neutrality; Austria, it is currently stated, having made formal communications of her intentions to support Switzerland in her claim on Chambery and Faucigny, should those countries be dismembered, and to aid Prussia, should the Rhine be threatened.

The results lie yet before us. All that we know at the present, helping to_ guide us on a speculation towards the future, is that Sardinia has consented to a certain arrangement for the cession of Savoy and Nice, subject, really or formally, to the wishes of the people, and that those parts of the French proposals for the settlement of Italy which related to Tuscany and the Romagna, have been blown into dust by the voluntary decision of the population, which has been taken by universal suffrage, and which^'presents, especially in the Romagna, an all but unanimous vote in favor of annexation to Piedmont. The next step is for Victor Emmanuel to take possession of his new kingdom.; and in order to enable him to do so effectually, the French troops, which were to have left Lombardy, have received counter-orders, Napoleon, in consideration of Savoy ancl Nice, being satisfied not only to let Victor Emmanuel assume the crown of Italy, now for the first time united under one head, but to protect him in wearing it. The* only dark spot is the Romagna. Here the votes were even more decisive than in any other quarter; but the Pope has prepared a Bull of Excommunication Which he intends to launch at the head of Victor Emmanuel the moment he enters the sacred estates of the Vatican. Whether the menace will have^anv effect remains to be seen.

In anticipation of an extremely probable outbreak somewhere, Italy may be said to be arming to the teeth. Sardinia is making a stand on the situation as she finds it, and preparing for the worst. It is pretty evident, also, that Austria, notwithstanding the activity she is bestowing on her internal reforms, is busy in her arsenals. The discontents of Venetia give her ample occupation in that quarter, and she is converting them to political capital as affording her a justification for keeping up a watch upon the movements in Lombardy. Another item of perturbation is furnished by the state of things at 'Naples. A breach has taken place between that Court and the Cabinet of Turin, and the Sardinian envoy has been suddenly recalled. Hostilities are confidently perdicted by the correspondents of some of the newspapers, who find a confirmation of their apprehensions in the fact that a battalion of the Sardinian garrison of Nice has been transferred to Genoa and Turin. In Rome, too, the political horizontals growing darker from day to day.; The old animosities between the students and - the Pontifical government have broken out afresh, and several students have been seized and sent into exile—a remedy which is pre-eminently calculated to exasperate the disease.

The terms of peace proposed by the Spanish government, and rejected by the Moors have excited much speculation and surprise in England. They comprise no less than the whole of the territory conquered, including Tetuan, an indemnity for the cost of the war, amounting to the incredible sum of 200 millions of reals, certain express advantages for Spanish commerce, the cession of a port on the coast of the Atlantic, near the Canary islands, and the right of Spain to establish a diplomatic agent and a religious mission at Fez. The modesty and good faith of these proposals will be fully appreciated, when it is recollected that at the outset of this most unnecessary and unrighteous war Spain declared that she did not contemplate, and would not avail herself, under any circumstances, of any territorial ac«Misitionß arising out of it. Ministers have been questioned io both Houses of Parliament on, the sub-

jectj but they hold as yet.a prudent reserve as to their opinions. Tne fact that the Channel fleet suddenly set sai| for Lisbon, occasioned a world of gossip in 4h6 clubs, find sensibly affected the Funds. Since the resumption of hostilities it will be seen that the Emperor of Morocco has again sought peace at the hands of the Spaniards, who have expressed, their willingness to entertain proposals, but will not, meanwhile, consent to a truce.

We apprehend that the ground's upon which Ministers have determined to recommend her Majesty to disallow the Act for amending the Legislative Council of Tasmania, will be considered by all parties to be both reasonable and sufficient. Two petitions have been presented in the House of Lords, lighting up :he subject from two different points; and the negative given in the one case appears to have been as wise and well-considered as the affirmative was just in the other. The pure administration of Justice and integrity of Legislation alike demand that the Judges should be independent of the Legislature, which they certain, jfifeould not be if they were permitted to hold seats in the Legislative. Council. It was the old Constitutional Act,, by which this anomaly was permitted, that committed an error, and not the act by which it was amended. The other case rests on different grounds. In this instance the clergy who have devoted themselves, some for upwards of a quarter of a century, to the labors of religious teaching in a struggling colony, and who have been led directly or indirectly, by an actual or implied understanding, to rely confidently under all circumstances upon the protection of Government, find themselves by the new Act suddenly cut down to less than a third of their already scant incomes; and accordingly they send across the sea a wail of remonstrance against the hardship and injustice with which they are threatened. It is nothing to the purpose that a compromise of the original intentions of the Government had become necessary, or that the opposition to all State endowments is acquiring irresistible force in the colony. These are not arguments for overlooking the obligations which the Executive owes to hard-working pioneer servants, or for breaking faith with vested interests. And it is because the new act has not been sufficiently considerate of these interests, and for that reason alone, that the Queen's advisers have recommended her Majesty to withhold her assent from the Act for Amending the Constitution.