FRANCE AND SAVOY.

Colonist, Volume III, Issue 288, 24 July 1860, Page 3

FRANCE AND SAVOY.

{From the A rew TorJt Times.) The title of the,party of " Peace-at-any-price," .originally invented fpr the French deputies who shrank from a collision with Europe on the Oriental question in 1840, and afterwards fastened upon the partisans of Bright and Cobden in England for their opposition to the war with Russia in 1857, may at last be matched with a equivalent and contrast. There exists in England at the present day a party which may; be justly described as the " Panic-it-any price " party. Whatever the French Emperor may do, or forbear to do, wears to these consistent tremblers all the certain indications of a coming storm of war, whereof the first furious gust will 'unquestionably sweep the green shores of Britain. " When Napoleon 111. marched his armies over the. Alps, it was plain to these people that he was only taking Milan on the way to London. ■ When he made- peace at Villafranca, it was equally plain that an AustroFrench alliance, involving the conquest of Malta, Gibralter, and the lonian Islands, was instantly to be looked for.- And now, in the very moment' when a commercial treaty has lulled financial England for a season into a fatal confidence,' comes the evil Emperor's latest and most subtle design of mischief, and the impending annexation of Savoy to France pretends that practical conversion of the Mediterranean Into a French lake, which has given the 'theme of so many leaders, oruitiOßS, speeches, reviews and jeremiads to the British mind for scores of, yews." -:'-.•' M-•'■'-— .

All this is pithble enough, certainly. Wera the piojent Emperor of the French ,a jnan of liket ni| er with the first Napoleon, who wassiugularly g.vpii to following his impulses, such'obstinacy of defamation,and distrust would long since have borne its common fruits,'1 and the world would now be suffering-all the terrible raiaiuities which a war between the two first Powers of Europe must always inflict upon mankind. But if times have changed since the Empire of the first Napoleon, men have changed with them, and the heir of the great Corsiean fortunately learned in his youth those salutary lessons which came to ' his predecessor only -when it was too late for him to profit by them. The Third Napoleon passed; through his' St. Helena before he reached the Tuileries. As be has so often done before, he is-leaving this new question of Savoy to work put its own solution; and no clamour seems likely to driveJiim to any rashness, either of action or jspeecb, in regard to it." The only reply which pas be deemed at all official that has been given 4o the voluminous idispussion of the matter iaßithe English Pres3 and Parliament, appears i'^he Paris Oonstifutionnel, in, the form of a bjyef and bewildering diplomatic article from tHe pen of M. Grandguillofcj asserting that nothing whatever: has been done by the Governments of France and Sardinia in regard to the annexation, and that it is simply a public and popular question, in<' volving no official action or correspondent of any kind. That the frontiers of France may be extended without compromising the peace of the world is undoubtedly true'; and as undoubtedly natural is it that in suck a case Frenchmen should wish to see the extension take place, A century has 'not elapsed since Avignon and the Venaissin, Corsica and Lorraine, beoame French territory ; and though the fortune of war has waved the French eagles back from qther dominions over which they had soared within the same period, the welfare 6f Europe has been found perfectly consistent with 'the permanent assimilation of those important accessions. Were the French tri-colors hoisted to-day ia the port of Nice, the control of the Mediterranean would be no more truly within the.grasp of the masters, of Corsica and Marseilles and Toulon than it nowisv: were the snowy passes of Savoyard Alps patrolled, by the red-breeched conquerors of Magenta, Switzerland and Germany, and Italy herself, would not be more really menaced than they now are by the lords of Lorraine. The. key of the Savoyard Alps is the pass of the Mont Cenis, and while Sardinia holds the ipass she,might afford to look with no uniuual anxiety upon the parades of Chasseurs de Vincenhes'and Zouaves de.la Garde at Chambery. : Nor can Englishmen urge against the transfer of Savoy to Fran.ce,/Without; making themselves intensely ridiculous/the argument that by con.senting to such a transfer the heroic Kings of Sardinia would bring dishonor on their ancient chivalric house, by bargaining away its patrimony. The surrender by the PJantageuets of their own ancestral dominions, and of the heritage from which the Norman Conqueror passed the. Channel with his Frankish barons to humble England,at his feet, simply consummated the conversion of a family of Continental nobles into a dynasty of English moriarchs. Moreover, this Plantagenet migration was a work of necessity, brought about by, the victorious arms of France; The House of Savoy, then, might surely of its own free will permit of the Savoyards themselves to decide whether they will join their fortunes with, those of neighbors from, whom they are divided by no. natural boundary, whose language is there own, and from whose race they originally sprang. ■ The current of history has drifted the House of Savoy itself as far beyond its original cradle as the House of Harps burg, which from an eyrie in the Swiss Alps has been carried halfway across the Coutiuent, to be lodged upon the banks of tbj middle Danube. Six hundred years ago the Dukes of Savoy, pressed hard the lines of Lyons, then a French frontier post. Their-white cross floated on "the-shores of Lake Lemen, over the picturesque walla of Lausanne, and the frea city of Geneva. recognised their sovereign rights, in matters of fortification and police. Within the last two centuries these Bnrgundian Princes have flowered on the southern slope of the Alps into Italian .Kings, and it is by no means improbable that within a very few months more the fairest States of the Peninsula may be united under their crown. For the Sovereign of Lombardy/ Piedmont, Tuscany, Central Italy, and Sardinia to surrender to its " natural affinities" what still remains to him of his Transalpine inheritance, need surely inflict no more "disgrace" upon bis house than it suffered when the imaginative Oriental crowns of Cyprus and Jerusalem iwero exchanged for a substantial lordship of Saluzzo and half the Milanese or when the distant dominion of Sicily was abandoned for that of Sardiuia, Genoa, and the Ligurian ; coast. Even now the Duchy of Savoy is described in the military maps of Sardinia, prepared by order of the Government, as the "French territory dependent upon the Royal House of Savoy." Should the will of the Savoyards make them French citizens in fact, as well as Frenchmen by race, the metamorphosis would be purely. po* litical, and while it would bring'many financial advantages to Savoy, it would certaiuly involve nothing of discredit either to the people or to the. sovereign of that province. .'•'•'! Nor is there any truth in the notion that such a transfer would endanger the independence of Switzerland, now supposed to be guaranteed by the neutrality of a i part of the Savoyard territory. The Duchy of Savoy is divided into eight Inteadencies. ' Three: of these—Carouge, the Chablais, Faucigny (the latter of which oontainsthe. territory of Mont Blanc)—lie along the Swiss: boundary-line. The two divisions of Savoy proper, known as Savoy, and Upper Sa,voy, completely command -the approach from the French frontiers into these three divisions, and were the Jura impassable, .Geneva inaccessible, and no possible > way open from France to Switzerland, save the roads leading from Chambery, would put'the independence of the Twenty-two Cantons just as much afc the mercy of France as it could be- were the whole region from Carougeio. Maurienne subjected to thelmperial tri-coior. : ,■:• *