ITALY.

Colonist, Volume IV, Issue 419, 29 October 1861, Page 3

ITALY.

The curious scene, so circumstantially narrated by the ' soi-disant' semi-official journals, in which the Count de Goyon and Monsignor de Merode, the Papal Pro-Minister of War, are shown as so nearly coming to fisticuffs regarding the giving up of the Papal Zouave who killed a French soldier who was walking in one of the public gardens with a certain woman, is being busily discussed by the ; entire French press, and has strengthened the conviction, so general here, that the French Gavernment considers that its role at Rome is shortly to come to an end. The puzzling policy of the Emperor baffles alike the previsions of friend aud toe ; but the inconsistency of the continued occupation of Rome with the programme of the Italian campaign, the recognition of the Italian kingdom, and the Emperor's professions of affection for Italy, is becoming so unpopular in France, that it seems impossible that it can be persisted in much longer. A new protest, addressed to France, to England, and to Italy, is being signed all over Italy, despite the apparent opposition of the Government to the measure, setting forth the duty of endeavoring, if possible, to obtain from France by peaceful means what, from any other power, Italy would demand by arms; setting forth the necessity of Rome to Italy, the evils of the present complication, the anarchy thus bred in Italy itself, the ill-will begotten thereby against France, and the total absence of any plausible pretext for the French occupation of Rome, "■ seeing that no one attacks religion, and that all Italy is ready to protect the person of the Holy Father.' The protest declares the French occupation maintained for twelve years, to be ' equivalent to a conquest,' and to be 'a violation of the principle of non-intervention declared by France.' It asserts that 'Italy belongs to the Italians only,' and addresses itself 'to France, which helped us to fight for our deliverance and unity; to England, which was the first to proclaim the principle of non-intervention ; and to Europe, which has hailed with affectionate congratulations the uprising of the national life of collective Italy, and whose tranquillity is! dangerously threatened by the arbitrary, indefinite occupation of Rome.' The evil caused by this occupation is undoubtedly becoming very serious. The bands of brigands, of which the greater number must certainly be considered as acting under the orders of the ex-king and his abettors, are no sooner dispersed upon one point, by the energetic action of Cialdini, than tlmy form upon another. The mass of the people have no sympathy with them, but, on the contrary, are filled with terror by their brutalities; yet, such is ihe demoralisation of the population so long subjected to Bourbon rule, that, so far from making any resistance to their tormentors, they will even join with them in their nefarious attemps, partly in the hope of sscaping their attacks, partly in the hope of sharing the plunder which these wretches amass, wherever they show themselves, among the villages and little towns of the rural districts. Cialdini's task is a hard one in every respect. The bands of brigands, if dispersed, form again, and renew their atrocities; the people are indignant against the Government for not protecting them, yet not only render the General no help in his arduous task', but too often allow their sectional jealousies to break forth at any act of wholesale severity performed by him, and begin to clamour against the ' Northerners,' whom they accuse of hating the Southern people, and tyrannising over them! The day that Francis 11. quits Italy, as he would have done, after the fall of Gaeta, but for the inexplicable policy of the Emperor, in allowing him to make of Rome the headquarters of absolutist reaction. The ex-king has just sold the Farnese Gardens, on the Palatine Mount, the site of the old palace of the Caesars, to the French Government, for 90,000 crowns. What this move may betoken it would be premature to prophecy. The French are j going to make excavations in these lovely gardens, in the hopes of finding Roman remains to transport to Paris. ' Under every deep,' says Emerson, in one of his oracular utterances, 'another deep opens.' Who would have supposed that there existed, upon our planet, anything in the shape of a human head so deeply 'rooted and grounded 'in political nonsense, as to be capable of regarding Francis 11. as a dangerous and wicked radical ? Yet a monk of the fraternity of Minori Osservanti, of Rome, has actually made an attempt to stab the ex-king, in pursuance of a vow which he confesses to having made to kill that personage, as a renegade to the doctrine of the Divine ri»ht of kings, on the day when he betrayed that right by granting a constitution to his Neapolitan subjects! The details of the attempt have been kept secret; but there seems to be no doubt of its having been made—of its having pearly succeeded, and of the the ex-king having been so thoroughly terrified that he has been in a state of painful, nervous trepidation ever since. His ex-Majesty has, however, been able to give bis assent to the mariiage of his half sister, the Princess Maria Clementina Immaculate, with the Archduke Charles of Austria, a match got up by his uncle, the Count di Trapanl. Cardinal Livorain, whose strange book, telling such terrible 'tales out of school,' touching the Papal Household, the Cardinals, and the Roman Administration, and'who lias been struck off the list of the Papal Household, and is to be deprived of his hat, has come out with a second book on the same subject, even more damaging than the first. He described minutely and analytically the cha-

racier of the Pope, whom he paints as ' angelically good,' but deplorably weak, and all the officers of his Court and Church; the latter, for the most part, in very sombre colors. As the Cardinal's position has given him access to all the! secrets of the Papal Court, and to the most carefully-hidden documents, the scandal of his revelations is very great., He professes to wish to see the Church freed of the incubus of the temporal kingship, and replaced on the basis of the early Christian era ; demands that Rome shall be made the capital of Italy, under Victor Emmanuel; and exalts the Jesuits as the salt of the priesthood, and the ardent apostles of liberty, civil right, and progress—a thesis_ which, considering the antecedents and teachings of that body, appears so singular as to have caused a suspicion of the Cardinal's having acted as its tool. While General Bosco is holding intercourse with the chiefs of the brigands whom Cialdini is endeavoring ( 0 extiipate, Mazzini has been vainly endeavoring to organise a committee in Rome for carrying out his views, using Garibaldi's name;, not only without authority, but in defiance of his wishes. The National Committee has been on the alert, and has seized and destroyed 400 bonds of five carlini each, put forth in his own name by Mazzini, and intended for distribution among the lower classes of the Eternal City. The Italian loan of five hundred millions (francs) has already been covered, by the principal capitalists of Europe, to the amount of 965 millions. The Industrial and Fine Arts Exhibition, to bfc opened in Florence on the 27th of next month, promises to be the rendezvous, not only of Italy, but of all the Liberal elements of Europe. The hostility of Austria having refused to allow the Italian railways to affect a junction with the line of the Vorarlberg, and Italy being thus threatened with the loss of its aim to attract the trade of Germany to Genoa, M. Barmann, exMinister of Switzerland to the Tuileries, has published a pamphlet, iv which he combats the Italian project of making a railway across the Alps by the Luckmanier, and maintains that the proper route is by the Simplon, being the shortest for London, Paris, and Milan, and equally necessary to the interests of Italy and Switzerland, whose Governments he calls upon to adopt tills route, and to carry it into execution without delay. All the religious orders that have made themselves conspicuous for reactionary zeal arc being suppressed in Italy. The Barnabites and Salopites, who are occupied in teaching, are maintained, the Government reserving the right of inspecting their schools, and prescribing the books to be used in them. Some half dozen monasteries are maintained, as are the Mendicant Orders, who are popular with the people, and useful. Their numbers, however, are to be restricted. The. other monks and nuns are put upon an allowance from the State of nine ducats a month, and are allowed to continue to live in their convents if they wish to do so; but as they cease to form religious corporations the stay of their members becomes a purely voluntary affair, and they can no longer receive bequests or exist in a corporate body. They are, moreover, forbidden to receive more than six novices at a time. Large concessions are being made to the Garibaldians, whose reconciliation with the regular army may be confidently expected. This measure gives general satisfaction, and the adhesion of Nicotera to Cialdini's administration, in which he is now zealously serving, will doubtless be followed by the entrance of the majority of the leaders of the ' party of action' into the service of the new Government. The Pope, who sent for Father Giacomo (the parish priest and friend of Cavour, who administered the sacraments to the great statesman before his death), in order to question him respecting the last moments of his illustrious friend, has failed to learn anything from the priest, who declares that it is against his conscience to violate the secrets of the confessional, and has, consequently, been deprived of his parish by the Pope. All Italy is just now laughing at two young men who, having quarrelled at Milan, have been fighting a duel, without succeeding in hurting one another. They fired at twenty-five paces, then at twenty, and then fifteen; but neither of them being hurt, they gave it up, and shook hands. To their horror, however, they then found that, although they had not succeeded in hitting one another, one of the balls had unfortunately wounded a poor cabman who had been engaged by the seconds to wait some distance from the scene of the duel with his vehicle, ready to carry off the homicide, should either of the principals have fallen ! Happily, the poor cabman's wound is but slight; but what astonishing clever shots must the duellists have been ! The Archbishop of Naples, Cardinal Riario Sforza, has been requested to travel for the good of Italian tranquillity, and has gone to Rome, where a grand dinner has been given him in the Quirinal. In Italy, which expects daily to see itself formally recognised by Russia, Cialdini is sweeping the Neapolitan brigands closer and closer upon the sea.; but the disturbances being incessantly fomented by daily supplies of men and money from Rome, the deliverance of this lovely region seems hopeless, so long as gangs of ruffians are prompted to arson, pillage, murder, and violence of every kind by the reactionaries who, under shelter of French intervention, are converting Rome into a focus of cruel and criminal contrivance. The atrocities committed by the brigands and theirpartisans, in which the complicity of the ex-king and a numerous party in the Pontifical Court can no longer be denied, almost surpass belief. To instance only the revolting details of the horrors enacted by these scoundrels at Pontegondolfo, as narrated by the Italia of Naples, what argument iv favor of the overthrown regime can its partisans derive from the fact that the unfortunate Lieutenant Caccia, and his brave band of thirty-nine men, having been treacherously surprised by the bands of scoundrels that were filling that village and Casalduni with flames and death, , their right hands were cut off at the demand of a priest, who declared that' hands which had fought against the Pope were excommunicated ;' some were tied to the tails of horses and dragged along until they were killed; others had there eyes torn out and ', their flesh torn from their bones, and others were roasted alive. When the 350 Berseglieri, under General Count Negri, entered the scene of these atrocious cruelties, the sight of the head of Cacpia stuck upon a cross, and of the mutilated remains of their comrades, filled them with fury, and they coulil not be restrained. The two villages were taken after a brief but. fierce contest, and utterly destroyed by the troops. With (he brigands perished, unhappily, many innocent persons; but the long series of frightful outrages of which the troops had been constantly coming on the traces, and the evidences of fiendish cruelty afforded by the mangled limbs and bodies of their brethren, had naturally raised their indignation, and called forth their revenge, to a pitch that, at length, overbore the excessive longanimity of (he Italian programme. General Penelli is making such progress among the brigands of Benevento that the campaign in that quarter is virtually over. The most ferocious of the brigands, who are escaped or liberated convicts, are among the hills, and may hold out until the rainy season. But the very smallest hamlets are now 'in arms against them, and will not allow them a moment's rest anywhere. Whole days of gallant resistance, often headed by the village priest, have been made against invading bands of brigands in many rustic localities ; one of the most courageous of these being that which has occurred at Gaprqdise, in, the 'Jtyra di Savqie, where ten villagers, under* the djrectjon of their priest, Mossari, resisted the onset' of a numerous band of brigands for an entire day, and succeeded in putting them to flight. Such is the astonishment and indignation of all the Liberal portion of the French people at the permission accorded to Francis 11. to remain in Rome, hatching all these horrors at his leisure under the wing of ihe French e^gle, that it seems impossible for the Emperor to continue much longer ],is present role in Italy, notwithstanding the recent assertion'oft he £atr:k that ' the French army went to Rome in t/$e interests of France, and will stay there as long as French interests require the presence there of French arms.' But, whether the Emperor be

carrying out a clever scheme for enabling the Absolutists to ruin themselves in the public opinion of Europe, in which case he will quit Rome at' the right moment,' as his friends believe, or whether he is really playing the double game, for the accomplishment of improbable schemes of French aggrandisement, as his enemies declare, and in which case he must sooner or later confront a coalition that would be fatal to his 'dynastic aspirations, a longer perseverance in the inexplicable part he has so long played in Italy, could be productive of only temporary injury to that country, without being capable of throwing in the way of the uew kingdom any serious obstacle.