too, there was published in Paris, with the cognizance of the French Government, a volume extending to nearly 500 pages, and containing the history of the crimes and delinquencies of the Austrian Court and Government. This compilation formed a regular bill of indictment against the Austrian Kaiser and his councillors. Every imaginable crime committed for the last three centuries, was imputed to the House of Hapsburgh. The family was described as a set of monsters equally cold, callous, and cruel, without the least touch of humanity, and France and Europe were called upon to put down their sway in the Peninsula, and to relieve Italy from this abominable and unbearable tyranny. This work, patronized by the French Imperial Government, was spread far and wide, and men looked on it as a manifesto indicating Imperial and Buonapartist intentions. Now the Histoire Secrete du Gouvernement Autrichien is no longer spoken of in high places, for it suits the present purposes of the French Emperor to come to a private personal understanding with a House described in this work as unprincipled, dishonest, sanguinary, and tyrannical.

In like manner too Pius IX. was, as well as Francis Joseph, denounced in January in the Moniteur; and La Question Romaine, written, it is said, to order by Edmund About, was admitted into France on the 1st of May by express order of the highest personage. Yet before July the monarch who patronized a book showing up the stupidities, the injustice, and the odious tyrannies of the Papal sway, wrote a missive to Pius IX. assuring the Pontiff of his protection and succour, and promising that whatever else might be remodelled in Italy the patrimony of St. Peter should not be remodelled. This playing in a double sense may be thought clever by politicians of the school of Louis XI., but the time has come when these duplicities are out of date. Such practices might be tolerated in the days of Ferdinand of Aragon, but a man who truly comprehends his era' would, to use the words of Napoleon III., not resort to them now. When Louis XII. complained that the King of Aragon

deceived him three times, The drunkard lies,' replied Ferdinand, 'for I deceived him more than ten times.' Monarchs were then proud of their perfidy, and were also shameless enough to make a parade of their insincerity and dissimulation. But that era of the ignorance and brutality of the many and of the unimaginable licence, falsehood, and deceit of the few is long passed, it may be hoped for ever.

The truce or armistice provides that the Dukes of Modena and Tuscany are to be restored. He who wills the end ought to will the means. But the means for the restoration of these princes are not provided. Tuscany and Modena, thanks to French emissaries and Sardinian commissioners, are both yet recalcitrant, and the general public are by no means disposed to receive at Florence the Grand Duke, Leopold II., who is not a bad but only a weak man, and whose government of his States was neither cruel nor sanguinary. Still less are the people of Modena, Massa, Carrara, Guastalla, &c., disposed to receive back on any terms Francis V., a fieldmarshal of Austria, the colonel and proprietor of the 32nd regiment of Austrian infantry, an Archduke of the Empire, and a man imbued with the most repressive principles of the Viennese Imperial system. The real fact is, that measures had been, before the peace of Villafranca, hastily taken to administratively annex both Tuscany and Modena, if not Parma, to Sardinia; and it will be strange if the King of Sardinia surrenders a people and a territory who are willing to combat for incorporation with his Government. Should King and people prove restive, who is to coerce them? Can it be France, who has sounded the signal for revolt and annexation? Can it be Austria, who was to be chased out of Italy from the Alps to the Adriatic? If so, why were 120,000 Frenchmen sent into Italy to cooperate with 65.000 or 70,000 Sardinians, and why were 80,000 French and Sardinian lives sacrificed in five engagements, beginning with Montebello and ending with Solferino ? Have 80,000 precious

lives and £50,000,000 of money been squandered, not to annihilate the Austrians, but to render their position in Italy more inexpugnable? We are told by a great authority 'that Austria is on the point of becoming a nation.' If so, it is an Austro-Italian nation; and a nation composed not of Austrians and Italians only, but of Austrians, Bohemians, Hungarians, and Italians.

I was happy,' said Louis Napoleon, in addressing the Pope's Nuncio on the 21st of July, to conclude a peace as soon as the honour and interests of France were satisfied.' But if we have read any of the French State Papers aright from the 24th of April to the 24th of June, the date of the battle of Solferino, France went into Italy, not to support the honour and interests of France, but to support Sardinia against Austria, and to drive Austria out of Lombardy, to drive her out of Venetia back into the recesses of Germany. These magniloquent promises have not been performed, and no provision is made in the truce, armistice, or imperfect treaty of Villafranca, for the abolition of those private family and secret treaty arrangements which Austria has concluded for the last five-andforty years with the Houses of Modena, Parma, and Tuscany, with the Court of Rome, and the Bourbons of Sicily. It is these treaties which have given Austria such a firm hold on Italy, and which more than anything else have contributed to perpetuate bad government at Modena, Rome, and Naples. When Francis V., Pius IX., and the Neapolitan Bourbons feel and know that they have a firm friend at Schönbrunn who can in a few days transport 150,000 or 200,000 men into Italy to stifle discontent, to maintain the temporal authority of the Pope, and to encourage Francis II., lately Duke of Calabria, in his resistance to all reform in Naples, is it likely these princes will of their own motion introduce those reforms of which the Emperor of the French speaks so confidently?

It is one of the conditions of the truce, too, that there is to be a general amnesty. How are the means to be provided to execute this provision? Who is to compel Francis

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Josephi to amnesty Kossuth, Klapka, and Teleki, or those Italians and Hungarians who have deserted from the Austrian army? Who is to compel the Pope to amnesty such of his officers and guards as have crossed the frontier into Tuscany? Who is to compel the Grand Duke of Tuscany to amnesty his whole army, with the military and civil officers who have gone over to the national cause? Who is to amnesty those Tuscans, Modenese, Parmesans, Romans, and Neapolitans who are serving with Garibaldi, with Mezzocapo, and Ulloa the Spaniard, in the service of Piedmont? Who, it may be also asked, is to revive Constitutional Government in Sardinia, now that Cavour has resigned, and that La Marmora and another general occupy the most influential posts in the Sardinian Cabinet? If the condition of Italy was precarious and full of danger at the beginning of the year, it is a thousand times more dangerous now in the commencement of the month of August. Italy, in fact, is pregnant with combustible matter; and we shall be surprised indeed if the Peninsula be not the centre of a civil war before a year is over. Possibly the festival of Christmas may see all Italy in hostile occupation by Austrian and Italian armies; and the two great bottleholders may then divide the stakes. to their own profit. France renounced all territorial aggrandizement in the State Papers and mani. festoes of April and May. France was to take nothing for securing the independence and liberty of Italy, and for driving the Austrians out; but France never pledged herself to decline territorial compensation for putting down anarchy, and stifling revolution.

Two or three things appear clearly from this short, sanguinary, and bootless war, and from this ignominious truce. One is that the military organization of France, commanding, in the neutrality of Great Britain, the sea, is far superior to that of Austria, partly from the homogeneity of its people, and the unity and nationality of its army, and partly from the superiority and celerity of its administrative sys

tem. The French soldier is also more intellectual, active, independent, and enterprising than the Austrian soldier, and less the slave of routine. But he is in no respect a better or a braver soldier, and if the Austrian troops had been as well handled as the French, and as well provided with a commissariat, the results of the campaign might have been different. There was but one supreme will guiding and governing the French army from the first week in May; whereas the Austrian army was commanded first by Gyulai, next by Schlick, next by Hess, and lastly by the Emperor in person. Gyulai was frequently thwarted by irresponsible authority, and Schlick and Hess were both interfered with and counteracted by the Emperor himself. But notwithstanding prodigious blunders, the military prestige of Austria is not seriously damaged. Her soldiers fought well and bravely, and had one competent marshal held the supreme command from the beginning, the French might never have passed the Mincio, notwithstanding their rifled cannon and their arms of precision. The allied armies were 40,000 more numerous than the Austrians, who numbered only 140,000 men, whilst there were 120,000 French and 60,000 Sardinians in the field. The losses of the French and Sardinian armies in men were very nearly, if not fully equal to the losses of the Austrians. It is computed that between 75,000 and 80,000 French and Sardinians were put hors de combat in Italy. We know little of the losses or disasters of the French army, for Louis Napoleon allowed no details to be published but such as he himself issued.

The number of guns lost by the Austrians was only, however, thirteen, and but one flag was taken. On the whole, then, there have been no very decisive or overwhelming military successes on the part of the French. They have won measuringcast victories, more by promptness,

celerity, and unity of action, and the command of the sea, than by any superior skill, science, or bravery. No great military genius has appeared on either side; and the general chiefly conspicuous for energetic bravery midst an army of gallant men was MacMahon. Measuring-cast victories, it is true, rarely command splendid or successful treaties; but the treaty of Villafranca is not a moderate or a tolerable treaty, but a capitulation to Austria, in which the interests of Italy are sacrificed. The treaty is not merely an awful blunder and a mistake, but it is a crime fraught with future woes for Italy and for Europe. The Emperor of the French, by his own headstrong wilfulness, has deliberately rushed into this dark pitfall, and he must extricate himself as he best can. Hitherto we have held aloof from the carnage; let us not now mix ourselves up with the dirty diplomatic intrigues and imbroglios, in which we may tarnish our own fair fame without benefiting the liberty and independence of Italy.

An uncertain and inconsiderate truce leaves the question of the future of Europe so undecided that it is our own duty in England to be prepared for any and every eventuality. First among our obligations is the obligation of self-defence. The increase of our fleet and our army, and the placing of our coasts in security, cannot be effected without additional taxation, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer has properly laid an additional fourpence in the pound on the incometax for the current half-year. This is a small premium for security; a premium to be cheerfully paid by every good citizen and subject.

Advice to unhappy Italy may be appropriately offered in the words of Byron :

Trust not for freedom to the Franks,

They have a king that buys and sells; In native swords and native ranks The only hope of freedom dwells.

A. V. K.

quences, is a disciple of Machiavelli, or rather a practitioner of the art Machiavelli professed to deduce from actual examples. Those who have brought to the reading of history a moral judgment of human actions without reference to the position or entourage of the actors, will not need to be told that the Florentine political philosopher has to mention a good many doings that will not pass muster with the rigid moralist, and which, told shortly and plainly as he propounds them, look much more offensive than they would do if dressed in the splendid or specious garb of the rhetorical historian or apologist. Indeed, we believe it is less the matter than the manner of the Prince that has brought so much obloquy upon its author. He does not shroud his meaning in fine phrases or a circuitous form of words. Machiavelli does not, with M. Thiers and others, term a murder a tragical revolution at the palace,' or disguise other deplorable events' by inflated language. He simply says that the man was strangled, or as the case may be. Neither are the criminal suggestions in his work so numerous as might be supposed from its evil name. It is true that one murder is sufficient to constitute a murderer, so that it is no defence of the Prince to say that the suggestions of what the world at large in its quiet average mood (not in fits of warlike fury, or its reaction of superhuman philanthropy) calls public crime, are comparatively few in number, or that few as they are they are not recommended on moral grounds, but on the contrary are morally censured, though enforced as necessary in the practice of princes. Still it is curious to note how few the doctrines really are that would shock people if met with in any other writer. Except the singular chapter on the question, Whether Princes should keep their faith, which the author concludes they should only do when it answers their purpose, but which maxim, however, he morally qualifies by observing that if all men were good, this precept would not be good, but since all men are wicked, and will not observe faith towards

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you [the prince], you need not towards them;' and the equally singular narrative of the doings of the infamous Cæsar Borgia, which he tells so coolly, there are hardly a dozen really Machiavellian maxims in Machiavelli, while some of those are scarcely peculiar to him, as instances will show. Speaking of the ease with which newly-acquired territories may be annexed to an old dominion when they are contiguous and the inhabitants speak the same language as the conqueror's subjects, Machiavelli intimates that it greatly facilitates their retention, if the line of the old princes has been extinguished.' This sounds and is bloody; yet few writers on the great English Civil War censure the laconic advice of Essex to the managers of Strafford's impeachment-Stone dead hath no fellow. Upon its profound policy Louis Philippe perhaps reflected in his later years, when he remembered his own timid, crafty, or clap-trap lenity towards a conspirator and rebel whom he held deservedly at his mercy. In speaking of settling a conquered territory after the fashion of the ancient Romans, Machiavelli observes, Colonies cost the Prince but little; and they are in their consequences injurious only to those who deserve punishment, or to the enemies of the Prince, who have been dispossessed of their lands and houses for the assistance and accommodation of the new colonists.' Few would avow this maxim now, but in Machiavelli's days such proceedings were recognised as one of the legitimate rights of war. It is probably acted upon by Americans, by the English (it is said) in India, by the French in Algeria, and by Russians in various places. A similar observation may be made on one of Machiavelli's three maxims as to the way of retaining in subjection a newly conquered people accustomed to liberty (by which he means a republic). The first is, to ruin them,' -a maxim not openly avowed, but which would have been acted upon without scruple till of late, and perhaps even now, by any other people than by us of England. It was Machiavelli's opinion that the cowardice and treachery of merce