May 14, 1814), along with independence when you were Commander in Chief of the Allied Armies, and when we stood in need of their aid to overthrow Napoleon. They desire for a state of things, the elements of which are hatred, mistrust, and fear, to substitute a condition under which they would be able to know each other, to love each other, to help each other onwards towards one common aim. They desire to destroy chimeras, to extinguish falsehood, to bury out of sight corpses that are aping life; in order to put in their stead, a reality; something true, acting, living, a power which shall be strong enough to guide them, and to which they may without shame yield allegiance. They desire to live, my Lord,-to live with all the faculties of their being, to live as God commands;—to walk onwards with the rest of the world, -to have brethren and not spies around them,-to have instructors, and not masters,-to have a home, and not a prison.' "The Italian question is very little understood in England. People know in general terms that the country is suffering, but few are aware to what a height that suffering has arrived. They know that some efforts are making to change its manner of Government, but they believe it is by a mere handful of conspirators, destitute of influence, and not possessing the sympathies of the masses, without any thing in short, except the blind and dangerous promptings of their own hearts." "We are a people of from one-andtwenty to two-and-twenty millions of men, known from time immemorial by the same name, as the people of Italy; enclosed by natural limits the clearest ever marked out by the Deity-the sea and the highest mountains in Europe; speaking the same language, modified by dialects varying from each other less than do the Scotch and the English; having the same creeds, the same manners, the same habits, with modifications not greater than those which in France, the most homogeneous country on the earth, distinguish the Basque race from the Breton; proud of the noblest tradition in politics, science, and art, that adorns European history; having twice given to humanity a tie, a watchword of Unity-once, in the Rome of the Emperors, again, ere they had betrayed their mission, in the Rome of the Popes; gifted with active, ready, and brilliant faculties, is not denied even by our calumniators; rich in every source of material well-being that, fraternally and liberally worked, could make ourselves happy, and open to sister nations the brightest prospect in the world. "We have no flag, no political name, no rank among European nations. We have no common centre, no common pact, no common market. We are dismembered into eight states-Lombardy, Parma, Tuscany, Modena, Lucca, the Popedom, Piedmont, the Kingdom of Naples-all independent one of another, without alliance, without unity of aim, without organized connexion between them. Eight lines of custom-houses, without counting the impediments appertaining to the internal administration of each state, sever our material interests, oppose our advancement, and forbid us large manufactures, large commercial activity, and all those encouragements to our capabilities that a centre of impulse would afford. Prohibitions or enormous duties check the import and export of articles of the first necessity in each state of Italy. Territorial and industrial products abound in one province that are deficient in another; and we may not freely sell the superfluities or exchange among ourselves the necessities. Eight different systems of currency, of weights and measures, of civil, commerical, and penal legislation, of administrative organization, and of police restriction, divide us, and render us as much as possible strangers to each other. And all these states among which we are partitioned are ruled by despotic governments, in whose working the country has no agency whatever. There exists not in any of these states, either liberty of the press, or of united action, or of speech, or of collective petition, or of the introduction of foreign books, or of education, or of anything. One of these states, comprising nearly a fourth of the Italian population, belongs to the foreigner-to Austria; the others, some from family ties, some from a conscious feebleness, tamely submit to her influence. "From this contrast between the actual condition and the aspirations of the country, was produced the National party; to which, Sir, I have the honour to belong." "The strength of the National party was so entirely recognized, that when the time came for the fall of Napoleon, it was in the name of this party that the European governments sought to arouse us against the domination of France. As far back as 1809, Austria spoke to us by his Imperial Highness the Archduke John, of glory, of liberty, of independence, and of a Constitution based on the immutable nature of things. (Invito dell' Arciduca Giovanni al Popolo d'Italia, 1809.) Four years later, General Nugent promised us an independent kingdom of Italy. (Proclamation of the 10th December, 1813.) And in the following year, your England, Sir, proclaimed by the mouth of Bentinck the liberty and independence of the Italian people (Manifesto of the 14th March): you inscribed these words (Libertà e Independenza Italica) on the standards of the Legion, itself also called Italica, that was organized in Sicily to be employed in Tuscany: you everywhere disseminated by the officers of this Legion copies of the Sicilian Constitution-of that Constitution, by the bye, which was given to Sicily when that island was important as a military position, and was disgracefully abandoned, your purpose once answered, in spite of promises in which the honour of the country was involved. "Napoleon fallen, all these promises were forgotten and broken. The meaning they conveyed was more permanent, and was confirmed, even diplomatically, by the National party. The hopes of the army and the National Guard were evidenced in addresses. A deputation of commerce had an interview at Genoa with Lord William Bentinck. Active efforts were made about Prince Metternich and the Emperor of Austria. Interviews took place at Paris between the deputies of the kingdom of Italy and the English Plenipotentiaries, the Earl of Aberdeen and Lord Castlereagh. We then had faith in diplomacy, and specially in England. All was unavailing. Your country, said the Emperor Francis to the Italian deputies, is mine by right of conquest. And three months after Lord Castlereagh's assurances that the Austrian Government would be altogether paternal, Italian officers and civilians of every rank, in considerable numbers, and under pretext of a conspiracy against the Austrians-at a time when they had not been declared masters by the Congress-were arrested at Milan and elsewhere, and thrown into military prisons, where all communication and every means of defence were withheld. These arrests took place at Milan almost regularly every Saturday night from November 1814, to the end of January 1815. After several months of secret investigation, the prisoners were refused the choice of advocates, and their counsel were nominated by the Austrians. Tried in the citadel of Mantua by a sort of half civil, half military, but wholly inquisitorial court, some were sentenced to three years' imprisonment, others condemned for life to the fortresses of Hungary. In Piedmont, in the States of the Pope, in Sicily, throughout Italy, one stroke of the pen erased all our liberties, all our reforms, all our hopes. The old régime re-appeared, pernicious as before, but surcharged with venge ance. "From the frauds of the Congress of Vienna sprang the insurrections of 1820, 1821, and 1831." "I have referred to the three insurrections of 1820, 1821, and 1831. Those are the three most striking facts of the struggle. But, I ask, has it for an instant ceased between and since these dates? Has there been, I may inquire, a single year since 1820 that has not furnished us its contingent of resistance, of conspiracy, of outbreak, of terror, and of victims?" "When you Englishmen have a reasonable object to attain, you have the great highway of public opinion open to your steps: why should you digress into the bye-lanes of conspiracy, or into the dangerous morass of insurrection? You put your trust in the all-powerfulness of Truth, and you do well: but you can propagate this truth by the press-you can preach it morning and evening in your journals,--you can insist upon it in lectures-you can popularize it in meetings; in a little while, it stands menacingly on the hustings, whence you send it to your Parliament, seated in the majority. We Italians have neither Parliament, nor hustings, nor liberty of the press, nor liberty of speech, nor possibility of lawful public assemblage, nor a single means of expressing the opinion stirring within us. "Italy is a vast prison, guarded by a certain number of gaolers and gendarmes, supported in case of need by the bayonets of men whom we don't understand, and who don't understand us. If we speak, they thrust a gag on our mouths; if we make a show of action, they platoon us. A petition, signed collectively, constitutes a crime against the State. Nothing is left us but the endeavour to agree in secret to wrench the bars from the doors and windows of our prison-to knock down gates and gaolers, that we may breathe the fresh life-giving air of liberty, the air of God. Then, a career by pacific means of progress will be open to us; then will begin our guilt and condemnation if we cannot bring our selves to be content with it." This is undoubtedly plain speaking; and Sir James Graham needs not break seals to ascertain his correspondent's views. Mr. Mazzini, however, explicitly stated in a Letter which he published in October 1844, that while it is his conviction that Italy will not obtain its emancipation but by unit ing firmly as a nation, and seizing it, he earnestly deprecates partial outbreaks, which lead only to useless bloodshed and misery. He adduces evidence to prove, that the expedition of the brothers Bandiera was against his wishes and remonstrances. It could not be, he says, "Other than a folly or a martyrdom: I felt it a duty to combat the first, and I had no right to encourage the second." Mr. Mariotti says of the partial risings: "Those unhappy revolts were the consequence of false principles, of fond misconceptions; of an imperfect acquaintance with the positive relations between Austria and the so-called independent States-with the real views of foreign diplomacy; of a blind reliance on vague suggestions from abroad." Our judgment upon the whole matter is, that it is much to be desired that the leading powers of Europe should calmly and impartially consider the affairs of Italy, and see them placed upon a safe and satisfactory footing. This might have been done by anticipation at the Congress of Vienna; and the remarks in our own pages in 1814 and 1815, shew that unbiassed Christian men, no favourers of insurgency any more than of despotism and popery, foreboded that mischief would arise if the probable working of events was not carefully pre-considered. The death of the Pope, and the contingencies which may arise from it, have revived the question; and it is not likely that it will be allowed again to slumber. With the merely political bearings of these discussions, it is not our province, as Christian Observers, to meddle; and we should soon be out of our depth if we attempted to do so. But when we see Italy hermetically sealed against the admission of the pure Gospel of Christ; when we find the Pope fulminating Encyclical Letters against the circulation of God's own word among the people, as calcu lated to break up the whole machinery of his kingdom of darkness; when his agents in England itself, including his Austrian "Janizaries," denounce it as a political as well as religious crime to teach a poor Italian child to read the Bible, seeing that it will make him, say they, a heretic to his church, and a rebel against his civil ruler; shall we refrain from setting forth the truth as Christians, as Protestants, and as Englishmen, because the question has come to be complicated with secular as well as religious considerations? It is, however, to the latter that we have endeavoured to confine them into this channel, we have our remarks; and in order to guide included in our list of works the Report of the New York Christian Alliance; the Rev. Dr. Bushnell's Letter to the late Pope; and Sir Culling Eardley Smith's Translation of the Pope's Encyclical Letter; and his own pamphlet upon "The Romanism of Italy." The "Christian Alliance" is germane to our subject, seeing that the Pope thought it politic to issue his edict against it. For an account of its objects and construction, our readers may refer to the detail in our last Volume, page 505. The Pope says: "As soon as this news reached us," (the news of the formation of the Christian Alliance, and its objects, and particularly of the intended translation into Italian of Merle D'Aubigné's History of the Reformation, and Dr. M'Crie's Memoirs of the Reformation in Italy,) "we could not but be deeply pained at the consideration of the danger with which we learned that the sectaries menaced the security of our holy religion, not merely in places remote from this city, but even at the very centre of Catholic unity." What the Christian Alliance has effected, or attempted, we know not; but the Pope's "deep pain" points out a tender and assailable spot. Sir Culling Smith's correspondence with the Catholic Institute of England, (in his Romanism of Italy,) shews that Popish Bishops and Priests, even though living in a Protestant land, entertain as much alarm and hatred of the circulation of the word of God, as the Pope himself. Take an illustration. Sir Culling, in his letter of October 9, 1844, hoped to shame the English Catholic Institute, by informing them that "The students of the Propaganda were punished after the publication of the Pope's Encyclical Letter directing the Bishops to tear unauthorised Bibles and books from the hands of the faithful." But were they shamed? Oh no; for they reply on the 23rd, after a fortnight's deliberation: "The punishment of some students of the Propaganda for having Protestant books in their possession, is a charge which the committee are not anxious to rebut. Even a Protestant college, having any pretensions to discipline, might be expected to place some limit upon the perusal by its alumni of Hobbes and Shaftesbury, Tom Paine and Bolingbroke, Rousseau and Voltaire." The word of God (if it have not the Pope's stamp upon it, which it will not have if it be faithfully rendered) is here classed with Hobbes, Shaftesbury, Tom Paine, Bolingbroke, Rousseau, and Voltaire. But the quibble about authorised and unauthorised is only to blind the eyes of the people of England; for, unless we are misinformed, in no shape is the simple text of the Bible allowed to be generally in the hands of the students of the Propaganda. We took up Dr. Bushnell's Letter to the Pope as being of recent date; but it only repeats and confirms the old story with new illustrations. We will cite one passage, in which the author anticipates what might occur upon the death of the Pope. "I have heard it suggested that you are the last Pope who will exercise temporal rule in Italy; that the civil powers who have acted as your guardians, are so much disappointed and chagrined, by the incurable oppression they find to be involved in a priestly government, as to have decided on leav ing your successor a spiritual jurisdicthere may be in this rumour, but I hope, tion only. I know not what authority for the honour of religion, it may be true. But, however this may be, it is time for you and all princes to consider, whether the melancholy spectacle of divisions and animosities in the Christian world, is not caused by a denial of the rights of truth, and attempts to guard by force what force can only disturb? equilibrium and health, which are safest Whether, in short, as trade has laws of in their action when they act freely; so also restrictions of force in the argu. ments and faith of men do not create, of necessity, false repugnances, and disturb the even balance of their opinions? How shall truth even hold her equilibrium, when it is not error she has set against her, but force? Emancipate the truth of God, and it will be wonderThere will be no sudden violent change, ful if truth does not emancipate us. perhaps, such as some men love to see, and such as you have the greatest reason to fear, in case you stand by your infal libility longer, but error will melt away in the sovereign light of truth, and we shall melt together into the love of a conscious brotherhood." May this be the actual issue! We dread to think of new outbreaks, attended with bloodshed and crime, and ending only in clenching the rivets of the fetter; but greatly should we rejoice to hear the triumphal cry, in its mystical sense, "Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city, because she made all nations drunk with the wine of her fornications." When the mystical Babylon falls, Italy will rise from her abject prostration; and Rome may be a blessing to mankind as she has long been a curse. Whether that will happen before the blissful era when "The kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ "—not in a hollow profession-however specious or splendid-but in deed and in truth, we are not sufficiently versed in unfulfilled prophecy to predict; but this is our prayer for Italy, and for all the world, "Thy king dom come; Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." "Even so Lord Jesus, come quickly." PUBLICATIONS ON THE EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE. 1. A Letter to the Editor of the Christian Observer, on the Evangelical Alliance. By the Rev. T. BIRKS, M. A., Rector of Kelshall, Herts. 1846. 2. Brief Summary of Facts in relation to the Proposed Evangelical Alliance. Printed for the Provisional Committee, April 14, 1846. 3. De la Célébration de la Cène dans ses rapports avec l'union des enfans de Dieu. Par E. Panchaud, Ministre de l'Evangile. Brussels, 1846. "We continue to receive inquiries respecting the proposed Evangelical Alliance, and we have an accumulation of materials concerning it; but we have not alluded to the subject in our present Number, being unwilling to press it with undue pertinacity or seeming un kindness." Were not our friends pleased now? We had discharged our conscience, and wished to be at rest. But rest is not the happy lot of the Conductor of a Periodical Publication, whom every man considers he has a right to address, upon whatever topic he pleases, and whether he replies Yes, or No, or "Mum," to attack him. While we were depositing our arms, Mr. Birks, the son-in-law of our honoured friend Mr. Bickersteth, was preparing his onslaught upon 4. The Spirit admitted to the Heavenly-House; the Eody refused a Grave: Two Sermons preached on occasion of the Death of the Rev. T. S. Guyer, of Ryde, Isle of Wight; with Notes on the "Evangelical Alliance," and other subjects. By THOMAS BINNEY. 1846. SOME of our Evangelical Alliance friends are hard to please. Whether we write or refrain; whether we are neutral for peace, or hostile from duty, they have much to say against us. At first we avoided all allusion to the subject, not being able to concur, yet unwilling to dispute. This gave offence, and heaps of letters poured in upon us, demanding justice. We apprised our friends that if they obliged us to insert their Yes, we must in Christian sincerity add our No; yet still they persevered. Then from month to month, as we inserted their arguments, and endeavoured modestly to express our difficulties, and with as kind words as in our simplicity we could devise, certain of them did, in writing and in speech, with pens and leaden types, in short columns in magazines and long ones in newspapers, on platforms plainly, and even in pulpits constructively, break out in displeasure against those who wished to speak words of holy truth, and therefore of Christian peace and love, though to the dissipating of some delightful dreams. At length, on bright May-day we printed as follows: us. Of this we do not complain, and have no reason to do so; but we had spoken our mind, and he now spoke his; the public were the umpires; and there we were willing that the matter should remain; cheerfully conceding to him the last word. He had intimated in his Letter that our original unwillingness to address ourselves to the question was feigned and affected. "The reluctance," said |