p. 8 | Italian Affairs

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 24, 1859

Italian Affairs.

THE London Post says: "We can easily imagine the embarrassment of the emperor of France to be extreme. He has undertaken the special protection of the Papal government. He has also undertaken the special protection of Italian liberty. The Papal power and Italian liberty are in open warfare; the Italians have revolted from the Pope; the Pope is denouncing the Italians. His denunciations are echoed by the Catholic prelacy all over Europe—by none so loudly as by the prelates of the Gallican Church. It is most probable, it is almost certain, that within a few months, perhaps within a few weeks—nay, the event might occur within a few days—the Romagna will be attacked by the Papal troops. It is still more certain that at the first menace of an armed intervention in the Duchies, the troops of Central Italy, under the command of Garibaldi and Fanti, will take the whole Roman question into their own hands, and sweep before them every vestige of the Papal rule as far as the Neapolitan frontier. And it may be questioned if they will stop there.

"In this possibility, this probability, we might almost say this certainty, the immediate intervention of Austria may be anticipated. What part would France then play? What extension would this Roman question then assume? These are questions which every European statesman must feel to be extremely serious. Every English statesman, at least, who possesses a due sense of his responsibility to his own country and to civilized Europe, on whose fate his decisions will exert an influence, must be imbued with the conviction that no means should be left untried to avert the dangers which he cannot fail to foresee."