Chapter XXII (2)

They did, in some measure, make “the best” of it, since the multiplicity of apparent rulers found them a ready excuse for resisting whatever they did not like, and thought they were strong enough to resist. Though they saw the English gentlemen called colonels, captains, and so forth, submitting to the “constituted authorities,” they were not to follow the example; and the chief, with arms in his hand, was not to be spell-bound by a dirty bit of paper presented to him by a disreputable-looking bailiff, especially if it affected the right to some large tract of territory. The massacre of Wairau, which created so much alarm and sympathy in this country in 1843, arose out of an attempt to enforce a title to a large district, as if it had been an estate in Yorkshire, first by surveying and marking it off, and next by apprehending, in due form, the chiefs who offered interruption. The persons who were to be ejected, like impertinent trespassers, were two chiefs, whose power and importance are known even in this country—Rauparaha and Rangihaeata. Mr Tucket, one of the few who escaped from the massacre, during the inquiry which ensued, gave the following rather amusing account of the preliminary discussion with the chiefs:—

“These chiefs were aware that we had already, more than once, explored
the Wairau, and that we were about to commence surveying it. They came
to Nelson, on this occasion, to forbid our doing so, and they soon
entered on the discussion of the subject; Rauparaha spoke with all the
blandness and suavity of an artful woman.

“Rangihaeata, in the other extreme, at once denied our right, and
defied us, and never opened his mouth but to breathe forth threats and
defiance. They both asserted that the Wairau was not mentioned, nor
intended to be included in the sale of lands made by Rauparaha to
Colonel Wakefield; the places which he acknowledged he had sold he
enumerated successively, again and again. He professed to be
reluctant, yet disposed to negotiate the sale of the Wairau, but said
that the cask of gold must be a very big one.

“Rangihaeata said they would not sell it, that they wanted it for
themselves, and thought of removing there from the Northern Island,
and occupying it. He declared that, if we went there, he would meet us
and drive us away; and that we should not have the Wairau until we had
killed him.

“Nothing would please him; he left the house in a rage, harangued the
natives on the beach, repeating his threats that he would kill us if
we went to the Wairau. He afterwards met Mr Cotterell, accosted him
angrily for having gone to the Wairau, and informed him he would kill
him if he caught him there. Mr Cotterell, that he might not be
mistaken, called to him a very competent interpreter, and requested
him to explain to him the speech, on which this ferocious chief again
repeated the threat. Rauparaha subsequently addressed to Mr Cotterell
a similar threat.

“With great reluctance Rauparaha was prevailed on to proceed, after
the talk at Dr Wilson’s house, to the survey office; we wished to show
him the native reserves on the plans, and to convince him that we
desired to benefit the condition of the resident natives in each
district of the settlement. He listened to the explanation with equal
contempt and impatience; would not glance a second time at the plan;
said that our profession of reserving lands for the Maories was all
gammon, humbug, and lies, accompanying this expressive phraseology
with fit manipulations, placing his thumb on the tip of his nose,
pulling down his eyelid, and such like approved acts of incredulity
and derision, which association with whalers had made familiar to him.
He then said in earnest that he had sold us all that land, alluding to
the reserves; if the resident Maories would not give it up, we might
kill them, repeating it, ‘Kill them, kill them:’ there was no occasion
for us to make reserves; the Maories could remove; all that land
should be ours, and then we should not want the Wairau. Then he
dropped the subject, and began begging again, urging on the agent that
the casks must be very big ones; then resuming the subject, he said
with a most honied voice, ‘Do not let your people go just yet to the
Wairau;’ adding presently, ‘But if they do go, there shall be no
harm.’ Next morning another interview took place at the agent’s
office; Rangihaeata equally violent and intractable as before;
Rauparaha less complaisant, having no further presents to hope for.
The agent, firm to his purpose, calmly replied to his threats by
informing them that, if they did molest or interrupt the surveyors, he
would take three hundred constables with him to the Wairau, and make
them prisoners. They parted, Rauparaha affecting courtesy;
Rangihaeata, sincere, but implacable, refused, with contempt, all the
presents which were carried out of the store for him.”—_Returns
regarding New Zealand_—Commons Papers, 1845.

The putting the finger to the nose is very characteristic of some of the manifestations of New Zealand civilisation. They are a very jocular people, with many set phrases and gestures of raillery. The chiefs who disputed the sale of the Wairau valley might well think that they were made the objects of jocularity when a bailiff presented himself with a writ—called an ejectment, a Bill of Middlesex, or something of that sort—and set about arresting them. Rauparaha’s testimony was taken in the inquiry, and he described the attempt to apprehend him thus:—

“Mr Thompson said, ‘Will you not go?’ I said, ‘No;’ and Rangihaeata,
who had been called for, and had been speaking, said so too. Mr
Thompson then called for the handcuffs, and held up the warrant,
saying, ‘See, this is the Queen to make a tie, Rauparaha!’ I said, ‘I
will not listen either to you or to your book.’ He was in a great
passion; his eyes rolled about, and he stamped his foot. I said, ‘I
had rather be killed than submit to be bound.’ He then called for the
constable, who began opening the handcuffs, and to advance towards me.
Mr Thompson laid hold of my hand; I pushed him away, saying, ‘What are
you doing that for?’”

It was immediately on this that the scuffle which the natives drove to so cruel an extremity began. It might have been known, from previous experience in New Zealand, that such contumelious treatment towards a chief was highly dangerous. The massacre of the crew of the Boyd arose from a chief’s son having been flogged by a shipmaster, who, in bringing him over from Europe to restore him to his friends, chose to treat the young savage aristocrat as a working sailor.

The letters of the native chiefs during the wars and negotiations were translated by sworn interpreters, and are printed with the other State documents in the Parliamentary papers. A funny enough appearance they cut in the solemn company with which they are associated, as the following specimens may show:—

“_December, the 2d day, 1845._

“Friend, this new Governor,—You are a stranger, we are strangers; we
do not understand your thoughts, and you do not understand our
thoughts. What is the right (meaning) of Governor Fitz-Roy? Land? Not
by any means, because God made this country for us. It cannot be
sliced: if it were a whale, it might be sliced; but as for this, do
you return to your own country, to England which was made by God for
you. God has made this land for us, and not for any stranger or
foreign nation to touch (or meddle with) this sacred country. Yours is
heavy; New Zealand is heavy too. My thoughts to (or towards) Mr
Williams have ended. That is all.

“_War Song._

“Oh! let us fight, fight, fight, aha! let us fight, aha! let us fight:
fight for the land which lies open before us: let us fight, fight. You
have not taken it away to your land to Europe, on account of the
holding on of Whare-whare—to the Heaven climbed is the ascent to the
Governor. * * *

“From
(Signed) LITTLE JOHN POKAI,
At the Karewa.

“Write on Thursday precisely. Be quick. If it is not done quickly, I
shall understand your sentiments. If you do not write your letter
quickly on Thursday precisely, I shall understand your thoughts. Do
you not like those thoughts?”

“TE RUAPEKAPEKA,
_4 December 1845_.

“Friend, Mr Williams,—Salutations to you. Good are the words of your
book to me. Friend, let not your heart be hasty to make peace. I am
waiting for my grandson John Heke, that he may come to the Ruapekapeka
to me; then we will assemble to (meet) the Governor. These words to
you are ended.

“Friend, Governor,—Salutations to you. Let not your heart be in haste
to make peace; when my men have finished (assembling) then (it will
be.) That is the whole of my saying.

(Signed) “KAWITI.”[2]

Perhaps the world may never discover whether the asterisks represent something too dreadful to be translated, or something which the sworn interpreter found it impossible to put into English. We can only say that we think the latter the more likely theory. Such documents, in the formal contents of the blue books, have some such effect as their authors would present if sitting in committee.

These chiefs had so much at least in common with the leaders of civilised warfare that the British flag was the main object of their hostility. They did not know what it expressed; but their instinct taught them to dislike it because the foreigner deemed it important. Among the Parliamentary documents from which we have been quoting, there is the following state paper in reference to the flag-staff—

“FRIEND Governor Fitz-Roy, friend the new Governor, I say to you, will
you come and let us converse together either at Paihia or at Waitangi,
or at the Waimate, that my thoughts may be right towards you
concerning the stick (flag-staff) from which grew the evil to the
world. Walker and Manu (Kewa) and others say they alone will erect the
staff; that will be wrong; it will be better that we should all
assemble. They, we, and all the many chiefs of this place and of that
place, and you too, and all the English also.

“Now this I say to you, come, that we may set aright your
misunderstandings and mine also, and Walker’s too; then it will be
right; then we two (you and I) will erect our flag-staff; then shall
New Zealand be made one with England; then shall our conversation
respecting the land or country be right.

“Mr Busby; the first Governor; the second Governor; the third
Governor; the Queen: salutations to you all.

“From
(Signed) “JOHN WILLIAM HEKE POKAI.”

Heke was a great chief, and a great leader in these conflicts; but at the time when the letter just cited was written, the beginning of the year 1846, he was losing position among his brother chiefs, who were abandoning the conflict with the British authorities. More than three years afterwards, in July 1849, when New Zealand had become as tranquil as the Orkney Islands, Heke thought fit to address a long representation to the Queen, for the purpose of instructing her Majesty on the true state of affairs in the colony. Like most statements by disappointed men, it is a rather confused document—

“To the Queen of England, greeting,—Show us the same affectionate
regard that King George did in what he said to Hongi when he went to
Europe. King George asked him, ‘What was your reason for coming here;’
he said, ‘I had two objects in doing so—muskets and sixty soldiers.’
To which King George answered, ‘I will not consent to send soldiers to
New Zealand, lest you should be deprived of your country, which I wish
should be left for your children and your people, for they would not
act properly.’ They continued arguing on the subject for a long time,
and then King George said to Hongi, ‘It is better that I should send
some missionaries to you, as friends for you, for they are good
people; should they act wrongly, send them back; but if they act
properly, befriend them.’ And we accordingly befriended them. They
asked us, ‘Will you not give us some portions of your land? Our
generosity induced us to consent, and we divided it with them—giving
them part and retaining part ourselves. We thought that they were the
only people who were to live in this country; but no, there were many
thousands of others—but it was when we were foolish that we thought
this.’

“The immense congregations of people that took place here was what
brought forth the day of trouble, which exactly agreed with what King
George had said to Hongi. After trouble had ensued, Mr Busby arrived
with a different arrangement, and then the first governor, William
Hobson, with a different one again: the flag of New Zealand was
abandoned, and that of England alone displayed. He did not state this
at the meeting at Waitangi, in order that everybody might know that
the flag-staff was the great protection of these islands; and his
concealing it was the cause of my error, for I was the person that
consented that both Mr Busby and the first governor should live on
shore, thinking that they would act rightly; then came Fitz-Roy, the
second governor, with a different arrangement again. Not understanding
the authority which accompanied the appointment of governors, and to
which we had in our folly consented, I urged him to come here, in
order that we might talk on the subject of the flag-staff; he did not
come, but re-erected it, having four iron bars, and covered with tar.
The obstinacy of his thoughts was the cause of the war, and of my
transgressing against you. Then came Governor Grey, a fighting
governor; I therefore say, who was it sent those people here? Which
makes me think that you were the original cause of the dispute between
us—which confuted what King George had said to Hongi. Don’t suppose
that the fault was mine, for it was not, which is my reason for saying
that it rests with you to restore the flag of my island of New
Zealand, and the authority of the land of the people. Should you do
this, I will then for the first time perceive that you have some love
for New Zealand, and for what King George said, for although he and
Hongi are dead, still the conversation lives; and it is for you to
favour and make much of it, for the sake of peace, love, and
quietness; therefore, I say, it remains with you to decide about the
people who are continually arriving here, viz., the Governors, the
soldiers, the French, and the Americans; to speak out to them to
return; they are quarrelsome, and every place will be covered with
them; I consequently am aware that their acts are making things
progress towards trouble. I thought that when our fighting was over,
the men-of-war and steamers would cease coming here and all their
mischief-breeding concomitants, for I am careful of the fiery darts of
the world, the flesh, and the devil.”

These last words showed that Heke had been listening to the missionaries, though he had derived little of the spirit along with the phraseology of Christianity. In the letter, of which the long passage just cited is but a comparatively small portion, the chief says—possibly in reference to the varied authorities, judicial, executorial, clerical, military, &c., whose conflicting powers puzzled the natives—

“What I consider very bad is concealing the intentions, for there are
many rooms in your house, which prevents their being all searched: the
calico room is that of peace, but then there is the room of red
garments and the room of black garments—these two rooms ought to be
concealed in that with peace of God.”

It was necessary that this state paper should be duly laid before her Majesty. We are left in profound ignorance of the shape in which Heke may have received the announcement of its reception, but the Parliamentary papers contain a despatch from the Secretary of the Colonies to the Governor of New Zealand in these terms:—

“I have received your despatch of the 18th July last, forwarding a
letter addressed by the New Zealand chief Heke to the Queen, in
explanation of his view of the causes of the difficulties which have
taken place throughout the colony, and I have to request you will
acquaint the writer that I have laid that communication before her
Majesty.”

But “the difficulties,” many of them of Heke’s own creation, were, as we have already hinted, conquered before he offered his intervention. The motives from which the armed forces in New Zealand gradually dissolved, as it were, into peaceful workmen, is in itself a significant symptom of the character of this remarkable people. They began to find that it was a far better speculation to enter into a partnership—however humble—with the Europeans, than to fight with them. They are not, it must be admitted, an imaginative or ideal people; they judge values by hard cash. Their superstitions were found to be entirely subservient to their interests—for instance, the inexorable _tapu_ or _taboo_. A field which had been bought, but which was not to be given up, was found to be tabooed, and so a rifle which had been lent, and which the owner wanted back again. When a chief was wanted to fulfil a bargain, or was dunned by a creditor, he was found to be surrounded by the sacred _tapu_. This utilitarian spirit gradually undermined the zeal for national resistance. In fact, it was not national—it was personal and patrimonial. The chiefs and their followers who might side with the English had no reproaches of baseness, or unpatriotic desertion, to fear. Some of them were taken into service and employed as a police force—and proud they were of the character. One or two chiefs who were wounded in the British service received pensions. There came, as among the Sepoys, to be a competition to get into the service, which extinguished the insurrections. Those who could not be employed in the government did still better by embarking in agricultural, shipping, or commercial enterprise. There never, perhaps, in the history of the world, was so sudden a revulsion from bitter war to the energetic pursuit of the arts of peace as these people have exemplified.

After agricultural enterprise, the chief pursuit of the natives has been that of the miller. They appear to have entered on it with surprising rapidity. As the New Zealanders are very fond of letting her Majesty know all they are about, we have among the Parliamentary papers presented in the last session a letter to the Queen, with an account of the raising of one of the earliest grist mills, accompanied by a present of the meal ground in it.

“Governor Grey has been here at Otawhao and Rangiaohia, and has given
us a plough; he also told us that Mr Morgan would arrange about some
white man to teach us to plough, at which we were much pleased—and
this year we commence to plough the ground. We have for a long time
been desirous of this, but we are a poor people, and the majority of
our pigs had been disposed of to pay for the mill, which was the
reason that we did not plough; but now the governor has generously
given us one, which has greatly rejoiced us; and we will persevere in
ploughing the land. We have finished a water-mill, and paid for it
entirely ourselves. We paid the white man who built it £200, which he
obtained by the sale of pigs and flax—£20 being for flax, and £180 for
pigs. The common labour we did ourselves—namely, building the dam, &c.
&c. Our reason for constructing the mill was on account of having
commenced to grow wheat at Rangiaohia. We were a year in collecting
the requisite amount of money.

“O the Queen, we regard you with affection, because we have nothing to
give you—because we, the Maoris, are a poor people; but we wish that
you should see and also eat of the flour grown at Rangiaohia. Don’t
find fault with what we send you, whether much or little: it is little
in the presence of the Queen of England. We have nothing else except
this quantity of flour to give you. Be graciously pleased with our
present in order that our hearts may be glad.

“The schools for our children are very good, and we will now become
civilised. But don’t send convicts here to our country. They will
cause us trouble, and we will be afraid lest evil should be increased
in our islands. This is all.

“TE WARU.
“KAHAWUI.”

The following document, dated a few months later, shows what rapid progress must have been made in the erection of mills:—

Return of Flour Mills now in
operation, (22d August 1849,)
within one district of the
Province of New Ulster, the
property of Aboriginal Natives
(all but the last within a circuit
of fifty miles of Otawhao.)
┌──────────────┬─────────────────┐
│ Name of │ COST. │
│ principal │ │
│ Owner. │ │
├──────────────┼────────┬────────┤
│ „ │ Cash. │Labour. │
├──────────────┼────────┼────────┤
│Te Waru, │£200 0 0│ £50 0 0│
│Ti Tipa, │ 80 0 0│ 40 0 0│
│Tipa, │ 80 0 0│ 40 0 0│
│Manihera, │ 80 0 0│ 40 0 0│
│Pake, │ 330 0 0│ 40 0 0│
│Paora Te Patu,│ 100 0 0│ 40 0 0│
├──────────────┼────────┼────────┤
│ │£910 0 0│£250 0 0│
└──────────────┴────────┴────────┘

The New Zealanders are, at the same time, large shipowners; and they have a shipping-list, published in English and Maori, with departures and arrivals of vessels owned and commanded by natives.

We find the Governor of New Zealand, on 7th March 1849, reporting,—

“During my journey through the extensive and fertile districts of the
Waikato and Waissa, I was both impressed and gratified at the rapid
advances in civilisation which the natives of that part of New Zealand
have made during the last two years. Two flour-mills have already been
constructed at their sole cost, and another water-mill is in course of
erection. The natives of that district also grow wheat very
extensively: at one place alone, the estimated extent of land under
wheat is a thousand acres. They have also good orchards, with
fruit-trees of the best kind, grafted and budded by themselves. They
have extensive cultivations of Indian corn, potatoes, &c.; and they
have acquired a considerable number of horses and horned stock.
Altogether, I have never seen a more thriving or contented population
in any part of the world.”

We may remark that, from so thinly peopled a country, so far off, we must not expect to receive authentic intelligence down to a recent period. The Parliamentary papers issued in the past session seldom contain intelligence later than 1849. On the 25th June of that year, the Lieutenant-General of New Munster reports:—

“At Otaki, the natives are still making rapid progress in
civilisation, and the settlement is assuming the appearance of a neat
European village. Many new houses of a superior kind have been built
during the last eighteen months; a magnificent church has been
erected, and, though not quite complete, is in a state which is
usable; in fact, I have myself attended service there, when, I think,
there could have been little short of 900 natives within its walls.
More attention has been paid to neatness than was formerly the case;
and most of the fences are not only substantially put up, but are cut
evenly at the top, and present a very neat and clean appearance. The
gardens are also more attended to; and the use of milk, butter, tea,
&c., more appreciated in the domestic arrangements.

Other indications of the advancement of the native race, and of their
growing confidence in the value of civilised institutions, are to be
found in their frequent applications to the resident magistrates’
courts, whenever they consider themselves aggrieved, whether by
Europeans or by other natives; and in the readiness with which they
submit to and abide by the decisions. In these courts, during the last
eighteen months, several cases of grave importance, between native and
native, have been adjudicated upon, which would have formerly involved
the life of the offender, and might have led to a general
disturbance.”

The thoroughly and almost impetuously practical character of the natives, and their freedom from ideal influences, is shown in the manner in which they have welcomed the services of the medical profession.

The colonial surgeon, in his report for 1849, says,—

“The short, but, I apprehend, somewhat indiscreetly alarming account
of small-pox, which was published in the native language some twelve
months ago, made an extraordinarily powerful impression in this
district on the Maori mind, creating, at the same time, a singularly
urgent anxiety to be vaccinated. Hence, no sooner was it known that
the antidote was in our possession, than not only the hospital and the
town practitioners were besieged by applicants from far and near, but
ex-professional gentlemen also were eagerly solicited to become
operators in the cause, as if the enemy they so fearfully dreaded was
at the threshold, and not a day to be safely lost; nay, so great was
the panic among them, and so precocious, too, their intuition, that
ere long they began to vaccinate one another; and finding that they
could produce vesicles, or pustular blots any way like to these,
vaccination hence went on in indiscriminate progress, to the neglect
of all observances, and in hand-in-hand deterioration, which it is
impossible now, with any probability of truth, to estimate or
surmise.”

As an equitable balance of the hard and almost selfish character which we have attributed to these people, let us conclude by saying, that many documents and works which we have perused in reference to them, convince us that they are an eminently good-hearted race. Several instances are recorded where they have made considerable sacrifices to serve Europeans to whom they were under obligations; and in more than one instance, their communities have subscribed to relieve distress caused by fire, shipwreck, or inundation—a form of generosity eminently indicative of civilisation.

THE ITALIAN REVOLUTION.

The _emeute_ of Paris, which cast out the Bourbons, is the key to all the subsequent _emeutes_ of Europe. The nations of the Continent, however differing in features and language, are one family; they have the same policy, the same habits, and the same impulses. No member of that family can be moved without communicating that motion, more or less, to the whole body; like a vast lake, into which, stagnant as it may be, a stone flung spreads the movement in circle on circle, and spreads it the more for its stagnation. But, if the great moral expanse had any inherent motion; if, like the ocean, it were impelled by a tide, the external impulse would be overpowered and lost in the regular and general urgency of Nature.

This forms one of the distinctions which mark England as differing from the Continent; in this country there is a perpetual internal movement. Open as England is to all foreign impulses, they are overpowered by the vigour of change among ourselves. She has the moral _tides_; constantly renewing the motion of the national mind, guided by laws hitherto scarcely revealed to man; and tending, on the whole, to the general salubrity and permanence of the national system. This preserves England from revolutions; as manly exercise preserves the human frame from disease, and from those violent struggles with which nature, from time to time, throws off the excess of disease. Thus, it is scarcely possible to conceive a revolution in England!

In the life of a single generation we have seen _three_ revolutions in France; and those three revolutions have been of the most decisive order;—the first comprehending an overthrow of the laws, the government, and the religion—a total overwhelming of the fabric of national society, an explosion of the State from its foundations;—no simple plunder of the palace, or disrobing of the priest—no passing violence of the mob, like a thunder cloud passing over the harvest-field, and though it prostrated the crop, yet leaving the soil in its native fertility;—but a _tearing_ up of the soil itself; an extermination of monarchy, priesthood, and law; requiring a total _renewal_ by the survivors of the storm. The two succeeding revolutions were overthrows, not merely of governments, but of dynasties—the exiles of kings and the imprisonment and flight of cabinets—great national convulsions, which would once have involved civil war, and which, but for the timid nature and sudden ruin of those dynasties, _must_ have involved civil war, and probably spread havoc once more through Europe. Yet England was still unshaken. She had tumults, but too trifling for alarm, and apparently for the purpose of showing to the world her innate power of resistance to profitless innovation; or for discovering to herself the depth of her unostentatious loyalty to the constitutional throne.

The French _emeute_ of 1830 propagated its impulse through every kingdom of Europe. The power of the rabble was proved to all by the triumph of the French mob; a new generation had risen, unacquainted with the terrible sufferings of war; the strictness of the European governments had been relaxed by the long disuse of arms; the increasing influence of commercial wealth had tended to turn ministers into flatterers of the multitude; and the increasing exigencies of kings had forced them to rely for their personal resources upon the merchant and the Jew. A less obvious, yet perhaps a more effective ingredient than all other materials of overthrow, was the _universal irreligion_ of the Continent.

Divided between Popery and Infidelity, the European mind was prepared for political tumults. Superstition degrades the understanding, and makes it incapable of reason. Infidelity, while it makes the world the only object, gives loose to the passions of the world. The one, extinguishing all inquiry, merges all truth in a brutish belief; the other, disdaining all experience, meets all truth with a frantic incredulity. The first temptation to political disturbance finds both ready. The refusal to “give to God the things that are God’s,” is inevitably followed by the refusal to “give to Cæsar the things that are Cæsar’s.”

Superstition took the lead in revolt. In 1830, the year after the expulsion of the Bourbons, some of the Papal provinces proclaimed the reign of Liberty at hand, and disowned the _temporal_ sovereignty of the Pope. But the Austrian army was on the alert; the troops entered the Romagna; the Legations, wholly unprepared for resistance, (though storming the Vatican in their figures of speech,) at once discovered the fruitlessness of oratory against bayonets, and licked the dust before the Austrian grenadiers.

All tyranny is cruel in proportion to its weakness: such is the history of all despotic governments. The Romagna was inundated with spies; the prisons were crowded; (and what language can describe the horrors of an Italian prison!) and with an Austrian army as the defenders of the Papal throne against its subjects, the reign of the old despotism once more was the reign over all things but the minds of the people.

In the midst of this confusion, the old man on the Roman throne, who had exhibited nothing of supremacy but its violence, suddenly died. The death of Gregory XVI. was a crisis. The presence of the Austrians had begun to be an object of alarm to the government of the Cardinals, and the desire to get rid of this dangerous defence was the key to the new line of policy adopted by Rome. This suggested the choice of a man who might influence the popular mind by giving way to the feelings of the populace; and Maria Mastai Feretti was raised to the Papal sovereignty, by the name of Pius the Ninth.

The election of a Pope has generally been a matter of intrigue among the ambassadors of the foreign powers at Rome, and especially among the Cardinals—the former intriguing to elect a tool of their Government, and the others an instrument of their own. The Popes have been generally chosen in old age, and in the decay of their faculties—the former, as affording the speedier prospect of a successor—and the latter, as throwing him more completely into the hands of his court. But, the crisis demanded an instrument of another capacity. Mastai Feretti had been educated for a military career—had subsequently chosen the priesthood—and had, we understand, even been employed in the South American missions. Thus he had lived out of the conventual routine, and had the rare fortune, for a monk, of travelling beyond the borders of Italy. His family, too, were known by some public offices, and the hope of seeing the triple crown _burnished_ on the brow of a vigorous leader, rendered the choice popular among the crowd.

The first act was to publish an Amnesty—an act of policy as well as of mercy; for, by it, he released a large number of the partisans of his new system. The exiles also were recalled; and some of the most prominent actors in the late movements were purchased by the hope of public offices. The Pope even performed occasionally the duties of the priesthood. He one day visited a church of which the vicar was absent; he put on the robe, and read the mass. Little dexterities of this kind, to which none could object, and which all were ready to applaud, raised popular acclamation to its height, and for a few months Pio Nono was, in all lips, the model of a priest, a patriot, and a pope.

All those things might have been done by a wise sovereign; but Pio Nono exhibited his ignorance of Italian nature by not knowing where to stop. Every day now produced some memorable innovation: the press was partially emancipated—a rational measure only among a rational people; the laity shared in the magistracies which had been hitherto confined to the priesthood; and a Cabinet Council was formed, all the members of which were laymen, except the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and the Minister of Public Instruction.

All those reforms, which would have been salutary among a manly people, were ruinous among a people utterly disqualified by their habits, their morals, and their religion, for liberty.

The news from Rome flew instantly to all parts of Italy. The populace everywhere demanded a constitution, and proceeded to attack the police, and sometimes to plunder the possessors of property. When the scattered soldiery resisted, the bloodshed was charged as a crime on the head of their governments. The peasantry thronged the roads, crying out for a reform, of which they could not comprehend the simplest principles. The King of Naples, in not unnatural alarm at those philosophers of the highway, attempted to exercise his authority. It was answered by rebellion. Sicily and Calabria at once armed their rioters. The mob seized upon Palermo and Messina; the politicians were on the alert; and they drew up a Jacobin constitution, which the King, helpless and hopeless, was persuaded to sign.

The Papacy was now in danger; the success of the Neapolitan rabble was a stimulus to the rabble of Rome. The Pope found the peril of toying with popular passions. He was forced to sign a constitution entitled—“a fundamental statute for the _temporal_ government of the States of the Church.” He was virtually _dethroned_.

Thus the Popedom had begun the true revolutionary era. The Italian Revolution of 1846 was followed by the French Revolution of 1848. The echo of the thunder was thus louder than the thunder itself. It was reverberated from every throne of the Continent; Berlin was in the hands of a mob; Vienna was in open rebellion; Prague fought the Imperial troops; Hungary rose in arms, and fought the bloodiest campaigns since Waterloo,—till Russia entered the field with her one hundred and fifty thousand men, and extinguished the war by a truce, which will be broken at the first opportunity of bloodshed.

But, before the general spread of insurrection, Lombardy had risen in rebellion, tempted by the vauntings of Italian patriotism, by the lenity of the Austrian Government, and, above all, by the example of Rome.

The dominion of Austria in Italy consists of the provinces formerly known as the duchies of Milan and Mantua, and the territory of the late Venetian Republic. It is one of the most absurd blunders of modern republicanism, to represent those possessions as the spoil of war. On the contrary, if ancient right and regular inheritance can give a title, Austria possesses that title to the duchies of Milan and Mantua—Milan having been an Austrian fief from the year 1533, when it descended to Charles V., Emperor of Germany, by the death of its sovereign, Sforza; and Mantua having been also an Austrian fief, though governed by the Gonzagas till the reign of the last Duke Ferdinand; who, taking a hostile part in the war of the Spanish Succession, the Emperor, Joseph I., placed him under ban, and annexed his forfeited duchy to Milan.

From Charles, Milan descended to his son Philip II., and from him to the Spanish line of the House of Austria; when, by the War of the Succession, it passed to the German branch, and became a province of Austria; and so both remained, until Napoleon’s invasion of Italy in 1796.

The Austrian claim to the Venetian territory is later and more mixed with war, but is equally clear.

By the peace of Campoformio in 1797, Austria had been compelled to give up the duchies of Milan and Mantua, at the same time with Belgium, to the French Republic, receiving in return Venice and its territory, which were then French conquests. In the campaign of 1805, by the treaty following the battle of Austerlitz, Napoleon again took possession of the Venetian territory and city, annexing them to Milan and Mantua, which, with the subsequent annexation of Modena, the Legations, and in 1808, the Papal Marches, he named the _Kingdom_ of Italy, though not comprehending more than a third of Italy, and having only a population of six millions. It has been the curious fate of French aggression, to provide by its grasp for possession by others. In 1814, the Austrian Emperor, by the right of victory over France, claimed the duchies of Milan and Mantua, with the Venetian territory, which had been united to them, as we have seen, only by the short-sighted rapacity of Napoleon. The whole was then confirmed to the Austrian Emperor, by the treaty of Vienna, under the name of the Lombardo-Venetian Kingdom, and annexed by Congress to the Imperial Crown of Austria. The other arrangements of Italy were also founded on their former state. Modena was restored to its Duke, the Legations and Marches were given again to the Pope; and, in general, the provinces south of the Po were placed under their former sovereigns.

Thus it is mere Italian coxcombry to talk of the Austrian possession of northern Italy as a usurpation. The Line of Charles V. have been its acknowledged masters for three hundred years—a possession as old as the reign of Elizabeth, and as thoroughly acknowledged as the possession of Ireland by the British sceptre. Irish folly may talk of the English as usurpers, and Saxons; but a right three centuries old is as indisputable as the reason of man can make it in either Ireland or Italy; and nothing but absurdity or treason in either case could call it in question.

But if it be said that those transfers of power were always resisted by the Italians, and that they merely succumbed to ill fortune in the field, nothing can be farther from the fact. From the earliest period of modern history, the Italians were the mere lookers-on in the wars which disposed of their country. The French fought the Germans, and the Germans fought the French; but Italy never fought for itself. Like Virgil’s heifer, it stood while the two bulls were lowering their horns, and tossing up the sand with their hoofs, the patient prize of the combat. When a French army entered Milan over the battalions of the German, the Italians welcomed them with an opera; when a German army entered Milan over the bodies of the French brigades, the Italians proclaimed the glories of Germany with a “Te Deum.” Then the affair was at an end; things took their regular course; the Italian returned to his macaroni, and acknowledged his master, consoling his submission by a vow of vengeance in the next generation.

Not that we would recommend a change of the national mind: the stiletto will never work a national redemption; and the bitter prejudices, womanish caprices, and narrow partialities of the Italian provincials, will never combine in one general and generous view of national independence. All the Italian’s sense of patriotism is party; all his love of liberty is love of licence; and all his religion is the denial of the right of judgment, and the practice of persecution.

The Italian republics of the Middle Ages were engaged in perpetual hostilities with each other. Milan detested Mantua, Florence flamed against Pisa. Genoa saw nothing in Venice but an enemy whose wealth would repay war. Venice saw in Genoa nothing but a rival, which she was pledged to level with the ground. Rome devoted them all to the fires of purgatory. The Peninsula was a vast hornet’s nest, in which all alike robbed the honey of others, and only employed the sting. To this hour the same spirit lives from the Alps to the Calabrias. No man on earth more despises the Neapolitan, than his fellow-subject the Sicilian. The Venetian’s contempt for the Tuscan is high and haughty: the Tuscan calls the tongue of the Venetian barbaresque, and says that his manners are suited to his tongue. How is it possible to form an Union among those scoffers? And without union, how is it possible to establish National independence?

But Austria has founded her claims to Italian supremacy on stronger grounds than even the superiority of her soldiership. There will be errors in all things human—there must be more than errors in the government of a despotism; the vices of despotism must be deepened where that government is military: yet, with all those drawbacks, the condition of Northern Italy under the Austrian government has been almost patriarchal compared to what it was before, and to what it must have continued, under the jealousies, antipathies, and ignorance of the native governments.

In the first place, it preserved those provinces from civil war. In the next, it expended immense wealth on the improvement of the country, in bridges, canals, roads, hospitals, &c. In the next, it provided schools to a remarkable extent, for the general training of the common people. In the next, it made _some_ provision for civil liberty; and even for that most improbable of all things in Popish countries, some approach to liberty of religion.

As the great security of all, it established a firm, regular, and systematic administration of the kingdom. A governor generally residing at Milan, and frequently an archduke, ruled the whole. Under him were governors of its two grand divisions; the Lombard Provinces, and the Venetian Provinces. Those divisions were again subdivided into Delegazioni, or minor provinces, each with an officer at its head, entitled the Delegate. There are even further subdivisions, and each commune had its Podesta, or local magistrate. The Lombard provinces are nine; the Venetian provinces are eight; and the spirit of subordination, and, we believe, of justice, was thus made to penetrate to the lowest orders of the community.

The Italian governments of the middle ages had chiefly degenerated into Oligarchies; the worst form of government for the progress of nations that ever was invented by the artifice, or continued by the tyranny, of man. With exclusiveness for its principle, suspicion for its stimulus, and passion for its practice, it effectually renders the mind of a people at once crafty and cruel. In its nature feeble, it has no expedient for safety but arbitrary execution; and without any superior authority to restrain its jealousies, its perpetual policy is to crush all talent, honour, and character, which shows itself beyond the narrow circle of its conclave. It concentrates all the evils of both despotism and republicanism, and has all the remorseless sternness of the one, and all the rapid violence of the other. Universal espionage, secret trials, the consignment of the accused to dungeons for life or death in the dungeon, unacknowledged and unknown, constitute the whole compass of its theory of power.

For those wretched and desperate governments, of which, let history develop them as it will, it can never tell the ten thousand part of the misery, the fortunate accession of the Austrian government presented a system which, on the testimony of every man qualified to judge, rendered the Lombard provinces an example of agricultural prosperity, and the cities of splendour to the capitals of Europe. Since the war with France, and even in the short period between 1820 and 1834, the Austrian treasury had expended forty-two millions of livres for the Lombard provinces alone. The testimony of an intelligent French traveller (VALERY, _Voyages en Italie_) is—“Nowhere, perhaps, on the Continent is the administration of the roads and bridges more actively and usefully carried on than in Lombardy. The whole of this part of Italy presents a solid and material prosperity; it presents the _fine side_ of the Austrian dominion. The roads are like the walks of a garden, and they are kept in repair with the greatest care. The government, economical and parsimonious in other respects, is great and magnificent in this. The excellent state of the highroads of the Lombardo-Venetian kingdom is maintained at the annual expense of 1,305,000 francs for 1518 Italian miles of road.”

But, though the habits of the empire predominate in the forms of its government, the Austrian influence, in Italy, makes considerable allowance for the natural love of freedom. The governors of the two grand divisions of Milan and Venice are each assisted by a species of parliament, consisting of landholders and deputies from the royal towns. Each minor province returns two landholders, one being noble, and the other not, as deputies, and the royal towns return one each. The Communal Councils, besides, each elect three persons, of whom the emperor selects one as deputy; those deputies are elected for six years.

Of course these provincial parliaments are not of the same rank with the British, but they have nearly the same financial duties. They settle the proportion of the taxes; they inspect the accounts of repairs of the roads and bridges, and have the superintendence of the revenues of the numerous charitable institutions. They have also a right of petition to the throne concerning the wants of the people. But, besides those parliaments, there is in every principal town of a province a council of eight, six, or four, landholders, one half of them being noble, and the other not of the nobility, whose office is to superintend the financial concerns of their respective districts. The Communes also have their own councils, and the system of commercial administration rounds the whole. Thus the inhabitants of the Lombard provinces have more influence over the collection and expenditure of the taxes, (the most important and most permanent interest of the people,) than in any other kingdom of the Continent.

We are not the panegyrists of Austria. We do not expect to see her giving liberty to the Italian dominions. We do not even believe that _any_ Popish government ever will give liberty to its people, nor that any Popish people will ever be fit to receive liberty: the slaves of superstition must be the slaves of power. The man into whose house a priest can enter, at will, ransack his library, and tear the Bible from his hands, has no right to name the name of liberty. The man whom a priest can command to send his wife and children to the confessional, to do penance in his own person, and to abjure the right of inquiry into the most solemn of all human concerns, the truth of his religion, is already in the chain—has no claim to the sympathy of freemen—and is as incapable of civil freedom as he is of religious liberation.

But the next best government to a constitutional monarchy is a benevolent despotism. We have adverted to the conduct of Austria in its ancient Italian dominions. Let us next observe its conduct in its later provincial acquisitions. Long before the extinction of the Venetian Republic, every traveller in Italy predicted its ruin. It had been decaying for centuries. It finally fell less by the sword of France, than by its own inability to live. Already broken on the wheel, it waited only the _coup-de-grace_ to hasten its dissolution. Its surrender to Napoleon was not conquest, but ruin; its surrender to Austria was not conquest, but restoration.

The Austrians, in 1814, found not less than 44,000 individuals, in Venice alone, dependent more or less on _public charity_—an enormous weight of pauperism. All the asylums, hospitals, and alms-houses, were in the deepest state of decay. Those were reinstated by the Austrian government—a poor government at all times—and then impoverished by a quarter of a century of war. Of this operation the expenses were upwards of _nine millions_ of francs! There had also been many families of the old Venetian nobility decayed by time and casuality, and living on pensions from the Republic. The French invasion, of course, on the desperate maxim of “making war support war,” had plunged them into utter destitution. The Austrian government furnished them with the means of a decent existence. The old officials of the Republic who had retired on pensions, and who had lost everything in the war, were put again on the pension-list; and to make the public bounty at once permanent and effectual, “a committee of public benevolence” was founded under the care of the principal citizens, with the Patriarch and the Podesta at their head, to which the government contributed 100,000 livres a-year, and which now has an income of half a million. Besides those works of beneficence, the government devoted itself to the objects of decoration, the repairs of the palaces, the restoration of the state buildings, the care of the Venetian archives, and the collection of the national arts, at an expense of fifty-three millions of livres. The authorities for these statements are given in the _Bolletino Statistico_, and the _Simplice Verita_, published in 1834 and 1838.

The facts before the eyes of every man contradict the metaphorical misery. The commerce of the Republic, perishing for fifty years before the French invasion, and which by that invasion had almost disappeared, amounted in 1837 to 3000 vessels and 211,000 tons. The residence of government in Venice, with all its boards of administration and public instruments, annually distributed two millions of livres in its expenditure in the city. If it is impossible to make a Popish population industrious, or a lazy population rich—if the Italian would rather beg than work, and relieve his self-contempt by complaining of his masters, rather than gain a competence by honest toil—the remedy is as hopeless as the complaint is imaginary. The laws of nature cannot be subverted for the luxuries of a Lazzarone.

The _secret_ of the Papal liberalism is still undeveloped; but it apparently lies in the Papal principle of universal power. Gregory VII. and Innocent III. aimed at this power by enlisting the vassal princes of Europe; but when the princes were vassals no more, the Popes bowed to the thrones, tried to obtain power by intrigue, and Jesuits and confessors took the place of legates and armies. A new era had begun, and a new source of power was to be employed. From the first French Revolution, the populace have been an element of overthrow. The two following French revolutions have made that element more conspicuous, more disciplined, and consequently more dangerous; but it is an evil acquiring strength alike with the laxity of government and the passions of the people. A mob had twice cast down the mightiest monarchy of continental Europe, and the Pope of Rome became a _Liberal_!

Insurrection immediately broke out in both the extremities of Italy. The Calabrias rose, and the Lombards rose. The centre, less bold but equally excited, threatened the seizure of its sovereigns, and the subversion of their government. The King of Sardinia, at the head of a well-disciplined army, and a flourishing exchequer, dazzled by the present promise of Lombard territory, and the glory of a future coronation in Rome, declared war, in the face of Austrian alliance, and rushed into the field.