ENGLAND-THE EXILE'S HOME.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume XVI, Issue 70, 28 November 1857, Page 3

ENGLAND -THE EXILE'S HOME.

[From the News of ike World.'] England is the home of the exile, the asylum of the political refugee ; but it is not a sanctuary for assassins. We can sympathize with men defeated in an attempt to enlarge the liberties of their country, and we can also show lespect to the misfortunes of fallen statesmen and kings, whose principles and actions we nevertheless condemn. There is no restriction upon the hospitality which Englishmen offer to distressed foreigners. All that we require of them is, that they shall not get us into trouble with their governments whilst enjoying the security which our protection affords. If we take a stranger into our house and succour and comfort him, he has no right to set the house on fire. If we should find him engaged in so ungrateful and incendiary a work, neither he nor his friends must complain if we turn him out of doors.

The character of our nation is affected by the discoveries which have taken place with regard to the recent insurrection in Italy. The "paternal governments" of the continent, which are always happy to have an opportunity of crying out against us, for the protection which our laws afford to refugees, seem, at last, to have some reasonable ground of complaint ; for the French Government is said to have evidence in its hands not only that the outbreak was to have been simultaneous in Piedmont, Tuscany, and Naples, but also that the signal of general revolt was to be the assassination of the Emperor Napoleon : and, further, that this diabolical plot was arranged in London.

Englishmen are not qesassins, nor will they submit to lie under the imputation of being aiders and abettors of assassins. If it be true that there are refugees in this country who have contemplated and taken part in the proceedings alluded to, let them be expelled: they will have forfeited the right to our protection, and put themselves out of the range of our sympathies. England must not be made a theatre of conspiracies against foreign potentates. We have enough to do with legitimate troubles, and cannot allow foreign gentlemen to make others for us.

It appears that the Courts of Piedmont, Tuscany, and Naples were apprised of the intended insurrection by the French Government, who had intelligence of it from England. The assassins who were to have struck the blow at the Emperor were four in number. No good cause ever prospered by assassination, and we may add that no good cause needs it. Besides, " the republic, one and indivisible," has already been rejected by France. Lamartine, highly gifted and honest, tried it, and failed; Cavaignac, brave, intelligent, and incorruptible, tried it also, and also failed. But were the case otherwise, Englishmen would not allow a conspiracy to be hatched upon our shores; least of all a conspiracy whose object is to be accomplished through the course trick of an assassination. No righteous cause requires the murderer's knife for its success. No honest man, whatever his political desires and aspirations may be, 'would counsel the use of so diabolical a weapon, or give countenance or shelter to those who did. The political exile has a safe asylum here, so long aa he pays respect to the laws of civilization and humanity. He cannot be permitted to engage in plots hostile to governments with which we are upon terras of amity, and that would involve us in hostilities, We listen to

no demands for the extraditiou of political offenders whom the force of events has driven to our door, unless they forfeit the right to protection by a crime. A distinction must be drawn between exiles and criminals, political offenders and assassins. We are happy and proud in giving asylum to the one. We have no sympathy with, but only indignation for the other.

A document found at Genoa among the papers of the late Colonel Pisacane, chief of the insurrection in Calabria, explains the ideas and intentions of the conspirators. Ideas more false, intentions more dangerous, were never entertained by men in a perfect state of mind. The constitutional government of Piedmont was considered by these fanatics as an offence and obstacle, which they would have got rid of, together with "railways, electric telegraphs, machinery, and improvements in manufactures," all of which Colonel Pisacane declares are calculated to "impoverish the mass of the people." We are enabled, by this remarkable document, to measure the folly and iniquity of the insurrection. " I believe in socialism," says the writer, and what he means by "socialism" he proceeds to explain. "Machines and improvements in manufactures, in fact, all that develops and facilitates commerce, is destined, by an inevitable law, to impoverish the mass of the people ;" and, "if these pretended ameliorations are regarded as a progress, it will be only in this sense, that by increasing the misery of the people, they will infallibly impel them to a terrible revolution."

It seems hardly credible that such ideas can have an influence on the minds of men ; and yet their author was a leader of the great conspiracy that has been detected, and defeated. If it had been successful, nothing but disappointment and misery could have sprung from it. "I am convinced," continues the revolutionary opponent of intellectual and commercial progress, " that temperate remedies, such as the constitutional system in Piedmont, far from advancing the regeneration of Italy, can only retard it." Constitutional government is as hateful to these conspirators as absolute government ; the only reign to be tolerated is that of cut-throats, and the only principle worthy of acceptance is that of confiscation and plunder. The liberty which they desiderate is the liberty to deal with other people's goods as (hey think fit ; to seize upon property and give it to those who have none ; to establish an universal scale of profits and wages, and defraud the honest and sober workman of his earnings, for the advantage of the ignorant and idle sot.

Such is the "freedom" which these men seek who violate the sanctuary which they have obtained upon our hearth, and by way of recompensing British hospitality, would involve us in hostilities with our allies. For the sake of honest and prudent exiles who are among us, it is requisite that these dishonest and turbulent mischief-makers should be exposed. For the sake, too, of the reputation of our country, which is at stake, we should disclaim connection and sympathy with them. "In my opinion," continues Colonel Pisacane, " the domination of the house of Savoy and the domination of the house of Austria are the same thing ! I believe, likewise, that the constitutional system in Piedmont is more injurious to Italy than the tyrauny of Ferdinand II." This does not much surprise us ; for the conspirators, who hate commercial progress, scowl at improvements and manufactures, would break machinery and annihilate the electric telegraph, are the sort of men to prefer a bigotted and cruel despotism to the enlightened, chivalrous, and tolerant government of Victor Emanuel.

It is not enough to say that these men are mad. Lunatics should be kept from doing mischief. And it is only terrible mischief that such men as Pisacane are capable of. They must not be placed in the class of thoughtful and rational patriots who suffer in the cause of freedom. The instruction of a people is described by Pisacane as "an absurdity." "Ideas," he goes on to say, " are derived from facts, and not facts from ideas ; and a nation will not be free because it is educated, but it will very soon become educated when it shall be free. The only act a citizen can perform in order to be useful to his country, is to wait patiently for an opportunity to co-operate in a material revolution." That is to say, the duty of a good citizen is to resolve upon being as ignorant as possible, in order that he may be fit and ready for rapine and murder, the business of a "material revolution." The "patriot" Pisacaiie appears to have possessed the spirit of the "patriot" Jack Cade, who hung the clerk of Chatham because he was able to write his name : —

" Cade. Dost thou use to write thy name, or hast thou a mark to thyself, like an honest plain- dealing man? j " Clerk. Sir, I thank God, I have been so wel brought up that I can write my name. "All. He hath confessed. Away with him. He 's a villain and a traitor.

" Cade. Away with him, I say. Hang him with his pen and inkhorn about hia neck."

"Conspiracies, plots, and attempts at insurrection, are, in my opinion," says Pisacane, " the series of facts through which Italy is moving towards her object — unity." The ultra-democrats of France and Italy advance to their object by tumult and violence. They can hope to succeed in no other way. They abjure constitutions, and sneer at constitutional statesmen. They would establish the ascendancy of their own particular will. Intellect is ignored, and patriotism accounted of no use unless it can wield the dagger and the torch. Laws and learning, science and commerce, are accounted good for nothing, but to degrade patriots and strengthen tyrants. Such is, in effect, the confession of one of the most sincere and earnest promoters of the Italian insurrection. There is little difference in the character of these men's minds and that of the despots who are so bitterly and justly condemned. Give them power, and they would be equally arbitrary and cruel. The prosperity which attends successful commercial enterprise and continued peace, and the civilizing and refining effects of education, are considered worthless because they make people satisfied with their present condition, and defer that great revolution which is to establish the higher happiness, which can be conceived only by men who engage in its promotion. Constitutional kings, like Victor Emanuel of Sar-

dinia, are hateful to patriots of this great stamp, because they make their people happy the wrong way. Statesmen and philanthropists who guide society by the ordinary code of morals, rejecting the doctrines of communism, are traitors of humanity, forbidding the knave and the brigand to help themselves out of the honest workman's dish* It is for such men and principles as these that persons would have the British Government quarrel with their neighbours when the latter complain and say, it is not for England to allow those men to conspire and send assassins out from the asylum which they have found here to take away a Sovereign's life. The new plot against the Emperor Napoleon has occasioned a deeper consideration of this subject than it had before obtained ; for next to our own Sovereign, the life of the Emperor of the French engages the interest and solicitude of Englishmen. England and France are newly-bound together in ties which all good men of both countries must desire to strengthen : arrd whilst England rejoices in a firm and faithful friend, France beholds her glory raised from the dust, and her material interests prospering, under the wise and judicious government of its emperor. It is a folly to say that France desires a change. The recent elections have proved that the heart of France is faithful to Napoleon the Third. And England will neither countenance nor give shelter to men who conspire his overthrow. They are numerically and intellectually insignificant ; but as an infant's breath applied to a spark may set a town on fire, their proceedings are not to be treated with indifference. They must be stopped. There must be no conspiracies formed here against an ally so firm and sincere as the Emperor of the French.