have
passed is this, that every poor plant of freedom which they had spared
has been uprooted by the unsparing hand of despotism. From the
republic of Cracow, poor remnant of Poland, swallowed by Austria, down
to the freedom of the press guaranteed to Germany, but reduced to such
a condition that, in the native land of Guttenberg, not one square yard
of soil is left to set a free press upon, everything that was not evil
in those inviolable treaties has been trampled down, to the profit of
despotism, of concordats, of Jesuits, and of benighting darkness. And
all these violations of the inviolable treaties were accomplished
without England's once shaking her mighty trident to forbid them. And
shall it be recorded in history that when the question is how to drive
Austria from Italy, when the natural logic of this undertaking might
present my own native country with a chance for that deliverance to
which England bade God-speed with a mighty outcry of sympathy rolling
like thunder from John O'Groat's to Land's End,--that deliverance for
which prayers have ascended, and are ascending still, to the Father of
mankind from millions of British hearts,--shall it be recorded in
history that at such a time, that under such circumstances, England
plunged into the horrors and calamities of war, nay, that she took
upon herself to make this war prolonged and universal, for the mere
purpose of upholding the inviolability of those rotten treaties in
favor of Austria, good for nothing on earth except to spread darkness
and to perpetuate servitude?

"There you have that Austria in Piedmont carrying on war in a manner
that recalls to memory the horrors of the long gone-by ages of
barbarism. You may read in the account furnished to the daily papers,
by their special correspondents, that the rigorously disciplined
soldiers of Austria were allowed to act the part of robbers let loose
upon an unoffending population, to offer violence to unprotected
families, to outrage daughters in the presence of their parents, and
to revel in such other savage crimes as the blood of civilized men
curdles at hearing and the tongue falters in relating. Such she was
always--always. These horrors but faintly reflect what Hungary had
to suffer from her in our late war. And shall it be said that England,
the home of gentlemen, sent her brave sons to shed their blood and to
stain their honor in fighting side by side with such a _soldatesca_ for
those highway