Mr. Marsh to Mr.
Seward.
No. 140.]
Legation of the United States,
Florence,
May 21, 1866.
Sir: Before this reaches you, you will have
learned from nearer sources of the formal proposal of a congress for the
settlement of the German and Austro-Italian questions, and, perhaps, the
result also of the proposal.
The enclosed slip of the Nazione, of this morning, contains all that is
publicly known on the subject at this city.
[Page 111]
Although the cession of Venetia is a probable result of the congress, I
have little hope that Italy will carry this point without yielding to
sacrifices very injurious, if not fatal, to the realization of the
enthusiastic hopes of the Italian people.
I believe she will be required to renounce her claims to the patrimony of
St. Peter; perhaps, also, to the territory of the ecclesiastical states,
which were annexed in 1860, if not to give up Naples and accept the
Napoleonic project of an Italian confederation presided over by the
Roman Pontiff.
No people was ever better prepared for a national war, so far as its
moral status goes, than Italy is at this moment, and I should not be
surprised if a political disappointment at this crisis should produce
effects of a character to hazard the peace of Europe, and to lead either
to the triumph of a truly Italian policy, or to the overthrow of the
present government.
I have the honor to be, sir, your obedient servant,
Hon. William H. Seward,
Secretary of State, Washington, D. C.
[Translation.]
A despatch from Paris of the 18th, to the Venice Gazette, says:
We make the following extract from La Presse: Prussia and Italy will
accept the congress with a preliminary programme. Whether Austria
will accept it or not remains to be seen; for she will lose Venetia
and her rights to the Elba duchies by it.
Latest News,
May 21.—The joint note of the three neutral
powers has not yet come to hand, for want of the assent of one to
the form of the note.
The questions to form a basis for the congress would be, first, that
of Venetia; second, that of the Elba duchies; third, that of federal
reform.
It is a fact of the greatest importance to us that Italy’s right to
Venetia be indirectly acknowledged by four of the great powers that
signed the treaties of 1815. Thus, morally, we have already
conquered.
Italy and Prussia have already consented to the congress, but Austria
delays, and hesitates to assume such a serious responsibility before
Europe.
The latest Parisian news informs us that the cabinet of the Tuileries
is endeavoring to assure other powers in relation to the views of
territorial acquisition attributed to it. Yet if the Emperor of the
French has declared, as our reliable correspondent asserts, that he
does not intend to ask a rectification of boundaries, it is not
strange that he courts the idea of reconstructing the Rhenish
confederation in some way, so as to effect a solution of the federal
question.
