LETTER XXI.
Insurrection of 1831.—Occupation of Ancona by the French.
If a revolutionary spark is lighted up any where in Europe, the fire bursts forth in Italy. The misgovernment above mentioned is the cause that latterly Romagna has been the centre of these insurrectionary movements, but there has never been sufficient union or strength to secure success. When the French revolution of 1830 occurred, the surviving Carbonari and the heads of other secret societies believed that the moment was propitious to their designs. The government of Louis-Philippe, desirous of drawing away from France the storm that brooded over her from Russia and Austria, excited two unfortunate enslaved countries, Poland and Italy, to rebel. It proclaimed the principle of non-intervention. Marshal Soult exclaimed in the Chamber of Peers:—“The principle of non-intervention shall henceforth be ours; but on condition that it shall be respected by others.” These
