If by 'the principles of 1789' we are to understand the principles of modern constitutional government--and I know no other intelligible interpretation of the phrase--there is certainly no reason why anybody out of France should particularly concern himself with celebrating the adoption of these principles in France any more than with celebrating the adoption of them in England, or the United States, or Germany, or Spain, or Italy. The principles of modern constitutional government were certainly not intelligently adopted, and certainly not loyally carried out in France, by any of the governments which tumbled over one another in rapid succession in that distracted country between 1789 and 1815. Have they been intelligently adopted and loyally carried out in that distracted country to-day? That is a question, I think, not hastily to be answered! To ask the people of England, of the United States, of Germany, of Spain, of Italy, to unite in celebrating the principles of modern constitutional government, under the name of the 'principles of 1789,' at Paris, as if the world were indebted to Paris or to France for the discovery, and the promulgation, and the adoption of those principles, was really a piece of presumption which might have been pardoned to the fatuity of the Abbe Sieyes a hundred years ago, but was hardly to have been expected from educated Frenchmen in the year 1889. This was stated, with great good sense and commendable courtesy towards the French Government responsible for the absurdity, by the Italian Premier, Signor Crispi, in the Chamber of Deputies at Borne, on June 25, 1887. In reply to an interpellation of Signor Cavalotti, addressed to the then Foreign Minister of Italy, Signor Depretis, as to the intentions of the Italian Government with regard to the Universal Exposition of 1889 at Paris, Signor Crispi, then Minister of the Interior, made a striking speech (Signor Depretis being then ill of the disease of which he eventually died), in which he lucidly and forcibly gave the reasons of the Italian Government for declining to take any official part in the matter. He plainly intimated his conviction (which is the conviction, by the way, of a great many sensible people not premiers of Italy) that the business of Universal Expositions has been possibly overdone. But, without dwelling upon that point, he went on to show that it would be foolish for Italy to isolate herself from the other great powers by taking an official part in this particular 'Universal Exposition.' To the plea of Signor Cavalotti that liberated Italy ought to unite with France to celebrate 'the principles of 1789,' Signor Crispi thus replied; 'I agree with the honourable member that we are sons of 1789. But I must remind him that 1789 was preceded by the glorious English Revolution, and by the great American Revolution, in both of which had been manifested and established the principles which have subsequently prevailed throughout the world.'