Another important debate was raised by Lord Beaumont, on the 14th of May, on French intervention in Rome. The States of the Church had long been preparing for a revolt against Papal misgovernment. Pius IX. therefore determined to modify the policy of his predecessors, and a hapless scheme for satisfying the democracy, by appointing lay councillors to work with or check a priestly government was tried--the Pope refusing to bate one jot or tittle of his temporal authority. The lay councillors could only meet and debate. They could not initiate reforms. No sooner had this constitution been granted than the revolution swept over Italy, and the Romans demanded the same concessions as had been extorted by the Neapolitans. Concessions were given with the intention that they should be withdrawn. Rossi--once French ambassador at Rome--was made Prime Minister, and to extricate the country from financial embarrassment, he proposed to mortgage the property of the Church. He was, however, assassinated when entering the Capitol; and then the Cardinals began to retract the concessions which had been made to Liberalism. The people rose, insisting that the Pope should protect the Constitution, and assuring him of their fidelity. He then fled to Gaeta. Attempts to reconcile the Pontiff and his people failed. The Roman Republic was proclaimed, and peace established, when suddenly France interfered to restore his Holiness. It was to prevent France from having a pretext for interfering in Italy that Lord Minto’s mission was undertaken, and thus another failure had to be debited to Lord Palmerston’s foreign policy. Naturally Lords Aberdeen and Brougham taunted the Government with the failure of the Minto mission. But taunts were powerless to extort from Ministers a statement of their relation to the French expedition. In the House of Commons, however, those who objected to French interference with the Roman people succeeded in obtaining from Lord Palmerston an expression of disapproval of the course which France had taken; but that was all. Far and away the most important foreign debate of the Session was that which Mr. Osborne raised on the Austro-Hungarian question in July. Hungary had been crushed by the aid which Russia, unrebuked or unrestrained by the shadow of a protest from Palmerston, had given her Austrian masters; and the Liberal Party, always jealous of Austria as the representative of Absolutist ideas, were wrathful accordingly. But the discussion had no practical result. It was merely marked by a declaration from Lord Palmerston, which came too late to be useful, to the effect that the heart and soul of the country were enlisted on the side of Hungary.