Cavour

E-text prepared by the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading
Team from images provided by the Million Book Project
1898
Italia, ab exteris liberanda .
Motto of Pope JULIUS II.
'Je suis italien avant tout et c'est pour faire jouir a mon pays du self government à l'interieur, come a l'extereur que j'ai entrepuis la rude tache de chasser l'Autriche de l'Italie sans y substituer la domination d'aucune autre Puissance'— Cavour to the Marquis Emmanuel d'Azeglio (May 8, 1860)
The day is passed when the warmest admirer of the eminent man whose character is sketched in the following pages would think it needful to affirm that he alone regenerated his country. Many forces were at work; the energising impulse of moral enthusiasm, the spell of heroism, the ancient and still unextinguished potency of kingly headship. But Cavour's hand controlled the working of these forces, and compelled them to coalesce.
The first point in his plan was to make Piedmont a lever by which Italy could be raised. An Englishman, Lord William Bentinck, conceived an identical plan in which Sicily stood for Piedmont. He failed, Cavour succeeded. The second point was to cause the Austrian power in Italy to receive such a shock that, whether it succumbed at once or not, it would never recover. In this too, with the help of Napoleon III, he succeeded. The third point was to prevent the Continental Powers from forcibly impeding Italian Unity when it became plain that the population desired to be united. This Cavour succeeded in doing with the help of England.
Time, which beautifies unlovely things, begins to cast its glamour over the old Italian régimes . It is forgotten how low the Italian race had fallen under puny autocrats whose influence was soporific when not vicious. The vigorous if turbulent life of the Middle Ages was extinct; proof abounded that the rôle of small states was played out. Goldsmith's description, severe as it is, was not unmerited—