Another incident has instruction in it, still necessary and worth remembering in the political world. In 1872 I found in the Boston Globe, then edited by Edin Ballou, a circumstantial story by the Constitutional of that day, setting forth that Sir James Hudson, our Minister at Turin, begged Cavour to accord an interview to an English gentleman. When Cavour received him, he was surprised by the boldness, lucidity, depth, and perspicacity of his English visitor, and told him that if he (Cavour) had a countryman of like quality, he would resign the Presidency of the Council in favour of him, whereupon the "Englishman" handed Cavour his card bearing the name of Joseph Mazzini, much to his astonishment.
There are seven things fatal to the truth of this story received and circulated throughout Europe without question:—
1. Sir James Hudson could never have introduced to the Italian Minister a person as an Englishman, whom Sir James knew to be an Italian.
2. Nor was Mazzini a man who would be a party to such an artifice.
3. Cavour would have known Mazzini the moment he saw him.
4. Mazzini's Italian was such as only an Italian could speak, and Cavour would know it.
5. Mazzini's Republican and Propagandist plans were as well known to Cavour as Cobden's were to Peel; and Mazzini's strategy of conspiracy was so repugnant to Cavour, that he must have considered his visitor a wild idealist, and must have become mad himself to be willing to resign his position in Mazzini's favour.
6. Cavour could not have procured his visitor's appointment in his place if he had resigned.
7. Mazzini could not have offered Cavour his card, for the reason that he never carried one. As in Turin he would be in hourly danger of arrest, he was not likely to carry about with him an engraved identification of himself.
Nevertheless, the Pall Mall Gazette of that day (in whose hands it was then I forget) published this crass fiction without questioning it.