“But, M. le Comte, have you not been a daring conspirator also?”
“I? Certainly,” replied M. de Cavour. “I have conspired, and how could I do otherwise at such a time?... We had to keep Austria in the dark, whereas, your emperor, you may be sure, will remain for ever incorrigible. I have known him a long time! To plot, for ever plot, is the characteristic of his nature. It is the occupation he prefers, and he pursues it like an artist—like a dilettante. In this rôle he will always be the foremost and most capable of us all.”[249]
Us all! Yes, there it is ably expressed in a word: all conspirators and accomplices, not to speak of the dupes. On the 24th of March, 1860, M. de Cavour, after signing the treaty that ceded Nice and Savoy to France, approached M. de Talleyrand, and, rubbing his hands, whispered in his ear: “We are accomplices now, baron, are we not?”[250] Alas! wrongfully acquired, and never any benefit, we now see why we have lost Alsace and Lorraine!
The entire route from Turin to Rome is marked by the deeds of these conspirators, by their tricks and intrigues, and by their crimes and double-dealings, which have resulted in the profit of Piedmont and Prussia, and the disgrace of our poor France. M. d'Ideville's conscience evidently reproached him at last for having liked Cavour so well, and for imprudently interesting himself in the Italian scheme. The other diplomatist, who has anonymously given his Etudes sur l'Italie to the public, seems never to have had the least sympathy with the iniquitous and sacrilegious ambition of the Sardinian government. It is true he does not belong to the French diplomacy infatuated with the ideas of '89![251] He finds nothing seductive in the policy of the conspirators. The fiction disguised under the attractive title of national rights, the age of annexations, the trick of the plebiscites, the system of moral agency, the so-called exigencies of civilization and progress, [pg 797] and the revolutionary messianism which constitutes the foundation of the Napoleonic ideas, have no attraction for him. His style is tolerably forcible when he speaks of all these stratagems: “Such tactics are nothing new. They have always been resorted to in order to palliate schemes of ambition and hypocrisy.”[252]
II.
A government given to conspiracy condemns the nation that supports it, as well as itself, to degradation—to moral and material ruin. If for a while it flatters itself with the hope of systematizing the revolution and directing its energies, it soon becomes its slave and finally its victim. When the hand is caught in machinery, the whole body is soon drawn after it, the head as well as the rest.
Our diplomatic traveller states some aphorisms in connection with this subject that are full of significance, and reveal the genuine statesman.
“A government that owes its existence to a revolution is not viable in the long run unless it has the power and wisdom to sunder all the ties that connect it with the party to which it owes its origin.
“Every government that has a similar origin to the Napoleonic Empire, and, still more, one which owes its existence thereto, will find itself in danger when traditionary principles once more assert themselves for the safety of society.
“Governments of a revolutionary origin have been known to become conservative and renounce their former principles of action. The Italian government may likewise wish to do this, but it cannot.