Cavour Part 2

Self-love might, he concluded, warp his judgment, but he had the intimate conviction that, if he had held the reins of power, he could have saved the country without any effort of genius, and planted the Italian flag on the Styrian Alps. But his friends joined with his foes to keep him out of power, and he had pa.s.sed his time in deploring faults which it would have been very easy to avoid.

Remembering what Cavour afterwards accomplished, these are words which should not be set lightly aside. Yet it is possible that the complete disaster into which Charles Albert rushed at Novara was the only thing to save the country and to lay the foundations of Italian unity. The king was more eager for war than the most unthinking democrat. Reviled by all parties, he sought the great conciliator, death. "The Italians will never trust me," he exclaimed. "My son, Victor, will be king of Italy, not I." When the death he would have chosen was denied him, he went away, a crownless exile. He could do no more.

It was necessary, as Charles Albert had seen, that the king who was to carry out the destinies of Italy should be trusted. Victor Emmanuel came to the throne with few advantages; he was unpopular, his private friends were said to be reactionaries, his brusque manners offended most people. He had practically no advisers in these critical moments, but the moral courage with which he refused the Austrian offers of lenient terms if he would repudiate the Statute and his father's word, won for him the nation's trust, which he never lost. Cavour, with all his genius, could not have made the kingdom of Italy if the Italians had doubted their king.

CHAPTER IV

IN PARLIAMENT

The condition of Italy, Cavour said, was worse at the end of the year's struggle than at the beginning. Such was the case, if the present only were looked at. When Austria resumed her sway in Lombardy and Venetia she resumed it by the right of the conqueror, a more intelligible, and in a sense a more legitimate, right than that derived from bargains and treaties in which the population had no voice. The House of Hapsburg was saved in Italy by one loyal servant, Radetsky, and in Hungary by the Ban of Croatia and 200,000 Russians.

Besides the regained supremacy in the Lombardo-Veneto, Austria was more predominant in the centre and south than in the palmiest days of the Holy Alliance. A keen observer might have held that she was too predominant to be safe. Talleyrand always said that if Italy were united under Austria she would escape from her, not sooner or later, but in a few years. There was not political unity, but there may almost be said to have been moral unity. Even in Rome, in spite of the French garrison, Austrian influence counted for much more than French.

When Victor Emmanuel gave the premiership to Ma.s.simo d'Azeglio, Cavour remarked that he was glad of the appointment, and equally so that D'Azeglio had not asked him to be his colleague, because in the actual circ.u.mstances it seemed to him difficult or impossible to do any good.

D'Azeglio could not have offered Cavour a portfolio without undoing the effect of his own appointment, by which confidence in Victor Emmanuel was confirmed. The king was not sufficiently known for it to be wise to place beside him an unpopular man, a suspected _codino_, the nickname ("pig-tail") given to reactionaries. D'Azeglio, who was really prepared to go far less far than Cavour, was almost loved even by his political enemies, a wonderful phenomenon in Italy. His patriotism had been lately sealed by the severe wound he received at Vicenza. To rigid principles he added attractive and chivalric manners, which smoothed his relations with the young king, who, if brusque himself, did not like brusqueness in others.

Cavour retired, as became his wont, to enjoy the sweetness of rural leisure at Leri: for him the sovereign remedy to political disquietude. The well-cultivated fields, the rich gra.s.s lands, in the contemplation of which he took a peaceful but lively satisfaction, restored as usual his mental equilibrium, and brought back the hopefulness of his naturally sanguine temperament. Before long he was exhorting his friends to be of good cheer; while liberty existed in a single corner of the peninsula there was no need to despair; if Piedmont kept her inst.i.tutions free from despotism and anarchy, these would be the means of working efficaciously for the regeneration of the country. To those who went to see him he said, rubbing his hands (a sure sign that he was regaining his spirits), "We shall begin again, and, profiting by past mistakes, we shall do better next time."

Probably he foresaw that "next time" he would have the game in his own hands.

The king had done his part by proving his resolve to uphold the const.i.tution, but all danger for liberty in Piedmont did not cease there. The members of the party which had ruled during the earlier years of Charles Albert's reign did not give themselves up for lost.

They cherished the hope of using the const.i.tution to overturn liberty.

On the face of things, the moral to be drawn from recent history was for and not against them. They could say that the only patent consequence of the change of system was that the country had been plunged in disaster, that blood and money had been wasted with no other effect than a bankrupt exchequer, a beaten army, trade at a standstill, misery stalking through the land. This party, which was by no means weak, could reckon on the compact support of Savoy, where Italian patriotism was as scarce as true and chivalric attachment to the royal house was abundant. Above all, it had the support of the whole power of the Church, which, through its corporations and religious orders and its army of priests, exercised an influence in Piedmont unparalleled in Austria or in Spain. If the liberal inst.i.tutions of the country were to be preserved, it was necessary to strike a blow at this party by weakening the arch on which it reposed.

Religious toleration had been proclaimed in Piedmont as one of the first reforms, the concession having been obtained from Charles Albert by the Marquis Robert d'Azeglio, a conservative and a profoundly convinced Catholic, but a lover of justice and mercy, who esteemed it the happiest day of his life when, through his interposition, the faithful Vaudois were granted the rights of free citizens. But legislation had not yet touched the extraordinary privileges arrogated to itself by the Church. One of these, the _Foro ecclesiastico_, a special court for the judgment of ecclesiastical offenders against the common law, it was now proposed to abolish. It was a test measure--like throwing down the gauntlet. Cavour had been re-elected when the king dissolved Parliament by what is known as the Proclamation of Moncalieri, and in the debates on the _Foro ecclesiastico_ for the first time he made his power felt in the Chamber. He spoke as one who had long thought out the subject and had chosen his policy: "Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and to G.o.d the things which are G.o.d's."

At this first stage in the long struggle the Roman curia might have settled the matter in a friendly way, but it would not. Cardinal Antonelli replied to a respectful invitation, that "the Holy Father was ready to go to the ante-chamber of the devil's house to please the king of Sardinia, but he really could not go inside." Yet, at the same date, the Archbishop of Paris (Sibour) admitted to a Piedmontese visitor that the Sardinian Government had no option under the new inst.i.tutions but to establish the equality of all citizens before the law, and in Austria they were laughing at the progressive monarchy in its laborious efforts to obtain reforms carried out in the despotic empire by Joseph II. The reason that Rome refused to treat was that she thought herself strong and Sardinia weak. Writers on this period have too readily a.s.sumed that the Church, by the law of its being, must always cry "no compromise!" Of course nothing can be more erroneous. The Church has yielded as many times as it thought itself obliged to yield. What other inference can be deduced from the strange and romantic story of the suppression of the Jesuits? and, to cite only one more instance, from the deposition of bishops for extra-canonical reasons conceded by Pius VII. to the First Consul? The curia thought that Victor Emmanuel would end at Canossa, but he ended instead in the Pantheon. It should be remembered, however, that the quarrel had nothing then to do with the dispute between pope and king on the broader grounds of the possession of Rome. That dispute was still in the darkness of the future. Sardinia had not given even moral support to the Roman Republic.

In Cavour's able speech of March 7, 1850, he observed that his friends, the Liberal Conservatives, feared the erection of the priesthood into a party hostile to the State. Peace was precious, but too heavy sacrifices might be made even to it. He himself trusted that in the long run the priesthood would recognise the necessity to modern society of the union of the two great moral forces, religion and liberty. Europe was threatened with universal revolution; only large and courageous reforms could stem the tide. M. Guizot might have saved the throne of Louis Philippe had he yielded to the demand for electoral reform. Why had there been no revolution in England? Because the Duke of Wellington in 1829, Lord Grey in 1832, and Sir Robert Peel in 1846, understood the exigencies of their epoch, proving themselves thereby to be the first statesmen of the time. Uninfluenced by the furious attacks on him as an _Anglomane_, Cavour took the first opportunity of reaffirming from his seat in Parliament the admiration for English methods which he had constantly expressed outside. He closed his speech by appealing to Government to persevere in its policy of large and fearless reforms, which, far from weakening the const.i.tutional throne, would so strengthen its roots that not only would Piedmont be enabled to resist the revolutionary storm should it break around its borders, but also "gathering to itself all the living forces in Italy, it would be in a position to lead our mother-country to those high destinies whereunto she is called."

The effect of this peroration was inconceivable. Here was the first word of hope publicly uttered since the _debacle_! People in the galleries who had seen Cavour usually silenced by clamour and howls heard the applause with astonishment, and then joined in it. All the ministers rose to shake hands with the speaker. Any other man would have become popular at once, but against Cavour prejudice was too strong for a fleeting success to remove it. From that day, however, he was listened to. He was no longer a _quant.i.te negligeable_ in the politics of Italy or of Europe.

One of the ministers, Count Pietro di Santa Rosa, died within a few months of the bill on the _Foro_ becoming law, and the last sacraments were denied to him because he refused to sign a retractation of the political acts of the cabinet of which he was a member. Cavour was an old friend of Santa Rosa. He was present when he died, and he heard from the Countess the particulars of the distressing scene when the priest in the harshest manner withheld the consolations of religion from the dying man, who was a pious Catholic, but who had the strength of mind even in death not to dishonour himself and his colleagues.

Cavour wrote an indignant article in the _Risorgimento_ denouncing the party spite which could cause such cruel anguish under a religious cloak, and the people of Turin became so much excited that if the further indignity of a refusal of Christian burial had been resorted to, as at first seemed probable, the lives of the priests in the city would hardly have been safe. Everything seemed to point to Cavour as Santa Rosa's successor, but Ma.s.simo d'Azeglio felt nervous at taking the final step. He was encouraged to it by General La Marmora, the friend of both, who declared that "Camillo was a _gran buon diavolo_,"

who would grow more moderate when "with us." Cavour accepted the offered post of Minister of Agriculture and Commerce, but not without making terms. He exacted the retirement of a minister whom he considered incurably timorous, especially in ecclesiastical legislation. The point was yielded, but D'Azeglio said to La Marmora, "We are beginning badly with your _buon diavolo_." The good Ma.s.simo got no comfort from the king: "Don't you see that this man will turn you all out?" Victor Emmanuel casually remarked, or rather he made use of a stronger idiom in his native dialect, which would not well bear translation. The king refrained from opposing the appointment, but he did not pretend that he liked it.

About that time Cavour paid a visit to the Piedmontese sh.o.r.e of the Lago Maggiore, where he made the acquaintance of the author of the _Promessi Sposi_. Perhaps by reason of his poetic instinct Manzoni expected great things of him from the first. "That little man promises very well," he told the poet Berchet. And he opened his heart to Cavour, telling him that dream of Italian unity which he had always cherished, but which, as he said in his old age, he kept a secret for fear of being thought a madman. They looked across the blue line of water; there, on the other side, was Austria. Had Cavour said what he thought, he would have responded, "That is the first stone to move."

But he did not enter upon a discussion; he merely murmured, rubbing his hands, "We shall do something!"

To the end Cavour evoked more ready sympathy among men of the other provinces than among the Piedmontese, although these last came to repose the blind trust in him which the Duke of Wellington's soldiers reposed in their leader--a trust born of the conviction that he would lead to victory. Latterly this was Victor Emmanuel's own way of feeling towards Cavour. Sympathy was always lacking.

On taking office Cavour sold his shares in the agricultural and industrial speculations which he had promoted, with the exception of one company, then not in a flourishing state, and likely to collapse if he withdrew his name. He also severed his connection with the _Risorgimento_, which had cost him much money and made him many enemies, but he believed that the services rendered by it to the cause of orderly liberty were incalculable. He never regretted his years of work in the _antro_, the wild beasts' den, as the advanced liberals called the office of the journal, a name gaily adopted by himself.

As editor of the _Risorgimento_ he fought his one duel; a scandalous attack on the personal honesty of the writers was made by a Jewish financier in an obscure Nizzard sheet; an encounter with pistols followed in which no one was hurt, but both sides seemed to have aimed in earnest. There is a tragic absurdity in the possible extinction of such a life as Cavour's on so paltry an occasion; yet, in the surroundings in which he moved, he could not have pa.s.sed over the worthless attack in the silent contempt it deserved without being called a coward. At the conclusion of the duel he walked away, turning his back on his adversary, but no long time elapsed before, as minister, he was taking trouble to obtain for this man some honorific bauble which his vanity coveted.

On taking office, Cavour doubted for a moment his own future, the doubt common to men who reach a position they have waited for too long. In these times, he wrote, politicians were soon used up; probably it would be so with him. But the work of his department dispelled gloomy thoughts: as Minister of Commerce he negotiated treaties with France, England, and Belgium in which a step was made towards realising his favourite theories on free trade. Before long he was also made Minister of the Marine; it was taken for granted that he could do as much work as two or three other men. Though both these offices were secondary, Cavour became insensibly leader of the house.

Questions on whatever subject were answered by him, and he was not careful to consult his chief as to the tenor of his replies. Ma.s.simo d'Azeglio said with a rueful smile that he was now like Louis Philippe: he ruled, but did not govern. Cavour stated his own opinions, whether they were popular or unpopular, consonant with those of his party or directly opposed to them. A deputy asked Government to interfere with the mode and substance of the teaching in the seminaries. Cavour immediately answered that he would hold such interference to be a most fatal act of absolutism; the person to control the instruction given in the seminaries was the bishop; let bishops play the part of theologians, not of deputies, and let the Government govern, and not play the theologian. Some one pointed out that this was quite at variance with what had been said by the other ministers; Cavour excused himself towards his colleagues, but repeated that the principle was one of supreme importance. He had spoken "less as a minister than as a politician." And he never learnt to speak otherwise until there was a ministry in which (to borrow a once often quoted witticism) all the ministers were called Cavour.

The energy with which Cavour repudiated the idea of interfering with the seminaries is interesting on other grounds. Possibly he was the only continental statesman who ever saw liberty in an Anglo-Saxon light. This is further shown by the policy he advocated in dealing with the Jesuits. He did not like the Society, which he described as a worse scourge to humanity than communism. You must not judge its real nature, he said, by observing it where its position is contested and precarious. Look at it, rather, where it has a loose rein, where it can apply its rules in a logical and consequent manner, where the whole education of youth is in its hands. The result is _une generation abatardie_. But the remedy he proposed was not repression.

He wished to grant the Jesuits three, four, ten times the liberty they gave to others in the countries under their power. In a free country they could do no harm; they would be always obliged to modify and transform themselves and would never gain a real empire either in the world of politics or intellect The great Pombal, who may be called the Cavour of Portugal, took his conception of a free state from England, like the Italian statesman, but he did not understand that persecution is an unfortunate way of inaugurating liberty. This is what for Cavour was "a principle of supreme importance."

In April 1851 Cavour took the office of Minister of Finance; he had exacted the resignation of his predecessor, Nigra, as the price of his remaining in the Cabinet. The Minister of Public Instruction also resigned owing to disagreements with the now all-powerful member of the Government, and was replaced by a nominee of Cavour's, L.C.

Farini, the Romagnol exile, author of _Lo Stato Romano_, whose appointment was significant from a national point of view, notwithstanding his ultra-conservative opinions. Cavour mentioned that Farini's work had been praised by Mr. Gladstone, "one of the most ill.u.s.trious statesmen in Europe," at which the Chamber applauded wildly, as Cavour intended it to do. Ever watchful for any sign from abroad which could profit Italy, he was glad of what seemed a chance opportunity to provoke a demonstration in honour of the writer of the _Letters to Lord Aberdeen_ on the Neapolitan prisons, which were just then creating an immense sensation. In Italy Mr. Gladstone was the most popular man of the hour; in France, still calling itself a republic, all parties except the reduced ranks of the advanced liberals were very angry--not with King Bomba, but with his accuser. A harmless cousin of Mr. Gladstone was blackballed in a club in Paris on account of the name he bore. n.o.body ever had such a good heart as the king of Naples, Count Walewski went about declaring, in support of which he told Mr. Monckton Milnes that Ferdinand had recently granted his request to pardon three hundred prisoners against whom nothing was proved. "How grateful they must have been," replied the Englishman; "did not they come and thank you for having obtained their deliverance?" Taken off his guard and unconscious of the irony, Walewski made the admission that the three hundred were debarred from the pleasure of paying him a visit because, though pardoned, they were not released!

This little story was related to Lord Palmerston, in whom it fanned the fuel of the indignation roused by Mr. Gladstone's _Letters_, of which he had written that "they revealed a system of illegality, injustice, and cruelty which one would not have imagined possible nowadays in Europe." But he employed still stronger language against the Austrians, whose method of reimposing their rule in Lombardy had lost them all their friends in England, for the time at least, and had worked their foes up to the point of fury. Those were the days when they sang at Vienna:

Hat der Teufel einen Sohn, So ist er sicher Palmerston.

Lord Palmerston was coming to a conclusion about Italian matters; it was this: that, great as were the objections to the deliverance of Italy from the Austrians by French aid, yet it would be better for her to be delivered so than not at all. The same conclusion had been reached by Cavour, except that he would not have admitted unending servitude to be the alternative; he was too patriotic and too resourceful for that. He kept in view other contingencies: European complications, the organic disruption of Austria, even at that early date, the foundation of a German empire. But in 1851, as in 1859, the aid of France was the one means of shaking off the Austrian yoke, which was morally certain to succeed For him, however, the French alliance was only a speck in the distance. He did not think, as Lord Palmerston seems to have thought, that a French liberating army might be "very soon" expected in the Lombard plains. When Louis Napoleon swept away the impediments between himself and the Imperial throne, Cavour was less moved by the violence of the act than by the hope that its consequences might be favourable to Italy. The Prince-President tranquilly awaited the eight million votes which should transform him from a political brigand into a legitimised emperor, and Cavour left him to the judgment of his own countrymen. He saw no need to be more severe than they. It is easy to conceive a higher morality, but as yet it has not been applied to politics. As Cavour remarked, "Franklin sought the help of the most despotic monarch in Europe," and the a.n.a.logies in recent history do not require to be recalled.

An inferior statesman who, like Cavour, contemplated foreign aid as an ultimate resource, would have lost his interest and slackened his activity in home politics. It was not so with him. Before all other things he placed the necessity of consolidating Piedmont as a const.i.tutional State, and of preparing her morally and materially to take her part in the struggle when it came. If that were not done, a new Bonaparte might indeed cross the Alps in the character of liberator, but a free Italy would be no more the result of his intervention than it had been of his uncle's. Cavour was meditating the stroke of policy which gave him the power to carry out this work of consolidation and preparation. He ruled the ministry, but he did not rule the House and, through it, the country. The Sardinian Chamber of Deputies was composed of the Right Centre, the Extreme Right, the Left Centre, and the Extreme Left. The Extreme Right was loyal to the House of Savoy, but contrary to Italian aspirations; the Extreme Left was strongly Italian, but the degree of its loyalty was. .h.i.t off in Ma.s.simo d'Azeglio's _mot_ "Viva Vittorio, il re provisorio" ("Long live Victor, the provisional king"). There remained the two Centres representing the liberal conservatives and the moderate liberals--"moderate radicals" would be more correct, if the verbal contradiction be permitted. But neither of these single-handed could support a stable and independent government. Every ministry must exist on the sufferance of its opponents, and in terror of the vagaries of the advanced section on its own side. At any critical moment a pa.s.sing breeze might overthrow it. The only antidote to the recklessness or obstructiveness of extreme parties lay in dissolution; but to dissolve a parliament just elected, as Victor Emmanuel had once been forced to do already, would be a fatal expedient if repeated often. Any student of representative government would suggest the amalgamation of the two Centres as the true remedy, but so great were the difficulties in the way of this, that not half a dozen persons in Piedmont believed it to be possible. Cavour himself thought about it for a year before making the final move The acerbities of Italian party politics are not softened by the good social relations and the general mutual confidence in purity of motive which prevail in England. Hitherto Cavour and the brilliant and plausible leader of the Left Centre had not entertained flattering opinions of each other. Rattazzi thought Cavour an ambitious and aggressive publicist rather than a patriot statesman, and Cavour knew Rattazzi to be the minister who led the country to Novara. But he appreciated his value as a parliamentary ally; he had the qualities in which Cavour himself was most deficient.

Urbano Rattazzi (born at Alessandria in 1808) was famous as one of the best speakers at the Piedmontese bar before entering the Chamber.

He was a perfect master of Italian; his manners were popular and insinuating. He was richly endowed with all those secondary gifts which often carry a man along faster, though less far, than the highest endowments. If he had not power, he had elasticity; if not judgment, cleverness. He always drifted, which made him always appear the politician up to date. His name was then a.s.sociated with one catastrophe; before he died it was to be linked with two others, Aspromonte and Mentana; but such was his ability as a leader that he retained a compact following to the last.

Cavour rarely made a man's antecedents a reason for not turning him to account; but there was one point on which he required to be rea.s.sured before seeking an understanding with Rattazzi--this was whether his fidelity to the monarchy could be entirely depended on. Cavour's old friend and fellow worker of the _Risorgimento_, M.A. Castelli, who was acquainted with the leader of the Left, opportunely bore witness to Rattazzi's genuine loyalty, and Cavour hesitated no longer to come to an agreement which every day proved to be more imperative. After the _Coup d'etat_, the Extreme Right, led by the Count de Revel and General Menabrea, adopted the tactics of professing to believe untenable the position of a free State wedged in between the old despotism of Austria and the new one of France. The argument was ingenious and was likely to make converts. It was urgently necessary to form a new political combination which should reduce this party to impotence.

Cavour's compact with Rattazzi was concluded in the first month of 1852, but at first it was kept a profound secret. It was divulged, as it were, accidentally in the course of a debate on a Bill which was intended to moderate the attacks of the press on foreign sovereigns.

This was the only form of restriction which Cavour, then and afterwards, was willing to countenance. He held that the excuse for umbrage given to foreign rulers by personal invective published in the newspapers was a danger to the State which no government ought to tolerate. The Extreme Right and Left were immediately up in arms, the first declaring that the Bill did not go far enough, and the second that it went too far. Both affected to consider it the first step to more stringent anti-liberal measures--invoked by one side and abhorred by the other. It was then that Rattazzi made the announcement that although he did not mean to vote for this particular Bill, he intended to support the Ministry through the session which had just begun, if, as he believed, this Bill was an isolated measure, and did not indicate a change of policy. Cavour acknowledged the promise in words which left no doubt that a prior agreement existed between the two leaders. He repudiated the reactionary tendencies of Menabrea and his Savoyards, even, he said ironically, at the risk of so great a misfortune as that of losing the weak support which they had lately bestowed on Government, Count de Revel retorted that the Ministry had divorced the Right and made a marriage (_connubio_) with the party which drove Charles Albert to his doom and to an exile's death in a foreign land. The alliance between the Centres was henceforth known by the nickname thus conferred on it, which has been repeated since by hundreds who have forgotten its origin.

It is difficult to describe the sensation which this scene created, and no one was more astonished than D'Azeglio, who, with the other ministers, had been kept entirely in the dark. By all ordinary rules Cavour ought to have communicated with his colleagues before revolutionising the parliamentary chessboard. The more sure he felt of their opposition the less easy is it to justify him for taking so grave a step without their knowledge. On public grounds, however (and these were the only grounds on which Cavour ever acted in his political life), it was desirable that the _Connubio_ should be an accomplished fact before it was exposed to discussion. D'Azeglio was very angry, but he hated scandal, and he refrained from disowning the act of his imperious colleague. He was none the less determined never to sit in the same Cabinet with Rattazzi. One reason he gave for it was characteristic. The leader of the Left had debts, and was not in a hurry to pay them. When Rattazzi, through Cavour's instrumentality, was elected President of the Chamber, D'Azeglio felt again aggrieved.

Cavour, who began by treating his chief's antipathy to his new ally as a prejudice to be made fun of, and in the end dispelled, came to understand that it was insuperable. To cut short an impossible situation, he tendered his resignation, on which all the ministers resigned; but as the question was one of personal pique, the king commanded them to remain at their posts. Cavour applauded this decision. For the moment it was better that he, not D'Azeglio, should be sacrificed. They parted without ceasing to be private and political friends. Ma.s.simo d'Azeglio's nature was too generous to hear a grudge against the man who was to eclipse him.

Cavour profited by his reconquered liberty to go to France and England, a journey that relieved him of the appearance of wishing to hamper the Cabinet, which was quickly reconstructed without himself and Farini. On the eve of starting he went, as etiquette required, to take leave of the king, who made the not very flattering remark that he thought it would be a long while before he called him to power.

Cavour must have smiled behind his spectacles, but he naturally left time to verify or contradict the royal forecast.

CHAPTER V

THE GREAT MINISTRY

Cavour went abroad with the full intention of preparing for the day when his voice would be that of Piedmont, if not of Italy. He attached importance to personal relations, which helped him to keep in touch with European politics and politicians, and he was anxious to find out how the _Connubio_ was regarded by foreigners, among whom, till lately, Rattazzi had been looked upon as a revolutionary firebrand.

But thinking men abroad understood the reasons which had dictated the coalition. In London Cavour met with a friendly reception from Lord Malmesbury, who was then Foreign Minister, and who a.s.sured him that the English Government would be glad to see him back in office. With characteristic presence of mind he framed his answer to provoke a more definite p.r.o.nouncement. He could not, he said, return to office alone or abandon the party he had been at so much pains to create.

"Naturally," answered Lord Malmesbury, "you cannot return to power without your friends." Rea.s.sured as to the sentiments of one great political party, Cavour approached the other in the person of Lord Palmerston, than whom he never had a firmer political friend or more sincere admirer. Lord Palmerston saw the larger meaning of the experiment of freedom in Piedmont, and he was one of the first to see it. If that experiment succeeded, the Italian tyrannies were doomed; how, he did not discern, but the fact was apparent to him. He heard, therefore, with much interest what Cavour had to tell him of the gradual taking root of const.i.tutional government in the Sardinian kingdom, and he promised him the moral support, not of one party or another, but of England, "in pledge of which," he added, "we have sent you our best diplomatist." This allusion was to Mr. (afterwards Sir James) Hudson, whom Lord Palmerston had called back from the Brazils in the spring of the year, because by a singular intuition he guessed him to be the very man to help the Italian cause. It was intended to send him to Florence, but when he reached the Foreign Office, which Lord Palmerston had just vacated, he received instructions to go to Turin, a fortunate change of plan. No two men were ever better fitted to work together than Cavour and Sir James Hudson. Without ceasing to be particularly English and strictly loyal to the interests of his own country, the British Minister at Turin served Italy as few of her sons have been able to do. Beneath a rather cold exterior he concealed the warmest of hearts, and he had the power of attaching people to him, so that they never forgot him. It is greatly to be regretted that he left no record of the stirring years of his mission, which coincided with the rise and ascendency of Cavour.

Enchanted with the country, and "more _Anglomane_ than ever," Cavour left England for Paris, where he laid himself out to conciliate political men of all shades, from Morny to Thiers, who advised him to be patient and not to lose heart: "If, after giving you vipers for breakfast, you have another dish served up for dinner, never mind"--such was the diet of politicians. What Cavour once called "his powerful intellectual organisation" made an immediate impression on the Prince President, as he was still styled. Louis Napoleon cultivated an impa.s.sible exterior, but at bottom his character was emotional, and, like all emotional persons, he was susceptible to the magnetism of a stronger brain and will. Cavour summoned Rattazzi to Paris to present him to the future Caesar. "Whether we like it or not," he wrote at this time, "our destinies depend on France; we must be her partner in the great game which will be played sooner or later in Europe." A few weeks later Napoleon declared at Bordeaux that "the empire was peace," but like all intelligent onlookers Cavour received the statement with incredulity. Possibly the only person who believed in it was the speaker--for the moment; he may have thought that "bread and games" was a formula by which he could rule France, or rather Paris, but he was soon to find it insufficient.

Cavour sought out several of the Italian exiles who were leading a life of privation and obscurity in Paris, one of whom was Manin, the Dictator of Venice. With him Cavour expressed himself "very much satisfied, though his sentiments were rather too Venetian": sentiments which Manin sacrificed--a last act of abnegation--when he finally gave his support to Italian unity under Victor Emmanuel, carrying with him two-thirds of the republican party, who could brave the charge of changed allegiance if so incorruptible a patriot led the way. Cavour also saw Gioberti, "always the same child of genius, who would have been a great man had he had common sense." Gioberti, however, had made a great stride towards common sense, for instead of dreaming of liberating popes, he was now imagining a renovating statesman, and he had inscribed Cavour's name under his new portrait. In a book published in Paris, Gioberti drew the Cavour of the future with a penetration and a sureness of touch which would make a reader, who did not know the date, suppose that the words were written ten years later. Men of great talent, he said, rarely threw aside the chance of becoming famous; rather did they s.n.a.t.c.h it with avidity; and what fame more splendid could now be won than that of the minister of the Italian prince who should re-make the country? He fixed his hopes on Cavour, because he alone understood that in human society civilisation is everything, all the rest, without it, nothing. "He knows that statutes, parliaments, newspapers, all the appurtenances of free governments, even if they are of use to individuals, are miserable shams to the commonalty if they fail to help forward social progress."

He was willing to forgive him the generous error of treating a province as if it were a nation, when he compared it with the pettiness of those who treated the nation as if it were a province. He invoked some great and solemn act of _Italianita_ on his part, which should pledge him irrevocably to the national cause. Cavour was too little influenced by others for it to be safe to say that this was one of the prophecies which tend to their own fulfilment; still it is worth noticing that he read the pa.s.sage and was struck by it.

Cavour had scarcely returned to Piedmont when a ministerial crisis occurred through the rejection by the Senate of a far from stringent Bill for permitting civil marriage, which had pa.s.sed in the Chamber of Deputies. The situation was further complicated by the state of mind into which the king had been driven by the remonstrances of his wife and mother, both near their end, and by the answer which he received from Rome in reply to a direct appeal to settle matters amicably, the Pope having said, in effect, that he was not going to help him to legalise concubinage in his dominions. D'Azeglio, hara.s.sed on all sides and ill through the reopening of his wound, resigned office, and advised the king to send for Cavour. "The other one, whom you know, is diabolically active, and fit in body and soul, and then, he enjoys it so much!" he wrote to a friend, with the pathetic wonder of the artist, romancist, and _grand seigneur_, who had never been able to make out what there was to enjoy in politics. Victor Emmanuel followed his advice, but he allowed Cavour to see that he hoped that the new ministry would make up the quarrel with Rome. Cavour knew that only one path could lead to peace--surrender. Though anxious for office he declined to take it on these terms, and he recommended the king to call Count Balbo to his counsels; but Balbo, persuaded that a ministry only supported by the Extreme Right could not stand even for a few weeks, in his turn suggested the recall of D'Azeglio. Here the saving good sense of the king interposed; little as he liked Cavour he recognised that he was the only man possible, and he charged him, without conditions, with the formation of a ministry. D'Azeglio had fallen on a point on which Cavour was for and not against him; his successor desired to show that there would be no violent change of policy, and he therefore reconstructed the Cabinet as it was before, except for the change of head. He reserved for himself the Presidency of the Council and the Ministry of Finance. Rattazzi, who still occupied the Speaker's chair, was willing to wait for the present for a seat in the Cabinet, especially when he heard that the king, who was at first very hostile to the _Connubio_, had quite expected him to take office.

So the _gran ministero_, as it was called, entered upon its functions: great by reason of its chief, who infused his own life and vigour into what was before a weak administration. Cavour was a born man of business; he hated disorder in everything--except, indeed, dress, in which his carelessness was proverbial. He had not the common belief that, muddle them how you may, there will always be a providence which looks after the affairs of the State and prevents the collapse that would attend a private commercial enterprise conducted on the same system. He took in hand the financial renewal of Piedmont in the same spirit in which, when he had only just reached maturity, he volunteered to restore his father's dilapidated fortune. It was for this that he chose the Ministry of Finance: Piedmont, as he saw, could never sustain a national and Italian policy abroad without having first set its own house in order. He started with two principles: taxation must be increased and the resources of the country must be so developed as to enable it to pay its way without sinking into hopeless stagnation. It was a disappointment to some to see Cavour devoting himself with more ardour to putting on new taxes than to producing any of those decorative schemes for hastening the millennium which are expected from a new and ambitious minister. But, though ambitious, he cared for the substance, power--not for the shadow, popularity.

If there had been no other reason for the compact with the moderate liberals, the necessity for fresh taxation would have been a sufficing one. The Extreme Right and Left proposed to meet the existing difficulties by cutting down expenditure, but, if sound in theory, in practice this policy would have reduced Piedmont to complete impotence. While a part of the Left Centre voted with the extremists, it was only by the greatest efforts that a grant of 100,000 was obtained for the fortifications of Casale, which had been declared by the war minister, La Marmora, to be absolutely necessary for the defence of the State. The radical deputy Brofferio said that States wanted no other defence than the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of their citizens. From the Chamber, as then const.i.tuted, there was little hope of obtaining the imposition of new burdens, in part designed to meet Sardinian liabilities, but in part also to render possible the reorganisation of the army, which was urgently required if the future was not to witness disasters worse than those already experienced. Prince Metternich had said that, even if Piedmont were so troublesome as to persist in her liberal infatuation, she would have to keep quiet, at a moderate computation, for twenty years--just the time which it took her king to unite Italy. The two campaigns of 1848-1849 and the war indemnity had cost about 300,000,000 frs. The annual expenditure was doubled. Added to this, the one source of wealth, agriculture, was almost ruined by the oidium disease which destroyed the vines, and by harvests so bad that the like had not been seen since the celebrated scarcity which followed the wars of Napoleon. As Cavour saved his father's property not by burying the last talent in a safe place but by laying it out in bold improvements, so now he did not fear to spend largely and even lavishly, not only on the army, but also on public works. He completed the railway system and employed what Brofferio called "a portentous activity" in extending the roads, ca.n.a.ls, and all the means of communication which could stimulate industry. It must be remembered that Piedmont was then lamentably backward; a long obscurantist _regime_, succeeded by war and havoc, had left her dest.i.tute of all the accessories of modern life. This was changed as if by the wand of the magician. In his first budget, Cavour put on new taxes to the amount of 14,000,000 frs., one being the so-called tax on patents, or on the exercise of trades and professions, which excited much adverse criticism. At the same time he reduced the salt tax and initiated several free-trade measures, to be ultimately crowned by the abolition of the corn laws. On the whole, however, his line of policy was not such as would recommend itself to the crowd, and in October 1853 a furious mob attacked the Palazzo Cavour, repeating the old cry that the minister was a monopolist who robbed the poor of their bread.

Luckily the doors were barred, but next day Cavour was threatened as he walked along the streets. Just then the Ministry of Justice fell vacant, and it was offered to Rattazzi, who, to his credit be it said, did not hesitate to take office at a time when the head of the Government was the target of unscrupulous abuse, and it was even thought that his life was in danger. Rattazzi was afterwards transferred to the Home Ministry, which he held till the _Connubio_ broke up, more on personal than on political grounds, in 1858.

Though Cavour's alliance with Rattazzi was not eternal, it lasted till it had served its purpose. By help of it he imposed his will on king and country until he was strong enough to impose it by force of his own commanding influence. He always considered the _Connubio_ one of the wisest acts of his political life. It is not uncommon to hear it still denounced in Italy as the origin of the political demoralisation, the mixing up of private and public interests, the lack of fixed principles; which later times have witnessed. If the fact were admitted, it would not show that Cavour could have governed in any other way. Had the country trusted him from the first it would have been different, but the country did not trust him. Even after the combination of the two Centres, whenever there was a general election it was doubtful if the Government would obtain a working majority. The accusation of corruption was frequently made against the Ministry in general and Rattazzi in particular, since it was he who presided over the electoral campaigns. Of corruption in the literal sense there was probably little, but const.i.tuencies were led to believe that it would be to their advantage to return the ministerial candidate. On one occasion Rattazzi tried to prove that such hints did not const.i.tute "interference." Cavour got up in the course of the same debate and not only acknowledged the "interference," but said that without it const.i.tutional government in Piedmont would collapse. His biographers have preferred to be silent on this subject, but he would have despised a reserve which conceals historical facts. The apathy of one section of the electors, the fads and jealousies of another, the feverish longing to pull down whomsoever was in power, inherited from a great revolutionary crisis, the indefatigable propaganda of clerical wire-pullers, all tended to the formation of parliaments so composed as to bring government to a standstill. The result of a protracted interruption might be the fall of the const.i.tution itself, or it might be civil war. Cavour took the means open to him to prevent it, and, whether he was right or wrong, his career cannot be judged if the difficulties with which he had to cope are kept out of sight.