The Autobiography of a Journalist Volume II Part 10

Amongst the notable men whose friendship I gained at this period of my service was Von Keudall, the German amba.s.sador, one of the most human diplomatists whose acquaintance I have ever made. Like Dufferin, he measured exactly the distance to which a correspondent could be treated confidentially, without encouraging him to presume on cordiality. Introduced to him by Sir John Saville Lumley, I was treated as one of the diplomatic body, with the confidence which is so important to a journalist, and as long as he remained in Rome our relations were of the most cordial and unceremonious. Wishing to make me a confidential communication one day and the coast not being clear, he asked me, in the presence of others, if I had ever seen the view from the tower of the emba.s.sy, and, as of course I had not, he invited me to come and see it, and we had our conversation on the platform of the lookout with all Rome and the Campagna spread out before us, beyond the reach of others' hearing. Von Keudall was a power in Rome, and no amba.s.sador of any government in my time had the influence at court that he had.

During the period of Von Keudall's residence Lord Rosebery came to Rome, in an interval of being in opposition, and, as the late Secretary for Foreign Affairs, and probably a future occupant of the same post, it was important that in a brief stay he should see all the important people in the capital. Lady Rosebery, who was the most a.s.siduous and intelligent manager possible of her husband's interests, had sent for me to ascertain who were the people whom he should know in order to learn the true condition of affairs in Italy. Chief amongst them I put Von Keudall, but, as Lord Rosebery did not know him, and the custom of Rome is that the newcomer makes the first call, Lady Rosebery was in a quandary, her ideas of the position of her husband not consenting that he should make the first call on an amba.s.sador. At the last moment, for he was to leave Rome the midnight following, she begged me to tell her how the acquaintance could be made, without derogation of Lord Rosebery's position between two portfolios. "Give me his card," I replied, "and I will manage it." I had intended to ask Von Keudall for some information, and I made my visit, finding him engaged with a dispatch, and as I wrote a message on the business on which I had come, I added that Lord Rosebery was at the Hotel de Rome and was leaving that night, and left his lordship's card with mine. When I got back to the hotel I found Von Keudall's carriage at the door and him closeted with Lord Rosebery. And certainly no man could then have told the English statesman the state of things in Italy so well as the large-hearted German amba.s.sador, who enjoyed the confidence of every element in Italian politics as a sincere friend of the country. He was recalled later on account of a pique of Herbert Bismarck, whose untimely meddling with public affairs had, I believe, more to do with his father's fall than any act of the Prince. As an eminent German statesman put it, in a conversation not long after the recall of Von Keudall, "a Bismarck dynasty could not be tolerated." Von Keudall was succeeded by his ant.i.thesis, a nullity in court and country of whom even his fellow diplomats could say nothing in praise.

The Rudini ministry had no long life and merited no more, while that of Giolitti, which followed, ended in scandal and disaster. The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Brin, with whom alone I had had to do, was an honest, able, and patriotic man, and my relations with him were always excellent. The fall of that ministry coincided with the culmination of the financial and political disorders which were the direct consequence of the overthrow of Crispi and the demoralization which ensued. From the beginning of the financial embarra.s.sment which came to its crisis during the term of Rudini's government, I had devoted much attention to the financial situation and had predicted the crash when no one else foresaw it. But for Villari I should have been expelled from Italy on account of my letters exposing the situation, which created such a sensation that Rothschild wrote to a financial authority in Rome to inquire what truth there was in them, receiving naturally such a.s.surances as only hid the trouble. But when the crash came people said, "How did you know? What a prophet you were!" etc., etc. Tanlongo, the director of the Banca Romana, which led off in the crash, threatened the "Times" with a libel suit, and accompanied the threat by offers to me of personal "commercial facilitations" to drop the subject. The _argumentum ad hominem_ did not weigh, but it was desired in the office to avoid legal troubles and I was advised to keep a more moderate tone. The disaster came so soon after, however, that I got all the credit, and maintained abroad the prestige of a greater authority in Italian finance than I perhaps deserved.

It is true that honesty and courage are two things that a correspondent has no right to boast of, for honest editing and management presupposes them in him, and a conspicuous want of either cuts his career very short unless he is uncommonly clever; but as the result of my personal experience I may say that, having campaigned with many English colleagues, I have found them to be almost universally men of thorough honesty and unflinching courage.

Personality aside, I think I may be permitted to say so much of a profession of whose real character and besetting temptations no one can know so much as one of themselves, and of whom the general public knows very little.

The financial authority which thus accrued to me became of not unimportant influence a little later when the second scratch ministry broke up under the financial depression, with gold at 16 premium, the scandals of the bank affair oozing into publicity, and insurrection breaking out in Sicily and Tuscany, with movements pending in the Romagna, where the spring had come late and so saved the country from a great disaster. It became so clear to even the most benighted partisan that a strong hand at the Palazzo Braschi was imperiously necessary, that even the strongest Conservatives submitted in silence to the call for Crispi which came from all parts of Italy, and no section of the Chamber except the extreme Left, who were the prime movers in the insurrectionary movement, raised the least objection to the old Sicilian's return to the position from which the most corrupt and ign.o.ble intrigues had driven him hardly three years before, years of discredit and steady demoralization.

The disgraceful struggle for office then grown characteristic of Italian parliamentary politics now a.s.sumed the most shameful form that I have ever known. The general sentiment of the country was that Crispi should be given dictatorial powers, and one of the Venetian deputies, an ultra-Conservative, coming fresh from an audience with the King, said to me that Crispi ought to be made dictator and that the King had professed his readiness to confer that power on him; and the chiefs of all the factions that had been engaged in the conspiracy for his downfall in 1891 were among the most eager to enter his ministry, when the King finally gave him the call to form one, after having combined in the most desperate intrigues to effect some other combination. In the anteroom of the minister designate all the political world, personally or by deputy, was represented except the friends of the insurrection, who fought him by every device. I met there a Roman deputy who was one of the amphibious politicians that breed freely in Italian politics, who gave his right hand to Crispi and his left to Rudini, and who, under the impression that I had great personal influence with the old man, begged me to urge him to offer the portfolio of Foreign Affairs to Rudini. In fact, my defense of Crispi in the "Times" in 1891 and the fulfillment of my predictions of his inevitable and necessary return to office, at a moment when there was no one in Italy who did not consider his career at an end, gave me a purely fanciful importance as a counselor in the crisis and as having great weight with the minister.

The obsequiousness of the leading politicians at that juncture must have given Crispi a savage satisfaction for the contumely he had had to suffer in 1891, and there is no kind of question in my mind that, if he had then insisted as a _sine qua non_ on a dictatorship, he would have had it with the almost universal approbation of Italians out of office and the acquiesence of those who hoped to be in it.

Cavalotti, his most implacable opponent and personal enemy in disguise, in a session of the Chamber made a pa.s.sionate appeal to him to avoid Sonnino and take a ministry of one color, i.e. the Left, promising his entire devotion on such a concession. The hostility was sullen and masked, but purely parliamentary; the country at large would have been delighted to see the old man sweep the parliament out of existence, and I am convinced that he might then have played the role of Cromwell and received the support of nine tenths of all Italians. The Chamber had become nauseous to the nation.

I was cool enough to see that the key of the position was finance, for I knew that Crispi would make short work with the insurrection, and I knew also the full value of all the possible ministers of finance in the country, and their influence abroad. When I saw that the const.i.tution of the cabinet really hung on the disposition of that portfolio, I did not hesitate to say to Crispi that, while I could not pretend to any judgment as to the formation of the ministry at large, I could a.s.sure him that if there was to be a rehabilitation of the financial position of Italy abroad by his ministry, it could only be by the appointment of Sonnino to the Treasury. I said to him in so many words that Sonnino was as necessary to the restoration of the credit of the financial situation as he himself was to that of order.

The pressure in the Chamber was very great to induce him to take the finance minister from the Left and so move toward the const.i.tution of the government in accordance with the color of the majority, and Crispi was urged that way by most of his oldest and most faithful adherents, either unconscious of or indifferent to the influence of financial opinion through Europe on the stability or success of the ministry. I could see that he was hesitating and that the idea of reconst.i.tuting parties, which had always been one of his most cherished and important schemes, was very present with him, but I think that the conviction of the necessity of the restoration of the confidence of the financial publics of Europe finally prevailed with him, for he decided to offer the Treasury to Sonnino, to whose measures he subsequently gave the most thorough and loyal support, though some of them were the reverse of popular and not of possible effectuation without his earnest support. It is possible that my advice turned the balance in his mind, but it is, with one later exception, the only instance in which I ever ventured to advise him as to a political line of conduct, though I was generally credited with a good deal of meddling.

The conduct of the Italian factions and politicians during the two years of the second ministry of Crispi, the internecine war of intrigues to which the King lent a negative but effectual a.s.sent, and which ended in the disaster of Adowah, showed me that the Italian commonwealth is incurably infected with political caries, and that, though the state may endure, even as a const.i.tutional monarchy, for years, the restoration of civic vitality to it is only to be hoped for under the condition of a moral renovation, to which the Roman Catholic Church is an unsurmountable obstacle, because the Church itself has become infected with the disease of the state,--the pa.s.sion of personal power, carried to the fever point of utter disregard of the general good. The liberty which the extreme party in Italian politics agitates for is only license, and, with the exception of a few amiable and impracticable enthusiasts in the extreme Left and a few honest and patriotic conservators of the larger liberties towards the Right, there are nothing but self-seekers and corrupt politicians in the state. During the years of my residence in Italy, the strengthening conviction of these facts has dampened my early enthusiasms for its political progress and my faith in its future, and, retiring at the limits of effective service from a position into which I had entered with sympathy, I buried all my illusions of a great Italian future as I had those of a healthy Greek future. My profound conviction is that until a great moral reform shall break out and awaken the ruling cla.s.ses, and especially the Church, to the recognition of the necessity of a vital, growing morality to the health of a state, there will be no new Italy. The idle dreamers who hope to cure the commonweal by revolution and the establishment of a republic will find, if their dream come true, that to a state demoralized in its great ma.s.ses, more liberty can only mean quicker ruin. The court itself is so corrupted by the vices and immoralities which always beset courts, that it does not rally to itself the small cla.s.s of devoted patriots who cannot yet resign themselves to despair, and who find in a change of persons the possibility of a revival which they hope for rather than antic.i.p.ate, while it offends every day more and more deeply the equally small cla.s.s of honest and patriotic reformers of the Radical side in politics. The mortally morbid condition of public feeling is shown, not in the fact that the Hon. X. or Y. is an immoral man, but in that he is not in the least discredited by well-known immoralities which would banish a man from public life in England or America, and compared with which those with which Crispi was charged were trivial.

One cannot p.r.o.nounce the same judgment on Greece and Italy. The decay in Greece is economic and civic, poverty of resource and resources on one side, and on the other invincible insubordination, refusal in the individual to submit to discipline or sacrifice, the conceit of a dead and forgotten superiority which makes progress or docility impossible.

The measure of apparent renovation in Athens and some other points is owing to the influence and benefactions of the Greeks who have lived and prospered in other lands, where their natural mental activity has borne fruit, but the normal progress of the nation is so slight that it has no chance in the race of races now being run in the Balkans.

But the Greeks are preserved from a moral decay like that which threatens Italy by the domestic morality, due in part to temperament, but in part also to the influence of the clergy, who, if not scholars and wise theologians, are generally men of pure domestic morality and leaders of the common people. The Orthodox Church is national, lives with and for the people, has no political ambitions, and cannot endanger the state.

In Italy the danger is other. The Roman Church has long ceased to be a distinctly religious inst.i.tution; it has become a great human machine organized, disciplined like an army, for a war of shadows and formalities, but now employed in the conquest of political influence, a kingdom absolutely of this world. It is as much a foreign body in Italy (or France) as if it were the Russian Church; it has no part or lot in the well-being of the Italian people, and, so far as the central power of it is concerned, the Vatican and its councils, its only purpose is to acquire political influence for its own political aggrandizement, to the exclusion from its field of operations of all other creeds. For the attainment of this end it works with the single-eyedness which Christ recommended for other ends, to the neglect of all pressure on the people in the direction of common morality. The Pope, in the present case an amiable, excellent ecclesiastic, is only one part of this machine, and through him it speaks, saying, practically, to the Italian people, "Be what you please, do what you please; only in all things which we command obey us,"--obedience to the prescriptions of rites and ceremonies being, so far as my observation during my years of residence in Italy goes, considered as of far greater importance than the observance of the laws of s.e.xual morality, veracity, or common honesty. The rule of conduct of the parochial clergy has appeared to me to be to keep their influence over their flocks in purely ecclesiastical matters, and run no risk of straining that influence by interfering with their personal morality, or by making Christianity the difficult rule of life which it is in Puritan countries.

I have no hostility to Roman doctrine or dogma, for the distinction I make between the different forms of anthropomorphic religion is only one of degree, and I have so many personal friends amongst Roman Catholics in whom I see the fire of pure and living spirituality glowing through the forms and superst.i.tions of their creed that I cannot join in that indiscriminate denunciation which is common amongst Protestants. My experience in these matters has taught me that to certain natures the anthropomorphic forms of religion are a Jacob's ladder to that spiritual life which is the end of religion. Nor can I see that a little more or a little less of the credulity which is, in all human minds, mingled with pure faith in the Divine, can make a vital difference in the character of the religion, whatever it may make in the creed. The most earnest man is hampered by an heredity of credence that makes the conception of the Supreme Being a matter of an intellectual struggle which is to some minds insuperable, and to deprive such of the symbols which lead to a final comprehension of the truth is no service to humanity or truth. The suppression of the Roman Catholic religion in Italy, if possible, would be only to leave its place vacant for unreason and anarchy, for the intellectual status of the common people does not admit of a more abstract belief. For that evil influence, however, which a recent writer has designated as Curialism, which to-day has its seat at the Vatican, and whose aim and end are the absolute antagonism of all pure religion, I have no respect, and only the feeling due to unmitigated evil. It is a deadly political malady, malefic in proportion to its influence on the people; and, I fear, until Italy is freed from it, no progress or healthy political life or morality is possible.

For myself, the study of the system and a comparison of its relations with other religions completed that evolution of my religious ideal which I regard as the princ.i.p.al outcome of my life. The Roman Catholic religion is to me the _reductio ad absurdum_ of all anthropomorphic religions, and such a study of it as was there possible drove me to a logical conclusion on the whole matter, not by a sudden revulsion, but as the gradual and normal growth of a rational evolution of my conceptions of the spiritual life, starting from that stage of emanc.i.p.ation which my residence at Cambridge and the intercourse with the liberal thinkers there had brought me to; the influence of Norton, Lowell, Aga.s.siz, and Emerson especially. In this liberation I am aware of no sudden break in my belief from its crude acceptance of miraculous conversion and eternal d.a.m.nation for the unconverted, but a slow opening of my eyes to larger truths. If any individual influence other than those I have named came in, it would have been the reading of Swedenborg, which gave me a comprehension of what spiritual life was and must be; but Swedenborg himself had never been emanc.i.p.ated from the anthropomorphic conception of Deity. He was a seer, not a philosopher. Emanc.i.p.ation from ignorance will never be complete, and ignorance and even superst.i.tion have their divine uses as infancy has.

Once the idea of evolution as the law of life is accepted, the logical conclusion is the reign of law and the rejection of all miraculous interposition, and the perception of this fact by the clever schemers at the Vatican underlies the implacable hostility they show to science and evolution. If they could, they would have burned Darwin as they burned Giordano Bruno. They are, and they must ever be, as the condition of keeping up the existence and power of the Vatican and its peculiar inst.i.tutions, the enemies of mental emanc.i.p.ation. It is not ignorance which is the enemy of wisdom, but the pa.s.sion of domination.

The Roman Catholic Church with its hypothetical succession of Peter will exist forever, because the necessity of seeing through forms and of obedience to authority will endure as long as humanity endures, for certain orders of mind and certain temperaments; but the political problem of the existence of the Vatican in a free and united Italy, progressive and maintaining her place amongst the European powers, is one the solution of which I shall await with great interest, not regarding the triumph of the Vatican as possible according to its hopes, but not sure that the internecine struggle may not end in the ruin of both contestants, since the Italians have not the courage or the patriotism to accept the only safe measure, formal and complete suppression of all civic privileges for the Pope and his bishops--the relegation of religion to a place outside the organization of government.

CHAPTER XL

ADOWAH AND ITS CONSEQUENCES

The dolorous history of the defeat at Adowah, the decisive event in the decline of Italy, is an epitome of all the tendencies and weaknesses of the Italian nation; and, as I was more or less intimately informed of all the causes of it, the intrigues and treachery which made it possible, and as no Italian who knows the story will, for very shame, tell it, I will leave the record of what I learned and what I believe to be the indisputable facts.

When Lord Salisbury came to power in 1895, he renewed a compact with Italy and Austria which had been made when Crispi was in office in his first premiership, about 1888, for a common action in all questions concerning the Turkish Empire; and on the occasion of the Armenian ma.s.sacres he called for the execution of its provisions, sending the English fleet to Turkish waters and making a requisition on Austria and Italy for the support of their fleets. Crispi, who saw in the measure the longed-for opportunity of action in league with England, ordered the fleet to follow that of England, and prepared the mobilization of an army corps to cooperate by land. He had already revived the ancient hostility of France by the rejection of an offer of the French government, made at his accession to office, of all desirable friendly offices, a treaty of commerce, financial facilities, etc., if he would withdraw from the understanding with England as to Mediterranean questions. The entry into the plans of England for the Armenian question, which were diametrically opposed to those of Russia, provoked the active enmity of that power, with which Italy had until then been on friendly terms. Thenceforward Russia united her influence with that of France in creating difficulties for Italy in Abyssinia as the punishment of Crispi, and at the same time the means of paralyzing one of the members of the Triple Alliance.

Lord Salisbury, vacillating, as is his way, and under persuasion of the powers opposed to his action, consented to delay and negotiate, thus giving the Sultan time to prepare the defenses of the Dardanelles, making the _coup de main_, possible at first, then impossible, and necessitating serious naval operations, which were likely to involve considerable losses if the pressure at Constantinople were to be successful.

The abandonment of the inconsiderate scheme, initiated in obedience to a religious agitation and far too daring for a statesman of Lord Salisbury's nervelessness, having drawn Italy into such difficulties as the result of her obedience to his call, the least that Crispi could expect was that he would be supported by all the moral if not by the military power of England, whose influence in Abyssinia was very great. During the government of Lord Rosebery that influence had been distinctly exercised in favor of Italy, in opposition to that of France, and, when Crispi asked for the privilege of landing troops at Zeila, the English port for Abyssinia, in case of war, it had been accorded, giving Italy the advantage of a menace on the rear of all the positions of Menelek, which had in the early stages of the trouble been efficient. The Italian government had no intention of sending an expedition through Zeila to attack Harrar in any contingency foreseen, but the possibility of such a movement compelled Menelek to keep a strong force in Harrar and prevented the concentration which ultimately proved so disastrous at Adowah. The French government protested against the concession, but the English ministry refused to recognize the right of France to protest. Lord Salisbury withdrew the privilege, enabling the French agents to convince Menelek that England was hostile to Italy, and thus decided the question of peace or war between Abyssinia and Italy.

That the occupation of Abyssinia had been a folly had always been the opinion of Crispi, who, in the outset, opposed it in a speech which proved a prophecy of all the disasters which followed; and on his return to power I very strongly, in one of the two cases in which I attempted to exercise any influence on him, urged him to withdraw from Africa, but the old man's patriotic pride was too intense for him to consent to an abandonment of an undertaking in which Italian blood had been shed. "The flag cannot retreat," he said, and in fact public opinion was at that moment so strongly in favor of the maintenance of the colony that no ministry could have carried a proposal to abandon it. It has been the habit of the Italians since the disaster to throw the blame for it on Crispi, but I, who was always opposed to the undertaking, can testify that at the outbreak of war, and especially after the brilliant if slight victories won by the Italian troops in Africa, Crispi would have been defeated in the Chamber if he had proposed withdrawing. In the Chamber there was only the extreme Left which opposed the war policy, and the order of the day which was accepted by the government as the war programme was presented by the Marquis di Rudini, then head of the opposition, and carried by an enormous majority. As I was present at the sitting of the Chamber at which the vote was taken I do not speak uncertainly.

Baratieri had been recalled to Rome on the suspicion that he was intending to extend the conquest unduly, and I met him at a breakfast arranged by the Minister of Foreign Affairs to enable me to discuss the subject with the general. He then made the most unqualified declarations that he was opposed to all extension of operations, and that he did not ask for a man or a lira more than had been accorded to him by Crispi. Baratieri was a Garibaldian general, a daring and brilliant commander of a brigade at most, without a proper military education, but with some experience. He was a political general, however, a partisan of Zanardelli, who had been the most insistent rival of Crispi at the formation of a ministry in 1893, and he had been Zanardelli's candidate for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, his nomination having been protested against by Austria on the well understood ground that he was an Irredentist, that is, in favor of taking the Tyrol from Austria. In the battle of Coat.i.t, which inaugurated the hostilities, he had shown brilliant qualities as a partisan commander and had become very popular, so that to remove him, as Crispi had intended when he was recalled to Rome, was very difficult, the more as he protested his strict adherence to the defensive policy imposed on him by the ministry; but on his return it soon became evident that he cherished more ambitious plans than he had owned up to when in Rome, and Crispi soon saw that his recall was necessary. But Baratieri had now the support, not only of the common public favor, but of the entire court circle, which saw in him a convenient weapon against Crispi, and of the military party, and, through these, of the King, who refused to a.s.sent to the recall of the general when Crispi finally demanded it.

The premier was not supported in his insistence and pressure on the King by the whole of the cabinet, and the only practical method of getting rid of Baratieri was by increasing the forces in Africa to the number at which, by the regulations, a superior officer was necessary to command. The general chosen, Baldissera, a safe and competent commander, was already in Africa, at Ma.s.sowah, when Baratieri, warned of his supersession in spite of all the precautions to keep secrecy, precipitated hostilities against the distinct orders of Crispi never to attack a force superior to his own, so as to force the issue before he should be deprived of the command. A court-martial sat to try Baratieri, nominally, but its sentence simply concealed all the facts and covered the responsibility, which there was good evidence to show was morally if not technically divided between Baratieri and certain parties in the court and army cliques more desirous of overthrowing Crispi than of securing a victory. The mystery that hid all the details of the investigation that could fix the disgrace where it belonged, and allowed only unimportant transactions to appear, will never be dispelled.

Crispi was disposed to renew the struggle, for there was within a march of a day or two a larger Italian force than that which had been defeated, under a competent commander, and the losses of the Abyssinians had been so heavy that they were unable to advance, while the season of rain was so close on them that they must have retreated in a few days, even if not attacked, and if attacked in their retreat they must have abandoned all the fruits of their previous victory.

But to do this it was necessary to prorogue the Chamber until the operations were concluded, and this course was opposed in the cabinet; Saracco, the Minister of Public Works, threatening to resign if a further prorogation was decreed. The public panic was such that a partial crisis would have been the signal for an outbreak of disorders on the part of the parties opposed to the African policy, headed by the extreme Left in the Chamber,--a risk which several of the ministers were indisposed to face,--and the ministry resigned without waiting to meet the Parliament.

Civic courage in Italy is so low that any grave military or civil disaster, no matter on whom should fall the responsibility, entails a change of ministry, and in this case even the King abandoned Crispi, though the chief responsibility for the disastrous result of the campaign rested on himself. Humbert always retreated before any popular commotion. He never understood that the duty of the sovereign was to lend his moral support to his ministers so long as no const.i.tutional question was involved, or until there had been the expression of the will of the nation, deliberately formulated, and not by the accidental votes which in the Italian Chamber are oftener the result of conspiracies or panics than of any question involving a political measure. Parliamentary government in Italy is a caricature of the form, demanding for its safe working the most conservative influence of the Crown to control its action. But Humbert, by yielding to every gust of excitement in the Chamber which, even by a surprise, menaced the ministry, encouraged and developed the disorderly tendency and the strength of the subversive party which always profited by the disorders. Victor Emmanuel in a similar case quelled the anarchy by dissolving the Chamber; Humbert had never that degree of courage even when he knew that the disorder was directed against the monarchy, not merely against a ministry; and he is, more than any other person, the cause of the decline and anarchy in parliamentary government in Italy.

In the succeeding ministry the King had the unprecedented courage to refuse to accept Rudini and his programme, but admitted his inclusion in the ministry of General Ricotti, an old and admirable soldier and military organizer, who was resolved to begin his administration by a long desired and needed reorganization of the army, reducing its numbers and increasing its efficiency. On this point the King was inflexible, for he always refused to allow the army to be reduced organically, though he never refused to accept such a diminution of the rank and file as made it utterly inefficient for an emergency, so long as the _cadres_ and the number of officers were not diminished.

He sent a message to some senators who were in his confidence to the effect that the measure of Ricotti must be defeated there, as he could not count on its being rejected by the popular a.s.sembly. The senate rejected it, and Ricotti, unsupported by his colleagues, resigned.

The regime of half measures and little men returned. The accession of Victor Emmanuel III. may bring about a change, if the new King has statesmen to fall back on, but I do not see them amongst the old men.

The only man competent to a.s.sume an effective reconst.i.tution of the state is Sidney Sonnino, the Secretary of the Treasury with Crispi, but he is not a popular man, and, if he attempts to govern by the strong measures necessary, he will meet the same hostility which always a.s.sailed Crispi. Nothing less than the courage and abilities of a Cromwell could reform government in Italy, and, in the opinion of some of the wisest and most patriotic Italians I know, the task is hopeless and the decay inevitable.

Fully convinced of this myself, I could but lose that interest in the future of Italy which had always made residence there so attractive to me. Moreover, I had arrived at an age which rendered the proper performance of the duties of my position on the "Times" impossible.

Accordingly, I sent in my resignation and returned to England, where in such condition of social and intellectual activity as my years and circ.u.mstances permit, I hope to end my days, no longer a partic.i.p.ant in political affairs and content simply to live.