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 Massimo 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
circumstances 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 grass 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 institutions 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
constitution, 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 constitution 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
institutions 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 God the things which are God'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
institutions 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 assumed 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
constitutional 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 _débâcle_! 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 _quantité négligeable_ 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 Massimo 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 Massimo
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 shore 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 passed 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. Massimo
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
génération abâtardie_. 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
illustrious 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. Nobody 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
analogies 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
constitutional 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 hit off in
Massimo 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 passing
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 associated 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 reassured
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'état_, 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. Massimo 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.