private citizen, but all the consciousness of his power had returned to him.  Some delay occurred in forming a new ministry.  Count Arese was first called, but his position as a personal friend of the Emperor disqualified him for the task.  Rattazzi succeeded better, but during the interregnum of eight or nine days Cavour was obliged to carry on the Government, and it thus devolved on him to communicate the official order to the Special Commissioners to abandon their posts.  He accompanied the order by a private telegram telling them to stay where they were, and work with all their might for an Italian solution.  Farini telegraphed from Modena that if the Duke, “trusting to conventions of which he knew nothing,” were to attempt to return, he should treat him as an enemy to the king and country.  Cavour’s answer ran:  “The minister is dead; the friend applauds your decision.”  Aurelio Saffi well said that “in these supreme moments you would have called Cavour a follower of Mazzini.”  The world often thinks that a man is changed when he is revealing what he really is for the first time.  It suited Cavour’s purpose to appear cool and calculating, but patriotism was as much a passion with him as with any of the great men who worked for Italian emancipation.

CHAPTER X

SAVOY AND NICE

The dissolution of Parliament by Lord Derby in June led to the return of a Liberal majority and the resumption of power by men who were open advocates of Italian unity.  Kossuth believed to his last day that this result was due to him, an opinion which English readers are not likely to share.  The gain for Italy was inestimable.  The Whigs had supported Lord Malmesbury in his unprofitable efforts as a peacemaker; but when the war broke out they had no further reason to restrain their natural sympathies.  Lord Palmerston especially wished the new kingdom to be strong enough to be independent of French influences.  Had the Conservatives remained in office there is no doubt that they would have supported the plan to constitute Venetia a separate state under the Archduke Maximilian, which was regarded with much favour by that Prince’s father-in-law, King Leopold, and hence by the Prince Consort.  The Liberal Ministry would have nothing to do with it.  Napoleon hoped, in the first instance, to shift the onus of stopping the war from himself to the English Government.  He wished the programme of Villafranca to emanate from England; but, as Lord Palmerston wrote to Lord John Russell, why should they incur the opprobrium of leaving Italy laden with Austrian chains and of having betrayed the Italians at the moment of their brightest hopes?  In the same letter (July 6), he pointed out that if a single Austrian ruler remained in Italy, whatever was the form of his administration, the excuse and even the fatal necessity of Austrian interference would remain or return.  They were asked to parcel out the peoples of Italy as if they