njoyed for the last ten years, was incapable of
handing over three millions of Italians to reaction, lawlessness, and
misery. If he had firmly resolved to put down the Republic at Rome, he
was not less firm in his resolution to suppress the abuses, the
injustice, and all the traditional oppressions which drove the
Italians to revolt. In the opinion of the head of the French Republic,
the way to be again victorious over anarchy, was to deprive it of all
pretext and all cause for its existence.

He knew Rome; he had lived there. He knew, from personal experience,
in what the Papal government differed from good governments. His
natural sense of justice urged him to give the subjects of the Holy
Father, in exchange for the political autonomy of which he robbed
them, all the civil liberties and all the inoffensive rights enjoyed
in civilized States.

On the 18th of August, 1849, he addressed to M. Edgar Ney a letter,
which was, in point of fact, a _memorandum_ addressed to the Pope.
_AMNESTY, SECULARIZATION, THE CODE NAPOLEON, A LIBERAL GOVERNMENT_:
these were the gifts he promised to the Romans in exchange for the
Republic, and demanded of the Pope in return for a crown. This
programme contained, in half-a-dozen words, a great lesson to the
sovereign, and a great consolation to the people.

But it is easier to introduce a Breguet spring into a watch made when
Henri IV. was king, than a single reform into the old pontifical
machine. The letter of the 18th of August was received by the friends
of the Pope as an "insult to his rights, good sense, justice, and
majesty!"[13] Pius IX. took offence at it; the Cardinals made a joke
of it. This determination, this prudence, this justice, on the part of
a man who held them all in his hand, appeared to them immeasurably
comical. They still laugh at it. Don't name M. Edgar Ney before them,
or you'll make them laugh till their sides ache.

The Emperor of Austria never committed the indiscretion of writing
such a letter as that of the 18th of August. The fact is, the Austrian
policy in Italy differs materially from ours.

France is a body very solid, very compact, very firm, very united,
which has no fear of being encroached upon, and no desire to encroach
on others. Her political frontiers are nearly her natural limits; she
has little or nothing to conquer from her neighbours. She can,
therefore, interfere in the events of Europe for purely moral
interests, without views of conque