nd
policy of the new king were unknown; but the probability was that he
would follow the example of his brother sovereigns of Italy, all of whom
had begun to revoke the Constitutions which they had so recently
inaugurated with solemn oaths. Happily these fears were not realized.
The new perils passed over, and left the Constitution unscathed. King
Victor Immanuel,--a constitutional monarch simply by accident,--turned
out a good-natured, easy-minded man, who loved the chase and his country
seat, and found it more agreeable to live on good terms with his
subjects, and enjoy a handsome civil list,--which his Parliament has
taken care to vote him,--than to be indebted for his safety and a
bankrupt exchequer to the bayonets of his guards. Thus marvellously,
hitherto, in the midst of dangers at home and re-action abroad, has the
Piedmontese charter been preserved. I dwell with the greater minuteness
on this point, because on the integrity of that charter are suspended
the civil liberties of the Church of the Vaudois. When I was in Turin
the Constitution was three years old; but even then its existence was
exceedingly precarious. The King could have revoked it at any moment;
and there was not then, I was assured by General Beckwith,--who knows
the state of the Piedmontese nation well,--moral power in the country to
offer any effectual resistance, had the royal will decreed the
suppression of constitutional government. "But," added he, "should the
Constitution live three years longer, the people by that time will have
become so habituated to the working of a free Constitution, and public
opinion will have acquired such strength, that it will be impossible for
the monarch to retrace his steps, even should he be so inclined." It is
exactly three years since that time, and the state of the Piedmontese
nation at this moment is such as to justify the words of the sagacious
old man.

The first grand difficulty in the way of the Constitution was, the
numbers and power of the priesthood. In no country in Europe,--not even
in France and Austria, when their size is compared,--were the benefices
so numerous, or their holders so luxuriously fed. Piedmont was the
paradise of priests. The ecclesiastical statistics of that kingdom,
furnished to the French journal _La Presse_, on occasion of the
introduction of the bill for suppressing the convents, on the 8th of
January 1855, reveals a state of things truly astonishing.
Notwithstanding that