ey could work the
confessional, but even it began to be silenced by the powerful artillery
of the press. At an earlier stage they might have roused the peasantry,
and marched upon the Constitution, whose life they knew was the death of
their power; but it was too late in 1851. An attempt of this sort made a
year or two after, among the peasantry of the Val d'Aosta, turned out a
miserable failure. Thus, a movement which in other countries came
forward under the sanction of the priesthood, from the very outset in
Piedmont took a contrary direction, and set in full against the Church.
Since that day liberty has been working itself, bit by bit, into the
action of the Constitution, and the feelings of the people; and now, I
believe, neither King nor Parliament, were they so inclined, could put
it down.

The sum of the matter then is, that of all the kingdoms which the era of
1848 started in the path of free government, the brave little State of
Piedmont alone has persevered to this day. Amid the wide weltering sea
of Italian anarchy and despotism, here, and here alone, liberty finds a
spot on which to plant her foot. Again we ask, why is this? There is
nothing in the past history of the country,--nothing in the present
state of the nation,--which can account for it. We must look elsewhere
for a solution; and we do not hesitate to avow our firm conviction, that
a special Providence has shielded the Constitution of Piedmont, because
with that Constitution is bound up the liberties of the ancient martyr
Church of the Vaudois. It was the only one of the Italian Constitutions
that carried in it so sacred a guarantee of permanency. On the 17th of
February 1848 (the day is worth remembering), Charles Albert, by a royal
edict, admitted the Waldenses to the enjoyment of all civil and
political rights, in common with the rest of their fellow-subjects. Now,
for the first time in a thousand years, the trumpet of liberty sounded
amid the Vaudois valleys; and the shout of joy which the Alps sent back
seemed like the first response to the prayer which had so often ascended
from these hills, "How long, O Lord." Would not Sodom have been spared
had ten righteous men been found in it? and why not Piedmont, seeing the
Waldensian Church was there? Yes, Piedmont is the little Zoar of the
Italian plains! Little may its people reck to whom it is they owe their
escape. It is nevertheless a truth that, but for the poor Vaudois, whom,
instigated by t