dge the new kingdom of Italy. In all this there was a want of
sincerity. Count Cavour, Prince Napoleon and the Emperor, were perfectly
agreed that the Holy Father was, in due course of time, to be given up to
his enemies.

(M79) In order to prepare the world for this consummation of
Franco-Sardinian policy, there appeared a new pamphlet, entitled _La
France, Rome et l'Italie_. It was signed by M. de la Gueronniere, and
published on the 7th day of March. It was suggested, if not actually
written, by the Emperor himself. The allocution already alluded to, dealt
by anticipation with the chief points of this publication. It was,
however, directly replied to in a letter of the eminent Cardinal
Antonelli, to the Papal Minister at Paris. The cardinal begins by stating
that the chief object of the pamphlet was "to throw on the Holy Father and
his government the responsibility of the condition to which Italy and the
Pontifical States in particular were reduced." He then proceeds lucidly,
logically, and not without eloquence, to attack all the positions assumed
by the writer, and exposes the treachery, baseness and duplicity of the
principal adversaries of the Holy See in its long struggle with
revolutionary Piedmont, supported as it was by the Emperor Napoleon III.
It will be recollected that it had been proposed, indeed it was one of the
articles of the treaty of Zurich, that there should be a confederation of
the States of Italy. The writer of the pamphlet audaciously accused the
Pope of having rejected the plan of an Italian confederacy, just as if he
and not the Emperor and his ally, the King of Piedmont, had violated the
treaty which succeeded the battle of Solferino. "The official proposition
of such a confederacy," the cardinal states, "and of its presidency came
only after the preliminaries of Villafranca and the treaty of Zurich; and
the Holy Father showed himself disposed to accept it as soon as its basis
should be defined. The author, nevertheless, says that it was then too
late. He does not, in saying so, seem to perceive that he seriously
insults his own sovereign, as if he and the other Powers had proposed as
the basis of a solemn treaty and the great means of conciliation, a thing
which was at that moment neither possible nor opportune. Be that as it
may, it was only then that the proposition was made by the person
authorized to make it; and it is unjust to pretend that his Holiness had
taken any action thereon bef