aintained at Rome that French
garrison which prevented them from emancipating the States of the
Church from Papal control, and from completing the unification of
Italy. They remembered that Napoleon annexed Nice--Garibaldi's
birthplace--to France, and that the French _chassepots_ at Mentana
dispersed Garibaldi and his red shirts bent on capturing the Eternal
City. In the eighties, the Italians had good reason to suspect that
the French Clericals were busy devising some imbroglio through which
the Pope might be restored to the temporal power.

A convinced Gallophobe and crafty intriguer like Crispi, therefore,
easily inflamed Italian indignation, so recently excited by the
seizure of Tunis and by Clerical intrigues, and he counted it a gay
feather in his cap when, in 1889, he declared a tariff war on France.
Hard times for Italy followed; the commerce of the country was
dislocated, and although Crispi tried to get compensation by
negotiating special terms for trade with Germany and Austria, the new
customers did not make up for the old. Germany could not furnish
capital as France had done. Paris was, and is, the financial capital
of the European Continent.

On this side Italy lost and Bismarck gained by the Triple
Alliance--for he had attained his purpose of splitting France and
Italy apart. What advantage did the Italians derive from the
agreement? The reply commonly given is, protection. But, we ask,
protection from whom? Not from France, because it is clear enough
that, whether the Triplice existed or not, Germany would have attacked
the French, if they had attacked the Italians; so that Italy had in
Germany a logical protector, to whom she need not have sacrificed her
initiative.

Her only other possible assailant was Austria, and it may fairly be
argued that the alliance restrained Austria from attack; but Austria
permitted herself every other unfriendly act toward Italy except open
war; and Germany looked placidly on.

The fact that Germany, the chief Protestant nation in Europe, was the
ally of Italy, might also be regarded as a support to the Italians in
their long conflict with Papal pretensions; but how little Germany
cared for Italy's welfare in this struggle appeared in 1903, when
Kaiser Wilhelm prevented the election of Cardinal Rampolla as Pope.
Rampolla, if not a Liberal, was a devoted Italian; Sarti, who defeated
him, was a Reactionary, controlled by the Jesuits, hostile to Italy.

When we look at