f horror that would go up in Europe if Poerio should die in
chains, or worse than death, should go mad, commuted prison to perpetual
exile,[251] and sixty-six of them were embarked for America. At Lisbon
they were transferred to an American ship; the captain, either
intimidated or bribed, put in at Queenstown. 'In setting foot on this
free soil,' Poerio wrote to Mr. Gladstone from the Irish haven (March
12, 1859), 'the first need of my heart was to seek news of you.'
Communications were speedily opened. The Italians made their way to
Bristol, where they were received with sympathy and applause by the
population. The deliverance of their country was close at hand.

Not now, nor for many years to come, did Mr. Gladstone grasp the idea of
Italian unity. It was impossible for him to ignore, but he did
undoubtedly set aside, the fact that every shade and section of Italian
liberalism from Farini on the right, to Mazzini on the furthest left,
insisted on treating Italy as a political integer, and placed the
independence of Italy and the expulsion of Austria from Italian soil as
the first and fundamental article in the creed of reform. Like most of
the English friends of the Italian cause at this time, except the small
but earnest group who rallied round the powerful moral genius of
Mazzini, he thought only of local freedom and local reforms. 'The purely
abstract idea of Italian nationality,' said Mr. Gladstone at this time,
'makes little impression and finds limited sympathy among ourselves.' 'I
am certain,' he wrote to Panizzi (June 21, 1851), 'that the Italian
habit of preaching unity and nationality in preference to showing
grievances produces a revulsion here; for if there are two things on
earth that John Bull hates, they are an abstract proposition and the
pope.' 'You need not be afraid, I think,' he told Lord Aberdeen
(December 1, 1851), 'of Mazzinism from me, still less of Kossuth-ism,
which means the other _plus_ imposture, Lord Palmerston, and his
nationalities.' But then in 1854 Manin came to England, and failed to
persuade even Lord Palmerston that the unity of Italy was the only clue
to her freedom.[252] The Russian war made it inconvenient to quarrel
with Austria about Italy. With Mr. Gladstone he made more way. 'Seven to
breakfast to meet Manin,' says the diary; 'he too is wild.' Not too
wild, however, to work conversion on his host. 'It was my privilege,'
Mr. Gladstone afterwards wrote, 'to welcome Manin in Lon