nd henceforth he was constrained
to advance to Italian unity. A storm of extreme violence broke upon him.
Gortchakoff said that if geography had permitted, the Czar would betake
himself to arms in defence of the Bourbon king. Prussia talked of reviving
the holy alliance in defence of the law of nations against the overweening
ambition of Piedmont. The French ambassador was recalled from Turin. Still
no active intervention followed.

One great power alone stood firm, and Lord John Russell wrote one of the
most famous despatches in the history of our diplomacy (October 27, 1860).
The governments of the pope and the king of the Two Sicilies, he said,
provided so ill for the welfare of their people, that their subjects
looked to their overthrow as a necessary preliminary to any improvement.
Her Majesty's government were bound to admit that the Italians themselves
are the best judges of their own interests. Vattel, that eminent jurist,
had well said that when a people for good reasons take up arms against an
oppressor, it is but an act of justice and generosity to assist brave men
in the defence of their liberties. Did the people of Naples and the Roman
States take up arms against their government for good reasons? Upon this
grave matter, her Majesty's government held that the people in question
are themselves the best judges of their own affairs. Her Majesty's
government did not feel justified in declaring that the people of Southern
Italy had not good reasons for throwing off their allegiance to their
former governments. Her Majesty's government, therefore, could not pretend
to blame the King of Sardinia for assisting them. So downright was the
language of Lord John. We cannot wonder that such words as these spread in
Italy like flame, that people copied the translation from each other,
weeping over it for joy and gratitude in their homes, and that it was
hailed as worth more than a force of a hundred thousand men.(6)

The sensation elsewhere was no less profound, though very different. The
three potentates at Warsaw viewed the despatch with an emotion that was
diplomatically called regret, but more resembled horror. The Prince Regent
of Prussia, afterwards the Emperor William, told Prince Albert that it was
a tough morsel, a disruption of the law of nations and of the holy ties
that bind peoples to their sovereigns.(7) Many in England were equally
shocked. Even Sir James Graham, for instance, said that he would never
have