believed that such a document could have passed through a British
cabinet or received the approval of a British sovereign; India, Ireland,
Canada would await the application of the fatal doctrine that it
contained; it was a great public wrong, a grave error; and even Garibaldi
and Mazzini would come out of the Italian affair with cleaner hands. Yet
to-day we may ask ourselves, was it not a little idle to talk of the holy
ties that bind nations to their sovereigns, in respect of a system under
which in Naples thousands of the most respectable of the subjects of the
king were in prison or in exile; in the papal states ordinary justice was
administered by rough-handed German soldiers, and young offenders shot by
court-martial at the drumhead; and in the Lombardo-Venetian provinces
press offences were judged by martial law, with chains, shooting, and
flogging for punishment.(8) Whatever may be thought of Lord John and his
doctrine, only those who hold to the converse doctrine, that subjects may
never rise against a king, nor ever under any circumstances seek succour
from foreign power, will deny that the cruelties of Naples and the
iniquities connected with the temporal authority of the clergy in the
states of the church, constituted an irrefragable case for revolt.

(M7) Within a few weeks after the troops of Victor Emmanuel had crossed
the frontier (Sept. 1860), the papal forces had been routed, and a popular
vote in the Neapolitan kingdom supported annexation to Piedmont. The papal
states, with the exception of the patrimony of St. Peter in the immediate
neighbourhood of Rome itself, fell into the hands of the king. Victor
Emmanuel and Garibaldi rode into Naples side by side (Nov. 7). The Bourbon
flag after a long stand was at last lowered at the stronghold of Gaeta
(Feb. 14, 1861); the young Bourbon king became an exile for the rest of
his life; and on February 18 the first parliament of united Italy
assembled at Turin--Venice and Rome for a short season still outside. A few
months before, Mr. Gladstone had written a long letter to d'Azeglio. It
was an earnest exposition of the economic and political ideals that seemed
to shine in the firmament above a nation now emerging from the tomb. The
letter was to be shown to Cavour. "Tell that good friend of ours," he
replied, "that our trade laws are the most liberal of the continent; that
for ten years we have been practising the maxims that he exhorts us to
adopt; tell him tha