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shall become public to the first Pole of Galicia who comes into your
presence. Show us, in fine, by some fact, that you intend not only to
improve the physical condition of your own few subjects, but that
you embrace in your love the twenty-four millions of Italians, your
brothers; that you believe them called by God to unite in family unity
under one and the same compact; that you would bless the national
banner, wherever it should be raised by pure and incontaminate hands;
and leave the rest to us. We will cause to rise around you a nation
over whose free and popular development you, living, shall preside.
We will found a government unique in Europe, which shall destroy the
absurd divorce between spiritual and temporal power, and in which you
shall be chosen to represent the principle of which the men chosen by
the nation will make the application. We shall know how to translate
into a potent fact the instinct which palpitates through all Italy.
We will excite for you active support among the nations of Europe; we
will find you friends even in the ranks of Austria; we alone, because
we alone have unity of design, believe in the truth of our principle,
and have never betrayed it. Do not fear excesses from the people once
entered upon this way; the people only commit excesses when left to
their own impulses without any guide whom they respect. Do not pause
before the idea of becoming a cause of war. War exists, everywhere,
open or latent, but near breaking out, inevitable; nor can human
power prevent it. Nor do I, it must be said frankly, Most Holy
Father, address to you these words because I doubt in the least of our
destiny, or because I believe you the sole, the indispensable means
of the enterprise. The unity of Italy is a work of God,--a part of
the design of Providence and of all, even of those who show themselves
most satisfied with local improvements, and who, less sincere than
I, wish to make them means of attaining their own aims. It will be
fulfilled, with you or without you. But I address you, because I
believe you worthy to take the initiative in a work so vast; because
your putting yourself at the head of it would much abridge the road
and diminish the dangers, the injury, the blood; because with you
the conflict would assume a religious aspect, and be freed from many
dangers of reaction and civil errors; because might be attained at
once under your banner a political result and a vast moral result;
bec