rrender to force? Why, "against his conviction," as
he confessed in private, did he declare that Nice was not Italian? Why
go through the farce of plebiscites so "arranged" that the result was
a foregone conclusion? The answer, satisfactory or not, is easily
found: Nice was stated to be not Italian to leave intact the theory
of nationality for future use; the plebiscites were resorted to that
Napoleon might be obliged to recognise the same method of settling
questions elsewhere.

The parliament which represented Piedmont, Lombardy, Parma, Modena,
and Romagna, met on April 2, 1860. The frontier lines of six states
were effaced. The man who had so largely contributed to this great
result stood there to defend his honour, almost his life. Guerrazzi
compared him to the Earl of Clarendon--"hard towards the king,
truculent to Parliament, who thought in his pride that he could do
everything." Cavour retorted: perhaps if Clarendon had been able to
show in defence of his conduct many million Englishmen delivered from
foreign yoke, several counties added to his master's possessions,
Parliament would not have been so pitiless, or Charles II. so
ungrateful to the most faithful of his servants. The deputy Guerrazzi,
he continued, had read him a lesson in history; it should have been
given entire. And he then drew a picture, splendid in its scathing
irony, of the unscrupulous alliance of men without principle, of
all shades of opinion, only united in self-interest, demagogues,
courtiers, reactionists, papists, puritans, without traditions,
without ideas, at one in impudent egotism, and in nothing else, who
formed the cabal which ruined Clarendon. Every one understood that he
was painting his own enemies inside the Chamber and out.

In spite of protests and regrets, the treaty was sanctioned by a
larger majority than had been reckoned on. When it came to the point,
not a large number of voters was ready to take the tremendous leap in
the dark which, among other consequences, must have condemned Cavour,
if not to the fate of Stafford, at least to obscurity for the rest of
his life. But the ministry came out of the contest, to use Cavour's
own words, extraordinarily weakened. "On me and on my colleagues," he
had said, "he all the obloquy of the act!" He was to regain his power,
and even his popularity, but time itself cannot wholly obliterate
the spot upon his name. He knew it well himself. A writer in the
_Quarterly Review_, soon aft