to him, was that introduced by Pius IX. 'A liberal Pope is an
impossible being!' he exclaimed. Nevertheless this impossible being was
a reality which had to be dealt with. He hoped all along, however, that
Pius would fall a victim to the Frankenstein he had called into
existence, and his only real anxiety lay where it had always lain--on
the side of Piedmont. 'Charles Albert ought to let us know,' he wrote to
the Austrian Minister at Turin, 'whether his reign has been only a mask
under which was hidden the Prince of Carignano, who ascended the throne
through the order of succession re-established in his favour by the
Emperor Francis.' Considering all things, the endeavour to make it
appear that the King was indebted for his crown to Austria was somewhat
venturesome. Charles Albert, Metternich went on to say, had to choose
between two systems, the system now in force, or 'the crassest
revolution.' He wrote again: 'The King is sliding back upon the path
which he enters for the second time in his life, _and which he will
never really quit_.' Words of a bitter enemy, but juster than the
'Esecrato o Carignano,' hurled for a quarter of a century at Charles
Albert by those who only saw in him a traitor.

The constant invocation of the revolutionary spectre by the Austrian
statesman convinced the King that the wish was father to the thought,
and, afraid of introducing the thin end of the wedge, he showed
himself more than ever averse to reforming the antiquated machinery of
the Sardinian Government. Instead of being the first of Italian
princes to yield to popular demands, he was almost the last. He
believed that the question of nationality, of independence, could be
separated from the question of free institutions. Of all the
chimerical ideas then afloat, this was the most chimerical. Even the
example of the Pope, for whom Charles Albert felt a romantic devotion,
was not enough to induce him to open the road to reforms. The person
who seems first to have impressed him with their absolute necessity
was Lord Minto, whose visit to Turin, in October 1847, coincided with
the dismissal of Count della Margherita, the minister most closely
associated with the absolutist and Jesuitical _regime_. Lord Minto was
sent to Italy to encourage in the ways of political virtue those
Italian princes who were not entirely incorrigible. His mission
excited exaggerated hopes on the part of the Liberals, and exaggerated
wrath in the retrograde party