was, his support was worth
legions.

It was not the first time that Italian republicans had said to the
House of Savoy: If you will free Italy we are with you; but the
circumstances of the case were completely changed since Mazzini wrote
in somewhat the same language to Charles Albert a quarter of a
century before. Both times the proposal contained an ultimatum as well
as an offer, but Manin made it without second thoughts in the
strongest hope that the pact would be accepted and full of
anticipatory joy at the prospect of its success; while by the Genoese
republican it was made in mistrust and in the knowledge that were it
accepted (which he did not believe), its acceptance, though bringing
with it for Italy a state of things which he recognised as preferable
to that which prevailed, would bring to him personally nothing but
disappointment and the forfeiture of his dearest wishes.

It is difficult to say what were at this date Cavour's own private
sentiments about Italian unity. Though he once confessed that as a
young man he had fancied himself Prime Minister of Italy, whenever the
subject was now discussed he disclaimed any belief in the feasibility
of uniting all parts of the peninsula in one whole. He even called
Manin 'a very good man, but mad about Italian unification.' It wanted,
in truth, the prescience of the seer rather than the acumen of the
politician to discern the unity of Italy in 1855. All outward facts
seemed more adverse to its accomplishment than at any period since
1815. Yet it was for Italy that Cavour always pleaded; Italy, and not
Piedmont or even Lombardy and Venetia. He invariably asserted the
right of his King to uphold the cause of all the populations from the
Alps to the Straits of Messina. If he adopted the proverb 'Chi va
piano va sano,' he kept in view the end of it, 'Chi va sano va
lontano.' In short, if he did not believe in Italian unity, he acted
in the same way as he would have acted had he believed in it.

It is evident that one thing he could not do. Whatever was in his
thoughts, unless he was prepared to retire into private life then and
there, he could not proclaim from the house-tops that he espoused the
artichoke theory attributed to Victor Amadeus. There were only too
many old diplomatists as it was, who sought to cripple Cavour's
resources by reviving that story. The time was not come when, without
manifest damage to the cause, he could plead guilty to the charge of
prepa