day or
two before the opening of the new Parliament at Turin.

Addressing for the first time the representatives of his widened
realm, Victor Emmanuel said: 'True to the creed of my fathers, and,
like them, constant in my homage to the Supreme Head of the Church,
whenever it happens that the ecclesiastical authority employs
spiritual arms in support of temporal interests, I shall find in my
steadfast conscience and in the very traditions of my ancestors, the
power to maintain civil liberty in its integrity, and my own
authority, for which I hold myself accountable to God alone and to my
people.'

The words: 'Della quale debbo ragione a Dio solo ed ai miei popoli,'
were added by the King to the speech prepared by his ministers; it was
noticed that he pronounced them with remarkable energy. The speech
concluded: 'Our country is no more the Italy of the Romans, nor the
Italy of the Middle Ages; no longer the field for every foreign
ambition, it becomes, henceforth, the Italy of the Italians.'

CHAPTER XIV

THE MARCH OF THE THOUSAND

1860

Origin of the Expedition--Garibaldi at Marsala--Calatafimi--The
Taking of Palermo--Milazzo--The Bourbons evacuate Sicily.

During the journey from Turin to Genoa, Garibaldi was occupied in
opening, reading and tearing up into small pieces an enormous mass of
letters, while his English companion spent the time in vainly
speculating as to what this vast correspondence was about. When they
approached Genoa, the floor of the railway carriage resembled a
gigantic wastepaper basket. It was only afterwards that Lawrence
Oliphant guessed the letters to be responses to a call for volunteers
for Sicily.

The origin of the Sicilian expedition has been related in various
ways; there is the version which attributes it entirely to Cavour, and
the version which attributes it to not irresponsible personages in
England. The former was the French and Clerical official account; the
latter has always obtained credence in Germany and Russia. For
instance, the late Duke Ernest of Saxe-Coburg said that 'the mystery
of how 150,000 men were vanquished by a thousand Red-shirts was
wrapped in English bank-notes!' Of this theory, it need only be said
that the notion of Lord Palmerston (for it comes to that) supporting a
foreign revolution out of the British exchequer is not one that
commends itself to the belief of the average Englishman. With regard
to the other theory--namely, that Cavour