politan subjects. But Malghella did not find
the destined saviour of Italy in Murat; his one lasting work was to
establish Carbonarism on so strong a basis that, when the Bourbons
returned, there were thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of
Carbonari in all parts of the realm. The discovery was not a pleasant
one to the restored rulers, and the Prince of Canosa, the new Minister
of Police, thought to counteract the evil done by his predecessor by
setting up an abominable secret society called the Calderai del
Contrapeso (Braziers of the Counterpoise), principally recruited from
the refuse of the people, lazzaroni, bandits and let-out convicts, who
were provided by Government with 20,000 muskets, and were sworn to
exterminate all enemies of the Church of Rome, whether Jansenists,
Freemasons or Carbonari. This association committed some horrible
excesses, but otherwise it had no results. The Carbonari closed in
their ranks, and learnt to observe more strictly their rules of
secrecy. From the kingdom of Naples, Carbonarism spread to the Roman
states, and found a congenial soil in Romagna, which became the focus
whence it spread over the rest of Italy. It was natural that it should
take the colour, more or less, of the places where it grew. In
Romagna, where political assassination is in the blood of the people,
a dagger was substituted for the symbolical woodman's axe in the
initiatory rites. It was probably only in Romagna that the
conventional threat against informers was often carried out. The
Romagnols invested Carbonarism with the wild intensity of their own
temperament, resolute even to crime, but capable of supreme impersonal
enthusiasm. The ferment of expectancy that prevailed in Romagna is
reflected in the Letters and Journals of Lord Byron, whom young Count
Pietro Gamba made a Carbonaro, and who looked forward to seeing the
Italians send the barbarians of all nations back to their own dens, as
to the most interesting spectacle and moment in existence. His lower
apartments, he writes, were full of the bayonets, fusils and
cartridges of his Carbonari cronies; 'I suppose that they consider me
as a depot, to be sacrificed in case of accidents. It is no great
matter, supposing that Italy could be liberated, who or what is
sacrificed. It is a grand object--the very poetry of politics. Only
think--free Italy!!! Why, there has been nothing like it since the
days of Augustus.'

The movement on which such great hopes