ed at Palermo, and suppressed
disorders where they occurred, but the rising tide of the will of the
people could not be suppressed, and had the ministry resisted it,
something more than the ministry would have fallen.

In justification of Lanza's slowness to move, and of the apparent, if
not real, unwillingness with which he took every forward step, it is
contended that more precipitate action would have caused what most
people will agree would have been a misfortune for Italy, the
departure of the Pope from Rome. It was only on the 20th of August
that the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Visconti-Venosta, sent a
memorandum to the European Powers which announced that the Government
had decided on occupying Rome at once. A week after, the fall of the
Empire came as a godsend to the ministry which had possibly hardly
deserved such a stroke of luck. They were no longer hampered by the
September Convention, because the September Convention was dead. This
was amply admitted by Jules Favre, though he declined to denounce the
treaty formally; even a French Radical, in the hour of setting up the
Republic, was afraid to proclaim aloud that France renounced all claim
to interfere in her neighbour's concerns.

Of the other Powers, Switzerland signified her approval, and the rest
engaged to abstain from any opposition.

The King addressed a letter to the Pope, in which, with the affection
of a son and the faith of a Catholic, he appealed to his spirit of
benevolence and his Italian patriotism to speak the word of peace in
the midst of the storm of war that was distracting Europe, and to
accept the love and protection of the people of Italy in lieu of a
sovereignty which could not stand without the support of foreign arms.
Pius IX. merely answered by saying that the letter was not worthy of
an affectionate son, and that he prayed God to bestow upon His Majesty
the mercy of which he had much need. To the bearer of the royal
appeal, Count Ponza di San Martino, he said that he might yield to
violence, but would never sanction injustice.

This was about the time that the Pope, on his side, wrote an appeal
not, be it observed, to any Catholic monarch, but to King William of
Prussia, who would certainly not have read unmoved the complaint of
one who, like himself, was crowned with white hairs, but Count
Bismarck took the precaution of causing the letter not to reach his
master's hands till the Italians were in Rome.

The day following t