Part 2 (2/2)

In April 1851 Cavour took the office of Minister of Finance; he had exacted the resignation of his predecessor, Nigra, as the price of his remaining in the Cabinet. The Minister of Public Instruction also resigned owing to disagreements with the now all-powerful member of the Government, and was replaced by a nominee of Cavour's, L.C.

Farini, the Romagnol exile, author of _Lo Stato Romano_, whose appointment was significant from a national point of view, notwithstanding his ultra-conservative opinions. Cavour mentioned that Farini's work had been praised by Mr. Gladstone, ”one of the most ill.u.s.trious statesmen in Europe,” at which the Chamber applauded wildly, as Cavour intended it to do. Ever watchful for any sign from abroad which could profit Italy, he was glad of what seemed a chance opportunity to provoke a demonstration in honour of the writer of the _Letters to Lord Aberdeen_ on the Neapolitan prisons, which were just then creating an immense sensation. In Italy Mr. Gladstone was the most popular man of the hour; in France, still calling itself a republic, all parties except the reduced ranks of the advanced liberals were very angry--not with King Bomba, but with his accuser. A harmless cousin of Mr. Gladstone was blackballed in a club in Paris on account of the name he bore. n.o.body ever had such a good heart as the king of Naples, Count Walewski went about declaring, in support of which he told Mr. Monckton Milnes that Ferdinand had recently granted his request to pardon three hundred prisoners against whom nothing was proved. ”How grateful they must have been,” replied the Englishman; ”did not they come and thank you for having obtained their deliverance?” Taken off his guard and unconscious of the irony, Walewski made the admission that the three hundred were debarred from the pleasure of paying him a visit because, though pardoned, they were not released!

This little story was related to Lord Palmerston, in whom it fanned the fuel of the indignation roused by Mr. Gladstone's _Letters_, of which he had written that ”they revealed a system of illegality, injustice, and cruelty which one would not have imagined possible nowadays in Europe.” But he employed still stronger language against the Austrians, whose method of reimposing their rule in Lombardy had lost them all their friends in England, for the time at least, and had worked their foes up to the point of fury. Those were the days when they sang at Vienna:

Hat der Teufel einen Sohn, So ist er sicher Palmerston.

Lord Palmerston was coming to a conclusion about Italian matters; it was this: that, great as were the objections to the deliverance of Italy from the Austrians by French aid, yet it would be better for her to be delivered so than not at all. The same conclusion had been reached by Cavour, except that he would not have admitted unending servitude to be the alternative; he was too patriotic and too resourceful for that. He kept in view other contingencies: European complications, the organic disruption of Austria, even at that early date, the foundation of a German empire. But in 1851, as in 1859, the aid of France was the one means of shaking off the Austrian yoke, which was morally certain to succeed For him, however, the French alliance was only a speck in the distance. He did not think, as Lord Palmerston seems to have thought, that a French liberating army might be ”very soon” expected in the Lombard plains. When Louis Napoleon swept away the impediments between himself and the Imperial throne, Cavour was less moved by the violence of the act than by the hope that its consequences might be favourable to Italy. The Prince-President tranquilly awaited the eight million votes which should transform him from a political brigand into a legitimised emperor, and Cavour left him to the judgment of his own countrymen. He saw no need to be more severe than they. It is easy to conceive a higher morality, but as yet it has not been applied to politics. As Cavour remarked, ”Franklin sought the help of the most despotic monarch in Europe,” and the a.n.a.logies in recent history do not require to be recalled.

An inferior statesman who, like Cavour, contemplated foreign aid as an ultimate resource, would have lost his interest and slackened his activity in home politics. It was not so with him. Before all other things he placed the necessity of consolidating Piedmont as a const.i.tutional State, and of preparing her morally and materially to take her part in the struggle when it came. If that were not done, a new Bonaparte might indeed cross the Alps in the character of liberator, but a free Italy would be no more the result of his intervention than it had been of his uncle's. Cavour was meditating the stroke of policy which gave him the power to carry out this work of consolidation and preparation. He ruled the ministry, but he did not rule the House and, through it, the country. The Sardinian Chamber of Deputies was composed of the Right Centre, the Extreme Right, the Left Centre, and the Extreme Left. The Extreme Right was loyal to the House of Savoy, but contrary to Italian aspirations; the Extreme Left was strongly Italian, but the degree of its loyalty was. .h.i.t off in Ma.s.simo d'Azeglio's _mot_ ”Viva Vittorio, il re provisorio” (”Long live Victor, the provisional king”). There remained the two Centres representing the liberal conservatives and the moderate liberals--”moderate radicals” would be more correct, if the verbal contradiction be permitted. But neither of these single-handed could support a stable and independent government. Every ministry must exist on the sufferance of its opponents, and in terror of the vagaries of the advanced section on its own side. At any critical moment a pa.s.sing breeze might overthrow it. The only antidote to the recklessness or obstructiveness of extreme parties lay in dissolution; but to dissolve a parliament just elected, as Victor Emmanuel had once been forced to do already, would be a fatal expedient if repeated often. Any student of representative government would suggest the amalgamation of the two Centres as the true remedy, but so great were the difficulties in the way of this, that not half a dozen persons in Piedmont believed it to be possible. Cavour himself thought about it for a year before making the final move The acerbities of Italian party politics are not softened by the good social relations and the general mutual confidence in purity of motive which prevail in England. Hitherto Cavour and the brilliant and plausible leader of the Left Centre had not entertained flattering opinions of each other. Rattazzi thought Cavour an ambitious and aggressive publicist rather than a patriot statesman, and Cavour knew Rattazzi to be the minister who led the country to Novara. But he appreciated his value as a parliamentary ally; he had the qualities in which Cavour himself was most deficient.

Urbano Rattazzi (born at Alessandria in 1808) was famous as one of the best speakers at the Piedmontese bar before entering the Chamber.

He was a perfect master of Italian; his manners were popular and insinuating. He was richly endowed with all those secondary gifts which often carry a man along faster, though less far, than the highest endowments. If he had not power, he had elasticity; if not judgment, cleverness. He always drifted, which made him always appear the politician up to date. His name was then a.s.sociated with one catastrophe; before he died it was to be linked with two others, Aspromonte and Mentana; but such was his ability as a leader that he retained a compact following to the last.

Cavour rarely made a man's antecedents a reason for not turning him to account; but there was one point on which he required to be rea.s.sured before seeking an understanding with Rattazzi--this was whether his fidelity to the monarchy could be entirely depended on. Cavour's old friend and fellow worker of the _Risorgimento_, M.A. Castelli, who was acquainted with the leader of the Left, opportunely bore witness to Rattazzi's genuine loyalty, and Cavour hesitated no longer to come to an agreement which every day proved to be more imperative. After the _Coup d'etat_, the Extreme Right, led by the Count de Revel and General Menabrea, adopted the tactics of professing to believe untenable the position of a free State wedged in between the old despotism of Austria and the new one of France. The argument was ingenious and was likely to make converts. It was urgently necessary to form a new political combination which should reduce this party to impotence.

Cavour's compact with Rattazzi was concluded in the first month of 1852, but at first it was kept a profound secret. It was divulged, as it were, accidentally in the course of a debate on a Bill which was intended to moderate the attacks of the press on foreign sovereigns.

This was the only form of restriction which Cavour, then and afterwards, was willing to countenance. He held that the excuse for umbrage given to foreign rulers by personal invective published in the newspapers was a danger to the State which no government ought to tolerate. The Extreme Right and Left were immediately up in arms, the first declaring that the Bill did not go far enough, and the second that it went too far. Both affected to consider it the first step to more stringent anti-liberal measures--invoked by one side and abhorred by the other. It was then that Rattazzi made the announcement that although he did not mean to vote for this particular Bill, he intended to support the Ministry through the session which had just begun, if, as he believed, this Bill was an isolated measure, and did not indicate a change of policy. Cavour acknowledged the promise in words which left no doubt that a prior agreement existed between the two leaders. He repudiated the reactionary tendencies of Menabrea and his Savoyards, even, he said ironically, at the risk of so great a misfortune as that of losing the weak support which they had lately bestowed on Government, Count de Revel retorted that the Ministry had divorced the Right and made a marriage (_connubio_) with the party which drove Charles Albert to his doom and to an exile's death in a foreign land. The alliance between the Centres was henceforth known by the nickname thus conferred on it, which has been repeated since by hundreds who have forgotten its origin.

It is difficult to describe the sensation which this scene created, and no one was more astonished than D'Azeglio, who, with the other ministers, had been kept entirely in the dark. By all ordinary rules Cavour ought to have communicated with his colleagues before revolutionising the parliamentary chessboard. The more sure he felt of their opposition the less easy is it to justify him for taking so grave a step without their knowledge. On public grounds, however (and these were the only grounds on which Cavour ever acted in his political life), it was desirable that the _Connubio_ should be an accomplished fact before it was exposed to discussion. D'Azeglio was very angry, but he hated scandal, and he refrained from disowning the act of his imperious colleague. He was none the less determined never to sit in the same Cabinet with Rattazzi. One reason he gave for it was characteristic. The leader of the Left had debts, and was not in a hurry to pay them. When Rattazzi, through Cavour's instrumentality, was elected President of the Chamber, D'Azeglio felt again aggrieved.

Cavour, who began by treating his chief's antipathy to his new ally as a prejudice to be made fun of, and in the end dispelled, came to understand that it was insuperable. To cut short an impossible situation, he tendered his resignation, on which all the ministers resigned; but as the question was one of personal pique, the king commanded them to remain at their posts. Cavour applauded this decision. For the moment it was better that he, not D'Azeglio, should be sacrificed. They parted without ceasing to be private and political friends. Ma.s.simo d'Azeglio's nature was too generous to hear a grudge against the man who was to eclipse him.

Cavour profited by his reconquered liberty to go to France and England, a journey that relieved him of the appearance of wis.h.i.+ng to hamper the Cabinet, which was quickly reconstructed without himself and Farini. On the eve of starting he went, as etiquette required, to take leave of the king, who made the not very flattering remark that he thought it would be a long while before he called him to power.

Cavour must have smiled behind his spectacles, but he naturally left time to verify or contradict the royal forecast.

CHAPTER V

THE GREAT MINISTRY

Cavour went abroad with the full intention of preparing for the day when his voice would be that of Piedmont, if not of Italy. He attached importance to personal relations, which helped him to keep in touch with European politics and politicians, and he was anxious to find out how the _Connubio_ was regarded by foreigners, among whom, till lately, Rattazzi had been looked upon as a revolutionary firebrand.

But thinking men abroad understood the reasons which had dictated the coalition. In London Cavour met with a friendly reception from Lord Malmesbury, who was then Foreign Minister, and who a.s.sured him that the English Government would be glad to see him back in office. With characteristic presence of mind he framed his answer to provoke a more definite p.r.o.nouncement. He could not, he said, return to office alone or abandon the party he had been at so much pains to create.

”Naturally,” answered Lord Malmesbury, ”you cannot return to power without your friends.” Rea.s.sured as to the sentiments of one great political party, Cavour approached the other in the person of Lord Palmerston, than whom he never had a firmer political friend or more sincere admirer. Lord Palmerston saw the larger meaning of the experiment of freedom in Piedmont, and he was one of the first to see it. If that experiment succeeded, the Italian tyrannies were doomed; how, he did not discern, but the fact was apparent to him. He heard, therefore, with much interest what Cavour had to tell him of the gradual taking root of const.i.tutional government in the Sardinian kingdom, and he promised him the moral support, not of one party or another, but of England, ”in pledge of which,” he added, ”we have sent you our best diplomatist.” This allusion was to Mr. (afterwards Sir James) Hudson, whom Lord Palmerston had called back from the Brazils in the spring of the year, because by a singular intuition he guessed him to be the very man to help the Italian cause. It was intended to send him to Florence, but when he reached the Foreign Office, which Lord Palmerston had just vacated, he received instructions to go to Turin, a fortunate change of plan. No two men were ever better fitted to work together than Cavour and Sir James Hudson. Without ceasing to be particularly English and strictly loyal to the interests of his own country, the British Minister at Turin served Italy as few of her sons have been able to do. Beneath a rather cold exterior he concealed the warmest of hearts, and he had the power of attaching people to him, so that they never forgot him. It is greatly to be regretted that he left no record of the stirring years of his mission, which coincided with the rise and ascendency of Cavour.

Enchanted with the country, and ”more _Anglomane_ than ever,” Cavour left England for Paris, where he laid himself out to conciliate political men of all shades, from Morny to Thiers, who advised him to be patient and not to lose heart: ”If, after giving you vipers for breakfast, you have another dish served up for dinner, never mind”--such was the diet of politicians. What Cavour once called ”his powerful intellectual organisation” made an immediate impression on the Prince President, as he was still styled. Louis Napoleon cultivated an impa.s.sible exterior, but at bottom his character was emotional, and, like all emotional persons, he was susceptible to the magnetism of a stronger brain and will. Cavour summoned Rattazzi to Paris to present him to the future Caesar. ”Whether we like it or not,” he wrote at this time, ”our destinies depend on France; we must be her partner in the great game which will be played sooner or later in Europe.” A few weeks later Napoleon declared at Bordeaux that ”the empire was peace,” but like all intelligent onlookers Cavour received the statement with incredulity. Possibly the only person who believed in it was the speaker--for the moment; he may have thought that ”bread and games” was a formula by which he could rule France, or rather Paris, but he was soon to find it insufficient.

Cavour sought out several of the Italian exiles who were leading a life of privation and obscurity in Paris, one of whom was Manin, the Dictator of Venice. With him Cavour expressed himself ”very much satisfied, though his sentiments were rather too Venetian”: sentiments which Manin sacrificed--a last act of abnegation--when he finally gave his support to Italian unity under Victor Emmanuel, carrying with him two-thirds of the republican party, who could brave the charge of changed allegiance if so incorruptible a patriot led the way. Cavour also saw Gioberti, ”always the same child of genius, who would have been a great man had he had common sense.” Gioberti, however, had made a great stride towards common sense, for instead of dreaming of liberating popes, he was now imagining a renovating statesman, and he had inscribed Cavour's name under his new portrait. In a book published in Paris, Gioberti drew the Cavour of the future with a penetration and a sureness of touch which would make a reader, who did not know the date, suppose that the words were written ten years later. Men of great talent, he said, rarely threw aside the chance of becoming famous; rather did they s.n.a.t.c.h it with avidity; and what fame more splendid could now be won than that of the minister of the Italian prince who should re-make the country? He fixed his hopes on Cavour, because he alone understood that in human society civilisation is everything, all the rest, without it, nothing. ”He knows that statutes, parliaments, newspapers, all the appurtenances of free governments, even if they are of use to individuals, are miserable shams to the commonalty if they fail to help forward social progress.”

He was willing to forgive him the generous error of treating a province as if it were a nation, when he compared it with the pettiness of those who treated the nation as if it were a province. He invoked some great and solemn act of _Italianita_ on his part, which should pledge him irrevocably to the national cause. Cavour was too little influenced by others for it to be safe to say that this was one of the prophecies which tend to their own fulfilment; still it is worth noticing that he read the pa.s.sage and was struck by it.

Cavour had scarcely returned to Piedmont when a ministerial crisis occurred through the rejection by the Senate of a far from stringent Bill for permitting civil marriage, which had pa.s.sed in the Chamber of Deputies. The situation was further complicated by the state of mind into which the king had been driven by the remonstrances of his wife and mother, both near their end, and by the answer which he received from Rome in reply to a direct appeal to settle matters amicably, the Pope having said, in effect, that he was not going to help him to legalise concubinage in his dominions. D'Azeglio, hara.s.sed on all sides and ill through the reopening of his wound, resigned office, and advised the king to send for Cavour. ”The other one, whom you know, is diabolically active, and fit in body and soul, and then, he enjoys it so much!” he wrote to a friend, with the pathetic wonder of the artist, romancist, and _grand seigneur_, who had never been able to make out what there was to enjoy in politics. Victor Emmanuel followed his advice, but he allowed Cavour to see that he hoped that the new ministry would make up the quarrel with Rome. Cavour knew that only one path could lead to peace--surrender. Though anxious for office he declined to take it on these terms, and he recommended the king to call Count Balbo to his counsels; but Balbo, persuaded that a ministry only supported by the Extreme Right could not stand even for a few weeks, in his turn suggested the recall of D'Azeglio. Here the saving good sense of the king interposed; little as he liked Cavour he recognised that he was the only man possible, and he charged him, without conditions, with the formation of a ministry. D'Azeglio had fallen on a point on which Cavour was for and not against him; his successor desired to show that there would be no violent change of policy, and he therefore reconstructed the Cabinet as it was before, except for the change of head. He reserved for himself the Presidency of the Council and the Ministry of Finance. Rattazzi, who still occupied the Speaker's chair, was willing to wait for the present for a seat in the Cabinet, especially when he heard that the king, who was at first very hostile to the _Connubio_, had quite expected him to take office.

So the _gran ministero_, as it was called, entered upon its functions: great by reason of its chief, who infused his own life and vigour into what was before a weak administration. Cavour was a born man of business; he hated disorder in everything--except, indeed, dress, in which his carelessness was proverbial. He had not the common belief that, muddle them how you may, there will always be a providence which looks after the affairs of the State and prevents the collapse that would attend a private commercial enterprise conducted on the same system. He took in hand the financial renewal of Piedmont in the same spirit in which, when he had only just reached maturity, he volunteered to restore his father's dilapidated fortune. It was for this that he chose the Ministry of Finance: Piedmont, as he saw, could never sustain a national and Italian policy abroad without having first set its own house in order. He started with two principles: taxation must be increased and the resources of the country must be so developed as to enable it to pay its way without sinking into hopeless stagnation. It was a disappointment to some to see Cavour devoting himself with more ardour to putting on new taxes than to producing any of those decorative schemes for hastening the millennium which are expected from a new and ambitious minister. But, though ambitious, he cared for the substance, power--not for the shadow, popularity.

If there had been no other reason for the compact with the moderate liberals, the necessity for fresh taxation would have been a sufficing one. The Extreme Right and Left proposed to meet the existing difficulties by cutting down expenditure, but, if sound in theory, in practice this policy would have reduced Piedmont to complete impotence. While a part of the Left Centre voted with the extremists, it was only by the greatest efforts that a grant of 100,000 was obtained for the fortifications of Casale, which had been declared by the war minister, La Marmora, to be absolutely necessary for the defence of the State. The radical deputy Brofferio said that States wanted no other defence than the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of their citizens. From the Chamber, as then const.i.tuted, there was little hope of obtaining the imposition of new burdens, in part designed to meet Sardinian liabilities, but in part also to render possible the reorganisation of the army, which was urgently required if the future was not to witness disasters worse than those already experienced. Prince Metternich had said that, even if Piedmont were so troublesome as to persist in her liberal infatuation, she would have to keep quiet, at a moderate computation, for twenty years--just the time which it took her king to unite Italy. The two campaigns of 1848-1849 and the war indemnity had cost about 300,000,000 frs. The annual expenditure was doubled. Added to this, the one source of wealth, agriculture, was almost ruined by the oidium disease which destroyed the vines, and by harvests so bad that the like had not been seen since the celebrated scarcity which followed the wars of Napoleon. As Cavour saved his father's property not by burying the last talent in a safe place but by laying it out in bold improvements, so now he did not fear to spend largely and even lavishly, not only on the army, but also on public works. He completed the railway system and employed what Brofferio called ”a portentous activity” in extending the roads, ca.n.a.ls, and all the means of communication which could stimulate industry. It must be remembered that Piedmont was then lamentably backward; a long obscurantist _regime_, succeeded by war and havoc, had left her dest.i.tute of all the accessories of modern life. This was changed as if by the wand of the magician. In his first budget, Cavour put on new taxes to the amount of 14,000,000 frs., one being the so-called tax on patents, or on the exercise of trades and professions, which excited much adverse criticism. At the same time he reduced the salt tax and initiated several free-trade measures, to be ultimately crowned by the abolition of the corn laws. On the whole, however, his line of policy was not such as would recommend itself to the crowd, and in October 1853 a furious mob attacked the Palazzo Cavour, repeating the old cry that the minister was a monopolist who robbed the poor of their bread.

Luckily the doors were barred, but next day Cavour was threatened as he walked along the streets. Just then the Ministry of Justice fell vacant, and it was offered to Rattazzi, who, to his credit be it said, did not hesitate to take office at a time when the head of the Government was the target of unscrupulous abuse, and it was even thought that his life was in danger. Rattazzi was afterwards transferred to the Home Ministry, which he held till the _Connubio_ broke up, more on personal than on political grounds, in 1858.

Though Cavour's alliance with Rattazzi was not eternal, it lasted till it had served its purpose. By help of it he imposed his will on king and country until he was strong enough to impose it by force of his own commanding influence. He always considered the _Connubio_ one of the wisest acts of his political life. It is not uncommon to hear it still denounced in Italy as the origin of the political demoralisation, the mixing up of private and public interests, the lack of fixed principles; which later times have witnessed. If the fact were admitted, it would not show that Cavour could have governed in any other way. Had the country trusted him from the first it would have been different, but the country did not trust him. Even after the combination of the two Centres, whenever there was a general election it was doubtful if the Government would obtain a working majority. The accusation of corruption was frequently made against the Ministry in general and Rattazzi in particular, since it was he who presided over the electoral campaigns. Of corruption in the literal sense there was probably little, but const.i.tuencies were led to believe that it would be to their advantage to return the ministerial candidate. On one occasion Rattazzi tried to prove that such hints did not const.i.tute ”interference.” Cavour got up in the course of the same debate and not only acknowledged the ”interference,” but said that without it const.i.tutional government in Piedmont would collapse. His biographers have preferred to be silent on this subject, but he would have despised a reserve which conceals historical facts. The apathy of one section of the electors, the fads and jealousies of another, the feverish longing to pull down whomsoever was in power, inherited from a great revolutionary crisis, the indefatigable propaganda of clerical wire-pullers, all tended to the formation of parliaments so composed as to bring government to a standstill. The result of a protracted interruption might be the fall of the const.i.tution itself, or it might be civil war. Cavour took the means open to him to prevent it, and, whether he was right or wrong, his career cannot be judged if the difficulties with which he had to cope are kept out of sight.

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