Part 7 (2/2)

”Cavour,” said Lord Palmerston in the cla.s.sic home of const.i.tutional liberty, the British House of Commons, ”left a name 'to point a moral and adorn a tale.'” The moral was, that a man of transcendent talent, indomitable industry, inextinguishable patriotism, could overcome difficulties which seemed insurmountable, and confer the greatest, the most inestimable benefits on his country. The tale with which his memory would be a.s.sociated was the most extraordinary, the most romantic, in the annals of the world. A people which seemed dead had arisen to new and vigorous life, breaking the spell which bound it, and showing itself worthy of a new and splendid destiny. The man whose name would go down to posterity linked with such events might have died too soon for the hopes of his fellow-citizens, not for his fame and his glory.

After thirty-seven years nothing need be taken away from this high eulogy, and something can be added. The completion of the national edifice within a decade of Cavour's death was still, in a sense, his work, as the consolidation of the United States after the death of Lincoln was still moulded by his vanished hand.

If it be true that the world's history is the world's judgment, it is no less true that the history of the state is the judgment of the statesman. Cavour would not have asked to be tried by any other criterion. He achieved a great result. He doubted if ideals of perfection could he reached, or whether, if reached, they would not be found, like mountain tops, to afford no abiding place for the foot of man. Perhaps he forgot too much that from the ice and snow of the mountain comes the river which fertilises the land. But, if he deprecated the pursuit of what he deemed the impossible, he condemned as criminal the neglect of the attainable. The charge of cynicism was unjust; Cavour was at heart an optimist; he never doubted that life was immensely worth living, that the fields open to human energy were splendid and beneficent. He hated shams, and he hated all forms of caste-feeling. He was one of the few continental statesmen who never exaggerated the power for good of government; he looked upon the private citizen who plods at his business, gives his children a good education, and has a reserve of savings in the funds, as the mainstay of the state.

No life of Cavour has been written since the publication of his correspondence, and of a ma.s.s of doc.u.ments which throw light on his career. It has seemed more useful, therefore, within the prescribed limits, to endeavour to show what he did, and how he did it, than to give much s.p.a.ce to the larger considerations which the Italian movement suggests. Of the ultimate issue of the events with which he was concerned it is too soon to speak. These events stand in close relation to the struggle between the civil and ecclesiastical powers, which dates back to the first a.s.sumption of political prerogatives by the Bishops of Rome. Cavour did not suffer his sovereign to eat humble pie like King John, or to go to Canossa like Henry IV., but neither did he ever entertain the wish to turn persecutor as Pombal was, perhaps, forced to do, or to browbeat the head of the Church as the first Napoleon took a pleasure in doing. He aimed at keeping the two powers separate, but each supreme in its own province.

Content you with monopolising heaven, And let this little hanging ball alone; For, give ye but a foot of conscience there, And you, like Archimedes, toss the globe.

The Italian revolution was bound up, also, with the principle of nationalities, which is still at work in South-Eastern Europe, and with the tendency towards unity which led to the refounding of the German Empire. Students who care for historical parallels will always seek to draw a comparison between Cavour and the great man who guided the new destinies of Germany. The points of resemblance are striking, but they are soon exhausted. Each undertook to free his country from extraneous influence, and to give it the strength which can only spring from union, and each was confident in his own power to succeed; either Cavour or Bismarck might have said with the younger Pitt: ”I know that I can save the country, and I know no other man can.” The points of disparity are inexhaustible. Prince Bismarck never threw off the aristocratico-military leanings with which he began life. He aimed at creating a strong military empire, in which the first and last duty of parliament was to vote supplies. Though the revolutionary tide set in towards unity still more in Germany than in Italy, he preferred to wait till he could do without a popular movement as an auxiliary. He did not admire the mysticism of King Frederick William IV., but he fully approved when that monarch, ”the son of twenty-four electors and kings,” declared that he would never accept the ”iron collar” offered him by revolution ”of an Imperial crown unblessed by G.o.d.” Bismarck started with the immeasurable advantage that his side was the strongest. Cavour had to solve the problem of how a state of five millions could outwit an empire of thirty-seven millions. All along, the German population of Prussia was far more numerous than that of Austria, and she had allies that cost her nothing. Napoleon, as Cavour pointed out, fought for Prussia in Lombardy as much as for Piedmont.

If Bismarck foresaw unification with more certainty than Cavour foresaw unity, it must be remembered that, while Cavour was held back by doubts as to whether the whole country desired unity, such doubts caused no trouble to Bismarck, since he was ready to adopt a short way with dissidents.

When Prince Bismarck once said that he was more Prussian than German, he revealed the weak side of his stupendous achievement. Prussia has not become Germany. The empire is a great defensive league in which only one partic.i.p.ant is entirely satisfied with his position. In Italy a kingdom has grown up in which Piedmont, even to the extent of ingrat.i.tude, is forgotten. If moral fusion is still incomplete, political fusion has, at least, advanced so far that the present inst.i.tutions and the nation must stand or fall together. The monarchy was made for the country, not the country for the monarchy. An acute Frenchman remarked during the Franco-German War, that Prince Bismarck had taken Cavour's conception without what made it really great--liberty. Possibly that word may still prove of better omen to the rebirth of a nation than ”Blood and Iron.”

CHIEF AUTHORITIES

Artom I. and A. Blanc. _Il Conte di Cavour in Parlamento_.

Florence, 1868.

Bersezio, V. _Il regno di Vittorio Emanuele II.; Trent' anni di vita italiana_. Turin, 1878-95. 8 vols.

Bert, A. _Nouvelles lettres inedites de Cavour_. Turin, 1889.

Berti, D. _Il Conte di Cavour avanti al 1848_. Rome, 1886.

Bianchi, N. _La politique du Comte Camille de Cavour_.

Turin, 1885.

Bonghi, R. _Ritratti contemporanei: Cavour, Bismarck, Thiers_.

Milan, 1879.

Buzziconi, G. _Bibliografia Cavouriana_. Turin, 1898.

Cavour, C. _Opere politico-economiche del Conte Camillo di Cavour_.

Cuneo, 1855.

---- _Discorsi parlamentari del Conte Camillo di Cavour_.

Published by order of the Chamber of Deputies. Turin, 1863-72. 8 vols.

Chiala, L. _Il Conte di Cavour_. Ricordi di Michelangelo Castelli, editi per cura di L. Chiala. Turin, 1886.

---- _Lettere edite ed inedite di Camillo Cavour_. Turin, 1883-87. 7 vols.

Dicey, E. _Memoir of Cavour_. London, 1861.

La Rive (De), W. _Le Comte de Cavour. Recits et souvenirs_.

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