Cavour was a younger son of a noble Piedmontese family, and entered the army in 1826, serving in the engineers.  His liberal sentiments made him distrusted by the government of Charles Felix as a dangerous man, and he was doomed to an inactive life in an unimportant post.  He soon quitted the army, and embarked in business operations as manager of one of the estates of his family.  For twelve years he confined himself to agricultural labors, making himself acquainted with all the details of business and with the science of agriculture, introducing such improvements as the use of guano, and promoting agricultural associations; but he was not indifferent at the same time to public affairs, being one of the most zealous advocates of constitutional liberty.  A residence in England gave him much valuable knowledge as to the working of representative institutions.  He established in 1847 a political newspaper, and went into parliament as a member of the Chamber of Deputies.  In 1848 he used all his influence to induce the government to make war with Austria; and when Charles Albert abdicated, and Victor Emmanuel became king, Cavour’s great talents were rewarded.  In 1850 he became minister of commerce; in 1852, prime minister.  After that, his history is the history of Italy itself.

The Sardinian government took the lead of all the States of Italy for its vigor and its wisdom.  To drive the Austrians out of the country now became the first principle of Cavour’s administration.  For this end he raised the military and naval forces of Sardinia to the utmost practicable point of efficiency; and the people from patriotic enthusiasm, cheerfully submitted to the increase of taxation.  He built railways, made commercial treaties with foreign nations, suppressed monasteries, protected fugitives from Austrian and Papal tyranny, gave liberty to the Press, and even meditated the construction of a tunnel under Mont Cenis.  His most difficult task was the reform of ecclesiastical abuses, since this was bitterly opposed by the clergy and the conservatives; but he succeeded in establishing civil marriages, in suppressing the Mendicant order of friars, and in making priests amenable to the civil courts.  He also repressed all premature and unwise movements on the part of patriotic leaders to secure national deliverance, and hence incurred the hostility of Mazzini.

The master-stroke in the policy of Cavour as a statesman was to make a firm alliance with France and England, to be used as a lever against Austria.  He saw the improbability of securing liberty to Italy unless the Austrians were expelled by force of arms.  The Sardinian kingdom, with only five millions of people, was inadequate to cope singly with one of the most powerful military monarchies of Europe.  Cavour looked for deliverance only by the aid of friendly Powers, and he secured the friendship of both France and England by offering five thousand troops for the Crimean war.  On the 10th of January, 1855, a treaty