Well has it been said, that “it is not the best tools that shape out the best ends; if so, Martin Luther would not have been selected as the master-spirit of the Reformation.”  Napoleon III. may deserve all that is said against him by men of the extreme right and by men of the extreme left,—­by Catholics and infidels,—­by Whites, and Reds, and Blues,—­but it cannot be denied that he gave to the Italians that assistance without which they never could have obtained even partial deliverance from the Austrian yoke, and which they could have procured from no other potentate or power.  Bankrupt though she was, Austria’s force was so superior to anything that Italy could present in the shape of an army, that Sardinia must have been conquered, if she had contended alone with her enemy; and a war between Austria and Sardinia was inevitable, and would probably have broken out long before 1859, had the former country been assured of the neutrality of France.

There has been a great inkshed, and a large expenditure of oratory, on the question of the origin of the Italian war of 1859; and, as usual, much nonsense has been written and said of and concerning the ambition of France and the encroachments of Sardinia.  But that war was brought about neither by French ambition nor by Sardinian desire for territorial aggrandizement.  That it occurred in 1859 was undoubtedly owing to the action of France, which country merely chose its own time to drub its old foe; but the point at issue was, whether Austrian or Sardinian ideas should predominate in the government of Italy.  Austria’s purpose never could be accomplished so long as a constitutional polity existed in the best, because the best governed and the best organized, of all the Italian States; and Sardinia’s purpose never could be accomplished so long as Austria was in a condition to dictate to the Italians the manner in which they should be ruled.  A war between the two nations was, as we have said, inevitable.  The only point about which there could be any dispute was, whether Sardinia would have to fight the battle of Italy unaided, or be backed by some power beyond the mountains.

It shows how much men respect a military monarchy, how deferential they are to the sword, that even those persons who assumed that France must espouse the Sardinian cause were far from feeling confident that Austria would be overmatched by an alliance of the two most liberal of the Catholic nations of Europe.  That monarchy is the type of force to all minds; and though she has seldom won any splendid successes in the field over the armies of enlightened nations, and has been repeatedly beaten by Prussia and France, men cling to old ideas, and give her great advantages at the beginning of every war in which she engages.  The common opinion, in the spring of 1859, was, that Austria would crush Sardinia before the French could reach the field in force, and that her soldiers, flushed by successes over the Italians, would hurl their new