“Certainly we differ in our estimate of the Italian situation, while loving and desiring for Italy up to the same height and with the same heart.

“For me I persist in looking to facts rather than to words official or unofficial, and in repeating that, ’whereas we were bound, now we are free.’

“‘I think, therefore, I am.’ Cogito, ergo sum, was, you know, an old formula.  Italy thinks (aloud) at Florence and Bologna; therefore she is.  And how did that happen?  Could it have happened last year, with the Austrians at Bologna, and ready (at a sign) to precipitate themselves into Tuscany?  Could it have happened previous to the French intervention?  And could it happen now if France used the power she has in Italy against Italy?  Why is it that the Times newspaper, which declared ... first that the elections were to be prevented by France, and next that they were to be tampered with ... is not justified before our eyes?  I appeal to your sober judgment ... if indeed the Emperor Napoleon desires the restoration of the Dukes!! Is he not all the more admirable for being loyal and holding his hand off while he has fifty thousand men ready to ‘protect’ us all and prevent the exercise of the people’s sovereignty?  And he a despot (so called) and accustomed to carry out his desires.  Instead of which Tuscans and Romagnoli, Parma and Modena, have had every opportunity allowed them to combine, carry their elections, and express their full minds in assemblies, till the case becomes so complicated and strengthened that her enemies for the most part despair.

“The qualities shown by the Italians—­the calm, the dignity, the intelligence, the constancy ...  I am as far from not understanding the weight of these virtues as from not admiring them.  But the opportunity for exercising them comes from the Emperor Napoleon, and it is good and just for us all to remember this while we admire the most.

“So at least I think; and the Italian official bodies have always admitted it, though individuals seem to me to be too much influenced by the suspicions and calumnies thrown out by foreign journals—­English, Prussian, Austrian, and others—­which traduce the Emperor’s motives in diplomacy, as they traduced them in the war.  A prejudice in the eye is as fatal to sight as mote and beam together.  And there are things abroad worse than any prejudices—­yes, worse!

“It is a fact that the Emperor used his influence with England to get the Tuscan vote accepted by the English Government.  Whatever wickedness he meant by that the gods know; and English statesmen suspect ... (or suspected a very short short time ago); but the deed itself is not wicked, and you and I shall not be severe on it whatever bad motive may be imputable.