remark that the Prussian Government would be soon very glad to follow his example.  When William I. ascended the throne, he ignored the rupture of diplomatic relations, and sent La Marmora to whisper into the ear of the new monarch words of artful flattery.  He may have doubted if a Prussianised Germany would exactly come as a boon and a blessing to men.  In 1848 he prophesied that Germanism would disturb the European equilibrium, and that the future German Empire would aim at becoming a naval power in order to combat and rival England on the seas.  But he saw that the rise of Prussia meant the decline of Austria, and this was all that, as an Italian statesman, with Venetia still in chains, he was bound to consider.

CHAPTER XIII

ROME VOTED THE CAPITAL—­CONCLUSION

The other unsolved question, that of Rome, was the most thorny, the most complicated, that ever a statesman had to grapple with.  Though Cavour’s death makes it impossible to say what measure of success would have attended his plans for resolving it, it must be always interesting to study his attitude in approaching the greatest crux in modern politics.

Cavour did not think of shirking this question because it was difficult.  In fact, he had understood from the beginning that in it lay the essence of the whole problem.  Chiefly for that reason he brought the occupations of the Papal States before the Congress of Paris.  In 1856, as in 1861, he looked upon the Temporal Power as incompatible with the independence of Italy.  It was already a fiction.  “The Pope’s domination as sovereign ceased from the day when it was proved that it could not exist save by a double foreign occupation.”  It had become a centre of corruption, which destroyed moral sense and rendered religious sentiment null.  Without the Temporal Power, many of the wounds of the Church might be healed.  It was useless to cite the old argument of the independence of the head of the Church; in face of a double occupation and the Swiss troops, it would be too bitter a mockery.  When Cavour spoke in these terms, Italian Unity seemed far off.  Now that it was accomplished, a new and potent motive arose for settling the Roman question once for all.  In May 1861 Mr. Disraeli remarked to Count Vitzthum:  “The sooner the inevitable war breaks out the better.  The Italian card-house can never last.  Without Rome there is no Italy.  But that the French will evacuate the Eternal City is highly improbable.  On this point the interests of the Conservative party coincide with those of Napoleon.”  There is no better judge of the drift of political affairs than an out-and-out opponent.  So Prince Metternich always insisted that the Italians did not want reforms—­they wanted national existence, unity.  Mr. Disraeli probably had in mind a speech delivered in the House of Commons by Lord John Russell, in which the Foreign Secretary recommended as “the