The Pope’s spiritual authority would be safer in the charge of twenty-six millions of free Italians than in that of a foreign garrison.  Whether they went to Rome with or without the consent of the Pontiff, as soon as the fall of the Temporal Power was proclaimed, the complete liberty of the Church would be proclaimed also.  Might they not hope that the head of the Church would accept the offered terms?  Was it impossible to persuade him that the Temporal Power was no longer a guarantee of independence, and that its loss would be compensated by an amount of liberty which the Church had sought in vain for three centuries, only gathering particles of it by concordats which conceded the use of spiritual arms to temporal rulers?  They were ready to promise the Holy Father that freedom which he had never obtained from those who called themselves his allies and devoted sons.  They were ready to assert through every portion of the king’s dominions the great principle of a free church in a free state.

At Cavour’s invitation, parliament voted the choice of Rome as capital.  From that vote there could be no going back. Roma capitale could never again be put aside as the dream of revolutionists and poets.  This was the last great political act of Cavour’s life.  Though he did not think that his life would be a long one, he thought that he should have time to finish his work himself.  One day, when he had been discussing the matter with a friend, who saw nothing but difficulties, he placed the inkstand at the top of the table before which they were sitting, and said, “I see the straight line to that point; it is this” (he traced it with his finger).  “Supposing that halfway I encounter an impediment; I do not knock my head against it for the pleasure of breaking it, but neither do I go back.  I look to the right and to the left, and not being able to follow the straight line, I make a curve.  I turn the obstacle which I cannot attack in front.”

What Cavour would have called the straight line to Rome was a friendly arrangement with the Pope.  He could not have hoped for this, had he been less convinced that the true interests of the Church of Rome would be served, not injured, by the loss of a sovereignty which had become an anachronism.  It is, of course, certain that many thought the contrary; Lord Palmerston believed that the religious position of the papacy would suffer, and among the advanced party the wish to weaken the spiritual influence of the priests went along with the wish to abolish their political dominion.  Cavour looked upon religion as a great moralising force, and he was well assured that the only form of it acceptable to the Italian people was the Latin form of Christianity established in Rome.  Efforts to spread Protestantism in Italy struck him as childish.  Freed from the log of temporalities, he expected that the Church would become constantly better fitted to perform its mission.