Cavour began negotiations with Rome which, at first, he had reason to think, were favourably entertained; afterwards they were abruptly broken off.  Nothing is more difficult than to penetrate through the wall of apparent unanimity which surrounds the Vatican.  Sometimes, however, a breach is made, to the scandal of the faithful.  Thus the biographer of Cardinal Manning revealed the fact that the late Archbishop of Westminster, who began by wishing the Temporal Power to be erected into an article of faith, ended by ardently desiring some kind of tacitly accepted modus vivendi with the Italian kingdom, such as that which Cavour proposed.  Cardinal Manning was sorry to see the Italians being driven to atheism and socialism, and so he had the courage to change his mind.  In 1861 he was in the opposite camp, but there was not wanting then a section of learned and patriotic ecclesiastics who desired peace.  It was said that their efforts were rendered sterile by the great organisation which a pope once suppressed, and which owed its resurrection to a schismatic emperor and an heretical king.  However that may be, the recollection of what befell Clement XIV. is still a living force in Rome.

Having failed to conclude a compact with the Vatican, Cavour turned to France.  To make it easier for Napoleon to withdraw his troops, he was willing to allow the Temporal Power to stand for a short time—­“for instance, for a year”—­after their departure.  In the arrangement subsequently arrived at under the name of the September Convention, the underlying intention was to adjourn Roma capitale to the Greek kalends.  Cavour had no such intention, nor would he have agreed to the transference of the capital to Florence.  His plan was warmly supported by Prince Napoleon, and had he lived it is probable that it would have been carried out.  He did not despair of an ultimate reconciliation with the Holy See, though he no longer thought that it would yield to persuasion alone.

While Cavour was applying himself with feverish activity to the Roman question, he was harassed by the state of the Neapolitan provinces, which showed no improvement.  The liquidation of Garibaldi’s dictatorship was rendered the more difficult by the undiminished dislike of the military chiefs for the volunteers, whom they were disposed to treat less favourably than the Bourbon officers who ran away.  Cavour hoped to get substantial justice done in the end, but meantime he had to bear the blame for the illiberality which he had so strenuously opposed.  To have told the truth would have been to throw discredit on the army, and this he would not do.  The subject was brought before the Chamber of Deputies in a debate opened by Ricasoli, who spoke in favour of the volunteers, but deprecated undue importance being assigned to the work of any private citizen.  The true liberator of Italy was the king under whom they had all worked; those whose sphere of action had been widest, as their