obliged to yield.  What other inference can be deduced from the strange and romantic story of the suppression of the Jesuits? and, to cite only one more instance, from the deposition of bishops for extra-canonical reasons conceded by Pius VII. to the First Consul?  The curia thought that Victor Emmanuel would end at Canossa, but he ended instead in the Pantheon.  It should be remembered, however, that the quarrel had nothing then to do with the dispute between pope and king on the broader grounds of the possession of Rome.  That dispute was still in the darkness of the future.  Sardinia had not given even moral support to the Roman Republic.

In Cavour’s able speech of March 7, 1850, he observed that his friends, the Liberal Conservatives, feared the erection of the priesthood into a party hostile to the State.  Peace was precious, but too heavy sacrifices might be made even to it.  He himself trusted that in the long run the priesthood would recognise the necessity to modern society of the union of the two great moral forces, religion and liberty.  Europe was threatened with universal revolution; only large and courageous reforms could stem the tide.  M. Guizot might have saved the throne of Louis Philippe had he yielded to the demand for electoral reform.  Why had there been no revolution in England?  Because the Duke of Wellington in 1829, Lord Grey in 1832, and Sir Robert Peel in 1846, understood the exigencies of their epoch, proving themselves thereby to be the first statesmen of the time.  Uninfluenced by the furious attacks on him as an Anglomane, Cavour took the first opportunity of reaffirming from his seat in Parliament the admiration for English methods which he had constantly expressed outside.  He closed his speech by appealing to Government to persevere in its policy of large and fearless reforms, which, far from weakening the constitutional throne, would so strengthen its roots that not only would Piedmont be enabled to resist the revolutionary storm should it break around its borders, but also “gathering to itself all the living forces in Italy, it would be in a position to lead our mother-country to those high destinies whereunto she is called.”

The effect of this peroration was inconceivable.  Here was the first word of hope publicly uttered since the debacle!  People in the galleries who had seen Cavour usually silenced by clamour and howls heard the applause with astonishment, and then joined in it.  All the ministers rose to shake hands with the speaker.  Any other man would have become popular at once, but against Cavour prejudice was too strong for a fleeting success to remove it.  From that day, however, he was listened to.  He was no longer a quantite negligeable in the politics of Italy or of Europe.