On taking office Cavour sold his shares in the agricultural and industrial speculations which he had promoted, with the exception of one company, then not in a flourishing state, and likely to collapse if he withdrew his name.  He also severed his connection with the Risorgimento, which had cost him much money and made him many enemies, but he believed that the services rendered by it to the cause of orderly liberty were incalculable.  He never regretted his years of work in the antro, the wild beasts’ den, as the advanced liberals called the office of the journal, a name gaily adopted by himself.  As editor of the Risorgimento he fought his one duel; a scandalous attack on the personal honesty of the writers was made by a Jewish financier in an obscure Nizzard sheet; an encounter with pistols followed in which no one was hurt, but both sides seemed to have aimed in earnest.  There is a tragic absurdity in the possible extinction of such a life as Cavour’s on so paltry an occasion; yet, in the surroundings in which he moved, he could not have passed over the worthless attack in the silent contempt it deserved without being called a coward.  At the conclusion of the duel he walked away, turning his back on his adversary, but no long time elapsed before, as minister, he was taking trouble to obtain for this man some honorific bauble which his vanity coveted.

On taking office, Cavour doubted for a moment his own future, the doubt common to men who reach a position they have waited for too long.  In these times, he wrote, politicians were soon used up; probably it would be so with him.  But the work of his department dispelled gloomy thoughts:  as Minister of Commerce he negotiated treaties with France, England, and Belgium in which a step was made towards realising his favourite theories on free trade.  Before long he was also made Minister of the Marine; it was taken for granted that he could do as much work as two or three other men.  Though both these offices were secondary, Cavour became insensibly leader of the house.  Questions on whatever subject were answered by him, and he was not careful to consult his chief as to the tenor of his replies.  Massimo d’Azeglio said with a rueful smile that he was now like Louis Philippe:  he ruled, but did not govern.  Cavour stated his own opinions, whether they were popular or unpopular, consonant with those of his party or directly opposed to them.  A deputy asked Government to interfere with the mode and substance of the teaching in the seminaries.  Cavour immediately answered that he would hold such interference to be a most fatal act of absolutism; the person to control the instruction given in the seminaries was the bishop; let bishops play the part of theologians, not of deputies, and let the Government govern, and not play the theologian.  Some one pointed out that this was quite at variance with what had been said by the other ministers; Cavour excused himself towards his colleagues, but repeated that the principle was one of supreme importance.  He had spoken “less as a minister than as a politician.”  And he never learnt to speak otherwise until there was a ministry in which (to borrow a once often quoted witticism) all the ministers were called Cavour.