The energy with which Cavour repudiated the idea of interfering with the seminaries is interesting on other grounds.  Possibly he was the only continental statesman who ever saw liberty in an Anglo-Saxon light.  This is further shown by the policy he advocated in dealing with the Jesuits.  He did not like the Society, which he described as a worse scourge to humanity than communism.  You must not judge its real nature, he said, by observing it where its position is contested and precarious.  Look at it, rather, where it has a loose rein, where it can apply its rules in a logical and consequent manner, where the whole education of youth is in its hands.  The result is une generation abatardie.  But the remedy he proposed was not repression.  He wished to grant the Jesuits three, four, ten times the liberty they gave to others in the countries under their power.  In a free country they could do no harm; they would be always obliged to modify and transform themselves and would never gain a real empire either in the world of politics or intellect The great Pombal, who may be called the Cavour of Portugal, took his conception of a free state from England, like the Italian statesman, but he did not understand that persecution is an unfortunate way of inaugurating liberty.  This is what for Cavour was “a principle of supreme importance.”

In April 1851 Cavour took the office of Minister of Finance; he had exacted the resignation of his predecessor, Nigra, as the price of his remaining in the Cabinet.  The Minister of Public Instruction also resigned owing to disagreements with the now all-powerful member of the Government, and was replaced by a nominee of Cavour’s, L.C.  Farini, the Romagnol exile, author of Lo Stato Romano, whose appointment was significant from a national point of view, notwithstanding his ultra-conservative opinions.  Cavour mentioned that Farini’s work had been praised by Mr. Gladstone, “one of the most illustrious statesmen in Europe,” at which the Chamber applauded wildly, as Cavour intended it to do.  Ever watchful for any sign from abroad which could profit Italy, he was glad of what seemed a chance opportunity to provoke a demonstration in honour of the writer of the Letters to Lord Aberdeen on the Neapolitan prisons, which were just then creating an immense sensation.  In Italy Mr. Gladstone was the most popular man of the hour; in France, still calling itself a republic, all parties except the reduced ranks of the advanced liberals were very angry—­not with King Bomba, but with his accuser.  A harmless cousin of Mr. Gladstone was blackballed in a club in Paris on account of the name he bore.  Nobody ever had such a good heart as the king of Naples, Count Walewski went about declaring, in support of which he told Mr. Monckton Milnes that Ferdinand had recently granted his request to pardon three hundred prisoners against whom nothing was proved.  “How grateful they must have been,” replied the Englishman; “did not they come and thank you for having obtained their deliverance?” Taken off his guard and unconscious of the irony, Walewski made the admission that the three hundred were debarred from the pleasure of paying him a visit because, though pardoned, they were not released!