did not rule the House and, through it, the country.  The Sardinian Chamber of Deputies was composed of the Right Centre, the Extreme Right, the Left Centre, and the Extreme Left.  The Extreme Right was loyal to the House of Savoy, but contrary to Italian aspirations; the Extreme Left was strongly Italian, but the degree of its loyalty was hit off in Massimo d’Azeglio’s mot “Viva Vittorio, il re provisorio” ("Long live Victor, the provisional king").  There remained the two Centres representing the liberal conservatives and the moderate liberals—­“moderate radicals” would be more correct, if the verbal contradiction be permitted.  But neither of these single-handed could support a stable and independent government.  Every ministry must exist on the sufferance of its opponents, and in terror of the vagaries of the advanced section on its own side.  At any critical moment a passing breeze might overthrow it.  The only antidote to the recklessness or obstructiveness of extreme parties lay in dissolution; but to dissolve a parliament just elected, as Victor Emmanuel had once been forced to do already, would be a fatal expedient if repeated often.  Any student of representative government would suggest the amalgamation of the two Centres as the true remedy, but so great were the difficulties in the way of this, that not half a dozen persons in Piedmont believed it to be possible.  Cavour himself thought about it for a year before making the final move The acerbities of Italian party politics are not softened by the good social relations and the general mutual confidence in purity of motive which prevail in England.  Hitherto Cavour and the brilliant and plausible leader of the Left Centre had not entertained flattering opinions of each other.  Rattazzi thought Cavour an ambitious and aggressive publicist rather than a patriot statesman, and Cavour knew Rattazzi to be the minister who led the country to Novara.  But he appreciated his value as a parliamentary ally; he had the qualities in which Cavour himself was most deficient.  Urbano Rattazzi (born at Alessandria in 1808) was famous as one of the best speakers at the Piedmontese bar before entering the Chamber.  He was a perfect master of Italian; his manners were popular and insinuating.  He was richly endowed with all those secondary gifts which often carry a man along faster, though less far, than the highest endowments.  If he had not power, he had elasticity; if not judgment, cleverness.  He always drifted, which made him always appear the politician up to date.  His name was then associated with one catastrophe; before he died it was to be linked with two others, Aspromonte and Mentana; but such was his ability as a leader that he retained a compact following to the last.