Cavour rarely made a man’s antecedents a reason for not turning him to account; but there was one point on which he required to be reassured before seeking an understanding with Rattazzi—­this was whether his fidelity to the monarchy could be entirely depended on.  Cavour’s old friend and fellow worker of the Risorgimento, M.A.  Castelli, who was acquainted with the leader of the Left, opportunely bore witness to Rattazzi’s genuine loyalty, and Cavour hesitated no longer to come to an agreement which every day proved to be more imperative.  After the Coup d’etat, the Extreme Right, led by the Count de Revel and General Menabrea, adopted the tactics of professing to believe untenable the position of a free State wedged in between the old despotism of Austria and the new one of France.  The argument was ingenious and was likely to make converts.  It was urgently necessary to form a new political combination which should reduce this party to impotence.

Cavour’s compact with Rattazzi was concluded in the first month of 1852, but at first it was kept a profound secret.  It was divulged, as it were, accidentally in the course of a debate on a Bill which was intended to moderate the attacks of the press on foreign sovereigns.  This was the only form of restriction which Cavour, then and afterwards, was willing to countenance.  He held that the excuse for umbrage given to foreign rulers by personal invective published in the newspapers was a danger to the State which no government ought to tolerate.  The Extreme Right and Left were immediately up in arms, the first declaring that the Bill did not go far enough, and the second that it went too far.  Both affected to consider it the first step to more stringent anti-liberal measures—­invoked by one side and abhorred by the other.  It was then that Rattazzi made the announcement that although he did not mean to vote for this particular Bill, he intended to support the Ministry through the session which had just begun, if, as he believed, this Bill was an isolated measure, and did not indicate a change of policy.  Cavour acknowledged the promise in words which left no doubt that a prior agreement existed between the two leaders.  He repudiated the reactionary tendencies of Menabrea and his Savoyards, even, he said ironically, at the risk of so great a misfortune as that of losing the weak support which they had lately bestowed on Government, Count de Revel retorted that the Ministry had divorced the Right and made a marriage (connubio) with the party which drove Charles Albert to his doom and to an exile’s death in a foreign land.  The alliance between the Centres was henceforth known by the nickname thus conferred on it, which has been repeated since by hundreds who have forgotten its origin.