of Verona, and Tito Speri, the young hero of the defence of Brescia.  Speri had a trifling part in the propaganda, but the remembrance of his conduct in 1849 ensured his condemnation.  He was deeply attached to the religion in which he was born, and his last letters show the fervour of a Christian joined to the calmness of a stoic.  If he had a regret, it was that he had been unable to do more for his country; but here too his simple faith sustained him.  Surely the Giver of all good would not refuse to listen to the prayers of the soul which passed to Him through martyrdom.  ‘To-morrow they lead me forth,’ he wrote.  ’I have done with this world, but, in the bosom of God, I promise you I will do what I can.’  So did this clear and childlike spirit carry its cause from the Austrian Assizes to a higher tribunal.

In the spring of 1853 there was an attempt at a rising in Milan from which the mass of the citizens stood aloof, if they even knew of it till it was over; an attempt ill-considered and not easily justified from any point of view, the blame for which has been generally cast on Mazzini; but though he knew of it, he was unwilling that its authors should choose the time and mode of action which they chose.  He was, moreover, misinformed as to the extent of the preparations, since no Milanese of any standing gave his support to the plan.

On the plea that the Lombard emigration was concerned in the abortive movement, which was by no means consistent with facts, the Austrian Government sequestered the landed property of the exiles and voluntary emigrants, reducing them and their families (which in most instances remained behind) to complete beggary.  Nine hundred and seventy-eight estates were placed under sequestration.  The Court of Sardinia held the measure to be a violation of the amnesty, which was one of the conditions of the peace of 1850.  The Sardinian Minister was recalled from Vienna, and the relations between the two governments were once more on a footing of open rupture.

Not less important was the moral effect of the sequestrations in France and England, but particularly in England.  They acted as the last straw, coming as they did on the top of the flogging system which had already enraged the English public mind to the highest degree.  The Prince Consort wrote in March to his brother:  ’To give you a conception of the maxims of justice and policy which Austria has been lately developing, I enclose an extract of a report from Turin which treats of the decrees of confiscation in Italy.  People here will be very indignant.’  He goes on to say (somewhat too broadly) that the English upper classes were till then thoroughly Austrian, but that she had succeeded in turning the whole of England against her, and there was now no one left to defend her.

Austria, through Count Buol, complained that she was ’dying of legality,’ but England took the Sardinian view that the sequestrations directly violated the treaty between the two Powers.  In the Austrian Note of the 9th of March, it was distinctly declared that Piedmont would be crushed if she did not perform the part of police-agent to Austria.  Cavour’s uncowed attitude at this crisis was what first fixed upon him the eyes of European diplomacy.