It would be vain to expect that the record of Italian vicissitudes during the years when the fate of Italy hung in the balance can awake or renew the spellbound interest caused by the events themselves.  The reader of recent history is like the novel reader who begins at the last chapter—­he is too familiar with how it all ended to be keenly affected by the development of the plot.  Yet it is plain that we are in a better position to appreciate the process of development than was the case when the issue remained uncertain.  We can estimate more accurately the difficulties which stood in the way, and judge more impartially the means that were taken to remove them.  One outcome of this fuller knowledge is the conviction that patriotism was the monopoly of no single Italian party.  The leaders, and still more their henchmen, were in the habit of saying very hard things about each other.  It was natural and unavoidable; but there is no excuse now for failing to recognise that there were pure and devoted patriots on the one side as well as on the other—­men whose only desire was the salvation of Italy, to effect which no sacrifice seemed too great.  Nor were their labours unfruitful, for there was work for all of them to do; and the very diversity of opinion, though unfortunate under some aspects, was not so under all.  If no one had raised the question of unity before all things, Italy might be still a geographical expression.  If no one had tried to wring concessions from the old governments, their inherent and irremediable vices would never have been proved; and though they might have been overturned, they would have left behind a lasting possibility of ignorant reaction.

The Great Powers had presented to the Court of Rome in 1831 a memorandum, in which various moderate reforms and improvements were proposed as urgently necessary to put an end to the intolerable abuses which were rife in the states of the Church, and, most of all, in Romagna.  The abolition of the tribunal of the Holy Office, the institution of a Council of State, lay education, and the secularisation of the administration were among the measures recommended.  In 1845 a certain Pietro Renzi collected a body of spirited young men at San Marino, and made a dash on Rimini, where he disarmed the small garrison.  The other towns were not prepared, and Renzi and his companions were obliged to retire into Tuscany; but the revolution, partial as it had been, raised discussion in consequence of the manifesto issued by its promoters, in which a demand was made for the identical reforms vainly advocated by European diplomacy fourteen years before.  If these were granted, the insurgents engaged to lay down their arms.  The manifesto was written by Luigi Carlo Farini, who was destined to play a large part in future affairs.  It proved to Europe that even the most conservative elements in the nation were driven to revolution by the sheer hopelessness of the dead-lock which the Italian rulers sought by