Popularity is very well, but a government cannot long subsist on the single fact of the popularity of the sovereign.  When the Roman mob began to cry:  ‘Viva Pio Nono solo,’ the fate of the experiment was sealed.  Real control slipped from the hands that nominally wielded it.  ‘The influence,’ Mr Petre wrote to Sir George Hamilton, ’of one individual of the lower class, Angelo Brunetti, hardly known but by his nickname of Ciceruacchio, has for the last month kept the peace of the city more than any power possessed by the authorities, from the command which he exerts over the populace.’  It was Ciceruacchio who preserved order when in July 1847 the air was full of rumours of a vast reactionary plot, which aimed at carrying off the Pope, and putting things back as they were under Gregory.  That such a plot was ever conceived, or, at anyrate, that it received the sanction of the high personages whose names were mentioned in connection with it, is generally doubted now; but it was believed in by many of the representatives of foreign Powers then in Italy.  The public mind in Rome was violently disturbed.  Austria made the excitement the excuse for occupying the town of Ferrara, where, by the accepted interpretation of the Treaty of Vienna, she had only the right to garrison the fortress.  This aggression called forth a strong remonstrance from the Pope’s Secretary of State, Cardinal Ferretti; and though a compromise was arrived at through the mediation of Lord Palmerston, the feeling against Austria grew more and more exasperated in the Roman states, and the Pope consented, not, it seemed, much against the grain, to preparations being taken in hand with a view to the possible eventuality of war.

At this date the Italian question was better apprehended at Vienna than in any other part of Europe.  A man of Prince Metternich’s talents does not devote a long life to statecraft without learning to distinguish the real drift of political currents.  While Lord Palmerston still felt sure that reforms, and nothing but reforms, were what Italy wanted, Prince Metternich saw that two real forces were at work from the Alps to the Straits of Messina, and two only:  desire for union, hatred of Austria.  Nor was it his fault if the English Cabinet or the rest of the world remained unenlightened.  Besides enlarging on this truth in frequent diplomatic communications, he caused it to be continually dwelt upon in the Vienna Observer, the organ of the Austrian Government, which printed illustrative quotations from the writings of Mazzini, of whom it said that ’he has the one merit of despising hypocrisy, and proceeding firmly and directly to his true end.  Persons who are versed in history will know that this is exactly the same end as that at which Arnold of Brescia and Cola di Rienzi formerly aimed.  The only difference is, that the revolutionary dream has in the course of centuries gained in self-reliance and confidence.’  It may truly be affirmed after this that Metternich ’had the one merit of despising hypocrisy.’  Exactly the same end as Arnold of Brescia and Cola di Rienzi—­who better could have described the scheme of Italian redemption?