their absolute necessity was Lord Minto, whose visit to Turin, in October 1847, coincided with the dismissal of Count della Margherita, the minister most closely associated with the absolutist and Jesuitical regime.  Lord Minto was sent to Italy to encourage in the ways of political virtue those Italian princes who were not entirely incorrigible.  His mission excited exaggerated hopes on the part of the Liberals, and exaggerated wrath in the retrograde party—­both failing to understand its limitations.  The hopes died a natural death, but long afterwards, reactionary writers attributed all the ‘troubles’ in Italy to this estimable British diplomatist.  What is not doubtful is, that, accustomed as they were to being lectured and bullied by foreign courts, the Italians derived the greatest encouragement from the openly expressed sympathy of well-known English visitors, whether they came in an official capacity like Lord Minto, or unofficially like Mr Cobden, who travelled as a missionary of Free Trade, and was received with rapture—­with which, it is to be feared, Free Trade had little to do—­by the leading Liberals in Italy:  Massimo d’Azeglio at Genoa, Mancini at Naples Cavour and Scialoja at Turin, Minghetti at Bologna, Ridolfi at Florence, and Manin and Tommaseo at Venice.

Towards the end of 1847, there was a curious shuffling of the cards in the small states of Lucca and Parma, resulting in much irritation, which, in an atmosphere so charged with revolutionary electricity, was not without importance.  The dissolute Bourbon prince who reigned in Lucca, Charles Ludovico, had but one desire, which was to increase his civil list.  He hit upon an English jockey named Ward, who came to Italy in the service of a German count, and this person he made his Chancellor of the Exchequer.  By various luminous strokes, Ward furthered his Sovereign’s object without much increasing the taxation, and when matters began to grow complicated, and here, too, a cry was raised for a Constitution (which had been solemnly guaranteed to the people of Lucca at the Congress of Vienna, but had never been heard of since), he proposed the sale of the Duchy off-hand to Tuscany, with which it would, in any case, be united, when, on the death of the ex-Empress Marie-Louise, the Duchy of Parma devolved on the Duke of Lucca.  At the same time, by a prior agreement, a district of Tuscany called the Lunigiana was consigned, one-half to the Duchess of Parma, and the other to the Duke of Modena.  The indignation of the population, which was made, by force, subject to the Duke of Modena, was intense, and the whole transaction of handing about Italians to suit the pleasure of princes, or to obey the articles of forgotten treaties, reminded the least sensitive of the everyday opprobrium of their lot.