advised every Italian prince to abstain from the conflict, and it is further as certain as anything can well be, that his influence, exercised through Lord Normanby, alone averted French intervention in August 1848, when the desperate state of things made the Italians willing to accept foreign aid.  What would have happened if the French had intervened it is interesting to speculate, but impossible to decide.  Their help was not desired, except as a last resource, by any party in Italy, nor by any man of note except Manin.  The republicans wished Italy to owe her liberation to herself; Charles Albert wished her to owe it to him.  The King also feared a republican propaganda, and was uneasy, not without reason, about Savoy and Nice.  Lamartine would probably have been satisfied with the former, but it is doubtful if Charles Albert, though capable of giving up his crown for Italy, would have been capable of renouncing the cradle of his race.  When Lamartine was succeeded by Cavaignac, perhaps Nice would have been demanded as well as Savoy.  That both the King and Mazzini were right in mistrusting the sentiments of the French Government, is amply testified by a letter written by Jules Bastide to the French representative at Turin, in which the Minister of Foreign Affairs speaks of the danger to France of the formation of a strong monarchy at the foot of the Alps, that would tend to assimilate the rest of Italy, adding the significant words:  ’We could admit the unity of Italy on the principle and in the form of a federation of independent states, each balancing the other, but never a unity which placed the whole of Italy under the dominion of one of these states.’

Whether, in spite of all this, a political mistake was not made in not accepting French aid when it was first offered (in the spring of 1848) must remain an open question.  When the French came eleven years later, they were actuated by no purer motives, but who would say that Cavour, instead of seeking, should have refused the French alliance?

One other point has still to be noticed:  the proposal made by Austria in the month of May to give up Lombardy unconditionally if she might keep Venetia, which was promised a separate administration and a national army.  Nothing shows the state of mind then prevailing in a more distinct light than the scorn with which this offer was everywhere treated.  Lord Palmerston declined to mediate on such a basis ‘because there was no chance of the proposal being entertained,’ which proved correct, as when it was submitted to the Provisional Government of Milan, it was not even thought worth taking into consideration.  No one would contemplate the sacrifice of Venice by a new Campo Formio.