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190 marked by a great increase in the Catholic party at Turin. They threw out, in May 1856, a Bill placing all education under the control of the State ; and, in order to diminish their opposition, Ratazzi retired from office. In 1858 the crime of Orsini obliged Cavour to introduce a conspiracy Bill, like our own, in which he encountered the resistance of the Left, but by which he strengthened the bonds of union with Napoleon.

This measure called forth a letter from Mazzini to Cavour, dated June 1858, in which the writer exhibits his own character and system as truly as he describes that of his antagonist, and which is one of the most expressive documents of the Italian movement.

This is so far true, that the notion of Italian unity belonged originally to Mazzini, not to the Italian Liberals; and that the success of the Roman movement, which the sect encouraged and then diverted, gave the impulse to the reforms of Charles Albert. The tone of Cavour, in speaking of the sanguinary practices of the sect, provoked a passionate but elaborate vindication of their theory : —

I loved you not before, but now I scorn you. Hitherto you were only an enemy ; now you are shamefully, infamously my enemy. . . . I believe that in principle every sentence of death — no matter whether applied by an individual or by society — is a crime, and if it were in my power I should deem it my duty to abolish it. . . . The abolition of capital punishment is an absolute duty in a free country. . . . But so long as war for the deliverance of one's country shall be a holy thing, or the armed protection of the weak against the powerful tyrant that tramples on him, or the defence by every means of the brother against whom the assassin's knife is raised, the absolute inviolability of life is a lie. . . . I see among your supporters, among those who cry out against the newly invented