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148 the Athenians: in a word, that they have been without laws and without chiefs, pillaged, torn to pieces and enslaved by foreign powers.

It has sometimes, unquestionably happened that men have arisen, whom we thought were sent by Heaven for our deliverance; but jealous fortune seems to have determined to abandon them in the midst of their career; so that our unfartunate country still groans and pines away in the expectation of a deliverer, who might put an end to the devastations in Lambardy, Tuscany, and the kingdom of Naples. She supplicates Heaven to raise up a prince, who may free her from the odious and humiliating yoke of foreigners, who may close the numberless wounds with which she has been so long afflicted, and under whose standard she might march against her cruel oppressors.

But on whom can Italy cast her eyes except upon your illustrious house, which visibly favoured by heaven and the church, the government af which is confided to it, posesses also the wisdom and, the power necessary for the undertaking of so glorious an enterprise? and I cannot think that the execution of this project will seem to you to present insurmountable difficulties. If you consider that the great princes according to whose example you may regulate your conduct were but men, although their merit raised them above others, yet none of them certainly were placed in a situation so