£520,000, and in 1858, £580,000. Tele- | Cavour tripled the debt of Sardinia and graphs have been constructed with a sim- materially increased the taxation, may ilar lavish hand, and with proportionate also be admitted without exposing his success; for, while equal in number to financial administration to the charge of those of Belgium, they exceed them in bankruptcy. England in the sixteenth cenreceipts. The submarine lines link Turin tury had no debt. Her taxation, also, did with the Isle of Sardinia, with Malta, and not amount then to one fortieth of the Africa; while those overland bring the sum it has reached in our day. But what Government in connection with every city political economist would be so hardy as in Piedmont and every capital in Europe. to affirm that the England of the sixteenth In the face of facts of this character, it century was richer than the England of the is somewhat amusing to have the admin- nineteenth century? That Sardinia could istration of Cavour traduced as unfortu- bear eight new imposts, and the augmentnate to the material interests of his coun- ation of some half-dozen old ones, is to try. Yet this attempt has been made by our mind an irrefragable argument that the Ultramontanes in our own Parlia- her people had thrived under the new ment, amidst the cheers of the great Con- system. At all events, the rate in the inservative party! Mr. Thomas Boyer, and crease of population sprang from three for his colleague of King's county, are strong every hundred to six for every hundred. in statistics. The latter gentleman went To estimate the financial condition of a over to Piedmont in the winter, and nation, as well as that of an individual, we brought home a box of documents to must balance its assets against its debenprove that Piedmont had lost her trade, tures. If its property increases in a far destroyed her shipping, played the bank- greater ratio than its debts, it is in a prosrupt with her exchequer, and taken the perous condition. This is precisely the last farthing out of the pockets of a starv- condition of Piedmont. The money ining people, by indulging the whim of vested by the government in public railItalian nationality. The figures quoted roads alone, and which it could realize by by this stump orator might be in the main selling them to-morrow, would more than correct, but that the inference from them liquidate the pecuniary burdens which expressed just the reverse of the truth, Cavour imposed on the nation. But the is evident upon the slightest examination, great bulk of the loans which he borrowthough such an acute logician as Lord ed went to the creation of a vast naval John Manners pronounced the conclusion port at Spezzia, the transformation of irrefragable. The declension in the freights sailing into steam-frigates, the fortificaof the Sardinian ports is evidence of no tions of Casal and Alexandria, the estabthing else than a change in the means of lishment of military schools, and the transport. It is calculated that three boring of Mont Cenis. By these undertafourths of the commerce of Sardinia lies kings, the nation came into possession of with France. Before the inauguration of property quite equal to the money investrailroads only one sixth of this took the ed by which it was enabled not only to overland route. The rest went round by defend the wealth it possessed, but to Genoa and Marseilles. But since the line acquire more. has been opened to Susa, which is to connect Turin with Paris, the land-traffic has considerably increased, and the shipping declined in proportion. A similar revolution has been effected by the line through Novara to the Lago Major, which is to connect Turin with Switzerland through the Simplon. Had Mr. Henessy lived in the days of the Melbourne ministry, he might have proved satisfactorily to his Conservative backers that British commerce had received a fatal check from the adoption of the Reform Bill, and based his argument on the decline of stagecoaches.

The other gravamen of the charge, that

That Cavour increased the debt of Sardinia from 225,849,316 francs to upward of 760 millions of francs ought to form a matter of very little surprise. When we consider the end he had in view, the great task he had to perform, and the magnitude of the result he accomplished, the marvel is not that he borrowed so much, but that he did not borrow more. He merely increased Sardinia's debt by shillings, to the same extent in which Pitt increased ours by pounds. But there is this difference between Pitt and the Piedmontese statesman, that while Pitt raised his loans upon terms utterly ruinous to the nation, and squandered the money reck

little state, and the celestial hierarchies were made to tremble upon the issue of the fray, as if the destinies of the universe depended on the victory of the fat conservative mayor over the lean radical professor. Ministers, splashed with a torrent of fiery talk, and haunted by monsters conjured up from the depths of Phlegethon, quailed for a moment. Cavour resigned in favor of Durando, April, 1855. But the latter gentleman could not form a ministry. The bishops gave way; and Cavour and his colleagues, strong in the justice of their cause, ultimately triumphed.

Two courses were open to Cavour in bringing the Church of Piedmont in harmony with the wants of the age and the As soon as Cavour had matured his spirit of the new constitution. He might Convent Bill, he exchanged the Home have reduced the Church to the Belgian Office, which he had previously presided model, as Ratazzi advised, by a wholesale over in connection with that of Finance, confiscation of its property, and brought for Foreign Affairs. His preceding ministhe priests in complete subjection to the terial career had only been prelusive; but state. This policy would have despoiled now he was to draw up the curtain on the the clergy of their material weapons, and first act of that eventful drama which was rendered them the creatures instead of to end in the unification of Italy. The diffithe assailants of the goverment. But culties which involved the Western PowCavour set his face against violent and ers in the early stages of the Russian war, wholesale proscriptions, even when they had led them to knock at the doors of tended to his advantage. The course of every principality in Europe for assistance. moderate reform might be slow, but it Even the late King of Naples was invoked was sure. It led to no reäction; it was in to put forth his arm on the occasion. But harmony with nature; hence Cavour pre- no statesman either in Germany or Italy ferred to leave the clergy with means in seemed to understand the advantages their hands of imperiling the safety of which might be drawn from the crisis but his government, rather than risk the at- Cavour. He told his countrymen the way tainment of his ultimate purposes by any to free Italy was not to indulge in idle radical spoliation. What their hostility tirades against Austria, or to write schoolwas, the reader may form some concep- boy declamations on the sacredness of tion of, who has witnessed the clerical liberty as imaged in the virtues of Timagitation in Ireland during a general elec-oleon and Brutus, but to take a sword in tion. Every parish furnished the focus their hands, and display their prowess on of an association for upsetting the gov- the battle-fields of Europe. The overernment. Every chapter-house was a tures of the Anglo-French alliance were magazine of sedition. The confessional, accepted. Cavour dispatched no mean the pulpit, the weekly prone, the parochial force to the Crimea, which on the banks visit, each were turned into a channel of of the Tchernaya, by their gallant resistvirulent attack upon the government. ance to the Russians in the sight of two When the time for choosing a new Cham-fine armies, earned for themselves the apber came round in 1857, all the armory of attack was consolidated and extended. Those who voted for the ministerial candidate were menaced with deprivation of the sacrament. Those who refused to support the clerical candidate would have to answer for the crime at the day of judgment. Both were threatened with exclusion from Christian burial. All the powers of heaven and hell were convoked to intermingle in the election of a representative for the petty municipality of a

plause of Europe. In the subsequent Council of War, held in Paris, their chief, La Marmora, took his seat along with the other commanders in the expedition. In the subsequent Congress, Cavour found himself discussing, for the first time, with the leading plenipotentiaries of Europe, high questions of policy affecting the loftiest European interests, After attaching Napoleon to his interests, by supporting his views on the union of the two Principalities and on the free navigation

of the Danube, in opposition to Austria, | subscription of a monument to the bravery he dexterously availed himself of the oc- of the Sardinian army at Milan. In the casion, in a note to Lord Clarendon, (25th diplomatic fence which followed, Cavour March, 1856,) to draw the attention of certainly had the best of the argument. Congress to the abnormal state of the The Austrian fortifications at Piacenza Pontifical Legations, and Austria's in- justified Sardinia in mounting cannon at fringement of the Vienna treaties, by her Alexandria. He could not, when public protracted occupation of Central Italy. sympathy was offered to Piedmont for His views found a echo in the breasts of her services in the cause of Italy, reject the English and French plenipotentiaries. it. Austria was as anxious as Turin to get But Count Buol, on the part of Austria, de- public opinion on her side. Count Buol clared his incompetence to discuss any was told that the Sardinian press was questions not arising out of the Eastern amenable to the laws, and that Count war. Though the Congress closed with- Paar, the Austrian envoy at Turin, might out any decision being taken, Cavour had cite it before the proper tribunals. The gained his object. He had taken the Emperor, indeed, should be the last perItalian question out of the chamber of son to complain of the virulence of the conspirators, and carried it before the Turin press, in the sight of the tirades councils of kings. He had many expres- which issue against Sardinia from his sions of the warmest sympathy, not from own. For the most virulent attacks of a club of excited revolutionists or reck- the Piedmontese journals could do the less partisans, but from the lips of the Emperor no harm, as they were not adrepresentatives of the kingdoms of the mitted into his dominions, while those of first rank in Europe. Italy leapt up at Vienna were found in every café of Turin. his words. At last she had found the Besides, Victor Emanuel's Government clue to her regeneration. Busts and me- had no power over its own press, and disdallions were showered on the Turin approved of its virulence. But the jourpremier upon his return. The spark had nals of Vienna might be suppressed by been applied to the train which was to royal edict, while the abuse which aplead to the resurrection of his country. peared in its columns was evidently inspired by people breathing the atmosphere of the court. Buol affirmed in reply that the allusion to the Viennese press was a feint to get out of a difficulty, and that it was inconsistent with the dignity of the Austrian envoy to be dragging every day the editors of journals before the legal tribunals.

For some years past an estrangement had been rapidly increasing between the Courts of Turin and Vienna. The liberal policy of the Government, and the ecclesiastical reforms which had drawn upon it the hostility of the Holy See, doubtless furnished the nucleus of the hatred which was on the eve of breaking out into open war. The sequestration of the goods of such Lombard subjects as became naturalized subjects of Sardinia, on the occasion of the Milanese riot in 1853, and the supercilious silence with which the Viennese Court treated Victor Emanuel's notification of the death of his wife, the Archduchess Maria, doubtless blew the smoke into a flame. The abuse with which the Piedmontese press greeted the Emperor's visit to Milan in 1855, and Cavour's gracious reception of the deputations which thronged into Turin from all parts of Italy, to thank him for his exertions in behalf of their country at the Congress of Paris, furnished the occasion of a diplomatic war, which ended in the mutual recall of their ambassadors. Austria also took umbrage at the activity displayed in manning the fortress of Alexandria, and at the erection by public

Paar demanded his passports, and said he would return when the attacks of the press ceased. Cavour recalled Cantono from Vienna, and appealed to the Western Powers for a confirmation of the justice of his cause. At that juncture the Morning Advertiser was distinguished for its daily tirades against Austria. Cavour asked, why did not the Austrian Legation quit London? Why complain at Turin, and leave St. James's without a remonstrance? Why such susceptibilities with the weak, while so tolerant with the strong?

There can not, we think, be a doubt, from the bold tone assumed by Cavour in these dispatches, and from his defiant attitude, there was an understanding between the courts of Turin and Paris, even on the breaking up of the Paris Congress, that in case of war Sardinia might depend on the aid of France. The