Читать книгу Cavour - contessa Evelyn Lilian Hazeldine Carrington Martinengo-Cesaresco - Страница 9

In 1846, Cavour was only known at home as the most unpopular man in Piedmont. Most people can scarcely be said to be unpopular before they have occupied any public position, but this, strangely enough, was the case with Cavour. He was simply a private person, but he was hated by all parties. His writings, which had made their mark abroad, were little known in Italy; the reviews in which they appeared could only be obtained by stealth. No one rightly knew what his views were, but every one disliked him. Solaro de la Margherita, the retrograde prime minister, was detested by the liberals, but he had a strong following among the old Savoyard nobility; Lorenzo Valerio, the radical manufacturer, was harassed by those in power, but he was adored by the people; Cavour was in worse odour with both parties than these two men were with either. Under the porticoes of Turin petty private talk took the place of anything like public discussion. "By good fortune," as the prime minister put it, "the press was not free in Piedmont;" quite the reverse. Gossip, especially spiteful gossip, reigned supreme. Gossip in both spheres of society was all against Cavour. What might be called the Court party (though whether the king belonged to it or it to the king was not clear), with the tenacious memory of small coteries, still recollected Cavour as the self-willed student of the Military Academy. Charles Albert himself made an occasional polite inquiry of the Marquis as to his son's travels and his visits to prisons and hospitals, but, unless report erred, he was speaking of him to others as the most dangerous man in his kingdom. The degree to which Cavour was hated by the conservatives is shown by one small fact: he was treasurer of an Infant Asylum, but it was thought necessary privately to ask him to retire for the good of the charity, his connection with which set all the higher society against it. The case with the radicals was no better. He belonged to an agricultural association in which Valerio was a leading spirit; one day he asked leave to speak, upon which almost all the members present left the building. On this side, no doubt part of the antipathy arose from the popular feeling against Cavour's father, who still occupied the invidious and ill-defined office of Vicario. No particular ferocity was laid at his door, but he was supposed to serve up all the private affairs of the good Turinese to the king, and if any one got into trouble he was thought to be the cause. When the liberals triumphed, the first thing they did was to oblige him to resign. Then Cavour's elder brother, though not retrograde on economic subjects, was a conservative of the old school in politics. In later days Gustavo always voted against Camillo. In politics the brothers were in admirable agreement to differ; in fact, after the first trifling jars, they dwelt to the end in unruffled harmony in the family palace, Via dell' Arcivescovado. At the time when Gustavo was much better known at Turin than Camillo the suspicious radical could not persuade himself that one brother was not as much of an aristocrat as the other. When Mr. Cobden was cordially received by both Marquis and Count, a would-be wit exclaimed, "There goes Free-trade in the charge of Monopoly," which was understood to refer to the false accusation that the Cavours had stored up a quantity of grain in that year of scarcity, 1847, in order to sell it dear, the truth being simply that the improved cultivation introduced at Leri had secured fair crops in a bad season.

The festivities in honour of the English Free-trader were promoted all over Italy by Italians who were soon to become famous. The fact that Cobden was an Englishman, even more than the outwardly harmless object of his campaign, deterred the different governments from interfering with him. Cavour proposed the health of the guest of the evening at the Cobden banquet at Turin, but almost immediately after, he retired to Leri, as he did not wish it to appear that he meant to embark on public life while the existing political dead-lock lasted. There was only room for conspirators or for those who extended toleration to the régime in force. It is doubtful if anything would have driven Cavour to conspiracy against his own king, and he would have considered it a personal disgrace to be mixed up with the men then in power. He thought, therefore, that he could best serve his country by keeping himself in reserve. He realised the futility of small concessions, and the childishness of agitating to obtain them. He was the only strong royalist who understood how far reform must go when it once began—farther towards democracy than his own sympathies would have carried him. If you want to use a mill-stream you must let it flow.

The situation in Piedmont was briefly this: Charles Albert's heart was with the growing cry for independence, but he wished for independence without liberty. This was the "secret of the king" which has been sought for in all kinds of recondite suppositions: this was the key to his apparently vacillating and inconsistent character. Yet he revealed it himself in some words spoken to Roberto d'Azeglio, the elder brother of Massimo. "Marquis d'Azeglio," he said, "I desire as much as you do the enfranchisement of Italy, and it is for that reason, remember well, that I will never give a constitution to my people." While his government was a priestly despotism, he employed his leisure in translating the sublime appeals to national sentiment in the history of the Maccabees, of which, by a curious coincidence, Mazzini once said that it seemed written for Italians. Charles Albert made the mistake of forgetting the age in which he lived. His ancestors fought the stranger without troubling themselves about representative government—why should not he? But his ancestors represented in their own persons the nerve and sinew of the State, its most adventurous spirit, its strongest manhood, whereas Charles Albert represented only the party of reaction which was with him in his absolutism but not in his patriotism. He was accused of having changed sides, but, even allowing his complicity in the movement of 1821 to have been greater than he admitted, it is plain that the one thing which drew him into that movement was its championship of Italian independence. Unlike the Neapolitan revolutionists who disclaimed adventures for the freeing of Italy, at least till they had made sure of their own freedom, the liberals of Piedmont rose with the avowed purpose of rushing into an immediate war with Austria. A madder scheme was never devised, but the madness of one day is often the wisdom of the next. In politics really disinterested acts bear fruit, whatever be their consequences to individuals.

The question which agitated all minds in 1847 was whether or not Charles Albert could be gained to the liberal cause. Many despaired, for by many even his Italian ambition was denied. Cavour had no favourable opinion of the king, but it was one of his theories that erroneous ideas always yield in the end to facts. He believed that Charles Albert's support could be secured if he were fully persuaded that the interests of his dynasty were not imperilled. He was not afraid, as others were, that even after the first surrender the wavering mind of the king would make retrogression probable; he understood that, if reforms were more difficult to obtain in Piedmont than elsewhere, they would be more durable when obtained. At last a concession of real value was wrung from the king: the censure was revoked. Cavour saw that the press, which till then had been a cipher, would instantly become of vast importance. He left his retirement to found a newspaper, to which he gave the name by which the Italian movement will be known in history—Il Risorgimento. He was not a born journalist, but he set himself with his usual determination to learn the art. In after times he said that the experience gained in a newspaper office was almost as profitable to him as the knowledge of mathematics. Count Cesare Balbo was asked by Cavour to write the prospectus of the new journal, in which its aims were described as Independence, union between the princes and people, and reforms. Cavour's name appeared as acting and responsible editor.

Balbo's work, Le Speranze d'Italia, had lately created an impression, only second to that made by the Primato of Gioberti. Practical men like Cavour preferred the simple programme which Balbo put forward—the liberation of Italy from foreign yoke before all things—to Gioberti's mystical outpourings, much as they pleased the general. Gioberti, once a follower of Mazzini, and afterwards a priest, imagined a United Italy, with the Pope at its head, which, to unthinking souls, seemed to be on the road to miraculous realisation when the amiable and popular Cardinal Mastai Feretti was invested with the tiara. Cavour never had any hope in the Papacy as a political institution.

The Genoese, impatient of the extreme slowness with which reforms were meted out, proposed to send a deputation with a petition for a civic guard, and the expulsion of the Jesuits, to whom the delay was attributed, and who were regarded as the worst enemies of the liberal Pope. The principal editors, with other influential citizens of Turin, met at the Hôtel d'Europe to consider how the deputation should be received, and if their demands were to be supported. The list of the journalists present comprises the best names in the country; it would be difficult to find more distinguished or disinterested pressmen than those who were then writing for the Piedmontese newspapers. Valerio was there to represent his new journal, Concordia, in which he carried on war to the knife with Cavour. His high personal character, as well as his talents, made him no inconsiderable opponent. It was at this meeting that Cavour first entirely revealed himself. He showed that faith in the prudence of daring which was the keynote to his great strokes of policy. The demands of the Genoese, he said, were not too large, but too small. They hit wide of the mark, and the second of them was idle, because the king, while he remained an absolute prince, was certain not to consent to it. The government was now neither one thing nor the other; it had lost the authority of an autocracy, and had not gained that of a régime based on the popular will. The situation was intolerable and dangerous; what was wanted was not this or that reform, but a constitution.

Constitutions seem tame to us now, but to speak of a constitution at Turin on January 18, 1848, was almost as audacious as it would be to speak of it at St. Petersburg at the present time. Europe stood at the brink of a precipice, but knew it not. The news had only just spread of the first symptom of revolution—the rising in Sicily. Cavour's speech was a moral bomb-shell. Most politicians begin by asking for more or less than the measure which finally contents them; those who cried for a republic have been known to put up with a limited monarchy; those who preached the most moderate reforms, at a later stage have danced round trees of liberty. Cavour asked at once for what he wanted and all that he wanted as far as the internal organisation of the State was concerned. From first to last he believed that a constitutional monarchy was the only form of government which, in a country like Italy, could combine freedom with order. Under no narrower system would he accept office, and when in office nothing could make him untrue to his constitutional faith; "no state of siege" was the axiom of his political life.

How his proposal was received shows the difficulties with which he had to contend from the outset. The more moderate members of the meeting thought that he had taken leave of his senses. This was natural. Less natural was the tooth and nail opposition of Valerio, who declared that a constitution much exceeded the desires of the people, and that a petition for it would only frighten the king. He carried all the radicals with him except Brofferio, an honest patriot and the writer of charming poems in the Piedmontese dialect, which gave him a great popularity. Brofferio was an ultra-democrat, but he was no party man, and he had the courage to walk over to the unpopular editor of the Risorgimento with the remark, "I shall always be with those who ask the most." Valerio made no secret among his private friends of the real reasons of his conduct. What was the good of wasting efforts on some sort of English constitution, perhaps with a House of Lords and other such abominations? Was it likely that anything worth having would be excogitated by Milord Camillo, the greatest reactionary in the kingdom, the sworn foe of revolution, "un Anglomane pur sang?" A constitution could only check the revolution and stifle the legitimate aspirations of the people. The nickname of "Milord Camillo" or "Milord Risorgimento" was in everyone's mouth when speaking of Cavour.

A short time sufficed to show not only the expediency but the necessity of granting a constitution, and that at once. Events never moved so fast as in the first two months of 1848. The throne of Louis Philippe was tottering, and, with the exception of the Duke of Modena, the princelings of Italy snatched the plank of safety of a statute with the alacrity of drowning men. In this crisis Charles Albert thought of abdication. Besides the known causes of his hesitancy, there was one then unknown: the formal engagement, invented by Metternich and forced upon him by his uncle Charles Felix, to govern the country as he found it governed. He called the members of the royal family together and informed them that if there must be a constitution there must, but the decree which bestowed it would be signed by his son. The queen and the Duchess of Savoy, who were both extremely afraid of him, sat in silence; the handsome Duke of Genoa tried to prove that constitutions were not such dreadful things; Victor Emmanuel opposed his intention of abdicating in resolute terms. Then he summoned a high ecclesiastic, who succeeded in convincing him that it would be a greater sin to abandon his people in their need than to break a promise he could no longer maintain. After mortifying the flesh with fasts and vigils, he yielded, and the famous decree bore the signature "C. Alberto" after all—not written indeed in the king's usually beautiful character, but betraying rather a trembling hand, which nevertheless registered a great because a permanent fact. This was not the prelude to perjury and expulsion. Around the Sardinian statute were united the scattered limbs of Italy, and after fifty years Charles Albert's grandson commemorated its promulgation at the Capitol.