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Of the character and policy of Louis Napoleon, Cavour was accustomed to speak with much freedom. No one had better opportunities than Cavour of sounding their depths. He was the only living man who had ventured to grapple with him face to face, and who had used him for his purpose. The estimate he had formed of his capacity was not a high one; but he fully admitted his fertility of resource, his physical and moral courage, and his knowledge of the people he governs. “He has no definite policy,” he remarked to an English friend. “He has a number of political ideas floating in his mind, none of them matured. They would seem to be convictions founded upon instinct. He will not steadily pursue any single idea if a serious object presents itself, but will give way and take up another. This is the mot d’énigme to his policy. It is by steadily keeping this in view that I have succeeded in thwarting his designs, or in inducing him to adopt a measure. The only principle—if principle it can be called—which connects together these various ideas is the establishment of his dynasty, and the conviction that the best way to secure it is by feeding the national vanity of the French people. He found France, after the fall of the Orleanist and Republican Governments, holding but a second place among the great Powers; he has raised her to the very first. Look at his wars, look at his foreign policy; he has never gone one step beyond what was absolutely necessary to obtain this one object. The principle ostentatiously put forward in the first instance has been forgotten or discarded as soon as his immediate end has been accomplished. It was so in the war with Russia; it has been so in the war with Austria. In the Crimea he was satisfied with the success of his army in the capture of Sebastopol, which took from the English troops the glory they had earned by their devotion and courage, and to which they would have added had the war continued. In the struggle with Austria, he was astounded by the greatness of the victories of Magenta and Solferino. The military glory of France had been satiated, and he thought no more of the liberty of Italy, of that free and united nation which he was to have called into existence from the Alps to the Adriatic.

“It is this uncertain policy guided by dynastic and selfish considerations, which makes him so dangerous to you, and which renders it necessary that you should ever be on your guard. Not that he is hostile to England, or that he has any definite design against her. On the contrary, he has much affection for your country. He is a man of generous impulses, and has strong feelings of gratitude towards those who have served and befriended him. At the bottom of his heart he is greatly attached to Italy. His earliest recollections are bound up with her. He is to this day a carbonaro in his desire for Italian freedom and hatred of Austria. He has not forgotten the kindness and hospitality shown to him when an exile in England. He admires your institutions and the character of the English people. But all this is as nothing when compared with the maintenance of his dynasty, the establishment of which he looks upon almost in the light of a religious obligation. If the moment came when he thought a sacrifice necessary to sustain it, however great that sacrifice might be, however painful or repugnant to his feelings, he would make it. No one has had better opportunities of knowing him than I have. He has talked to me with the greatest openness of his future plans. But he has invariably assured me at the same time that his first object was to maintain peace and good understanding with England. I believe,” he solemnly added, “that, from policy, as well as from affection, such are his views; and that only in a moment of the utmost emergency, when he was convinced that his influence in France depended upon it, would he depart from them. But that moment may come, and you would be madmen if you were not prepared for it.”—Quarterly Review, No. 222.