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.
"I have long known you," he begins, "more solicitous for the Piedmontese monarchy than for our common country, a materialist worshipper of the event more than of any sacred and eternal principle, a man of an ingenious rather than a powerful mind. . . . To that party whose extraordinary vitality is now admitted even by yourself, in the teeth of your friends who declared it at every moment dead and buried, Piedmont owes the liberty she enjoys, and you owe the opportunity of making yourself the useless and deceitful defender of Italy."
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 : —
