We repeat with still greater confidence that the annexation of Nice to France is certain : the time of its accomplishment is a question not of months, but of days.
The editor was told to leave the country, and then forgiven. On the 29th the Governor of Savoy said : —
The policy of the Government is sufficiently known : it has never entertained the design of surrendering Savoy. As to the party which has started the question of separation, it is useless to give it an answer.
On the 3rd of February Sir James Hudson writes that he had seen Count Cavour, who expressed his astonishment at the report about the annexation of Savoy, and declared that he did not know how it could have arisen. He wondered, he said, at the change of opinion among many people in Savoy, who wished to join France before the war and were now against it. Sardinia, he averred, had never had the remotest intention of surrendering, selling, or exchanging Savoy. On the 24th, the French Government wrote to Turin, that if Sardinia incorporated in her dominions part of Central Italy, the possession of Savoy became a geographical necessity for the protection of the French frontier. Sardinia lost no time in replying : —
March 2nd : We feel too deeply what Italy owes to the Emperor, not to consider most earnestly a demand which is founded on the principle of respect for the wishes of the people. At the moment when we are loudly insisting on the right of the inhabitants of Central Italy to decide on their own fate, we cannot refuse to the subjects of the king beyond the Alps the right of freely expressing their will, and we could not refuse to recognise the importance of their demonstration, expressed in a legal way and consistently with the directions of Parliament.
The last words were omitted in the Moniteur, as France did not wish the transaction to be left to the Chambers, to which Cavour looked as the last resource, to prevent the loss or to share the blame.
These matters were hardly settled when a prospect of compensation opened out in Southern Italy. Early in the year Mazzini had offered to Victor Emmanuel to create
