Note 67 — Chapter III · THE COURT AND THE CABINET.

Cavour’s invasion of the Papal States was inevitable, though the pretext was flimsy. His subtle justification will be found in his masterly despatch of the 12th of October, reviewing the affairs of Italy, in which he dwelt on the advantage of substituting for the discredited dynasties, an Italian Kingdom that would “rob revolutionary passions of a theatre where previously most insane enterprises had chances, if not of success, at least of exciting the sympathies of all generously-minded men.” In a word, his case was that Sardinian intervention could alone prevent the national movement from degenerating into sheer anarchy. Fear, lest Garibaldi might be induced by Mazzini’s partisans, who had surrounded him, to set up a Republic, led the European Courts to condone by passive acquiescence a despatch which postulated the inherent right of a people to depose an hereditary monarch. France withdrew her Minister from Turin by way of formally discountenancing the invasion, which, however, had been secretly arranged at an interview between Napoleon and Cavour at Chambéry. England alone avowed her approval of Cavour’s policy, in a despatch which Lord John Russell sent to Sir J. Hudson on the 27th of October, but of which he kept the Queen and his colleagues in ignorance. The feeling of the country being with Lord John, the Queen and Lord Palmerston did not find it expedient to resent the affront. The truth is, that Lord John had previously written a despatch (31st August) menacing Sardinia if she attacked Austria in Venetia, and admitting the right of Austria to hold Venetia, which had enraged the Radicals. So by way of conciliating them he wrote the despatch of the 17th of October, recanting the absolutist doctrines he had promulgated in August. But personally, Lord John was notoriously a partisan of the national movement in Italy. “Sir J. Hudson,” writes Lord Malmesbury, “told me that Lord John virtually encouraged the King (Victor Emmanuel) to invade Naples, by asking his aide-de-camp at Richmond whether the King was not afraid. This was quite enough to send Victor Emmanuel anywhere.”—Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 237.