Metternich himself used to direct the burrowers
in these mines under the feet of Liberty, and to
protect them in case of danger. A leader of
libel and uproar, a native of Pinerolo, having
been arrested by the Tuscan government,
was claimed by the Austrian minister at
Florence, although a Sardinian subject; and it
then became officially known that his debts,
which were considerable, had been lately paid
by an Austrian agent. Tories of Rome, as
men of the Holy Faith, or Sanfedisti, were not
less unscrupulous in their hostility to the
advancement of the people. One faithful man
proclaimed in print that Pius the Ninth was not
pope by canonical election, and that he was, in
truth, an anti-pope. In the middle of April
the Pope founded at Rome, as a rudimentary or
tadpole Parliament, a Council of State. On
the last day of May the same thing was decreed
at Florence; but, in this first effort at a Parliament,
there was little more to be found even of
the tadpole than its tail. Rome, under the
reforming Pope, had a national guard. Accordingly,
by sovereign edict, still the only source of
change, placarded in the customary manner 'on
the city walls, a Tuscan national guard was
established in September, 'forty-seven. The people
were delighted; they went, full of gratitude, to
the duke's palace, where they were received with
a few spontaneous words of propitious omen.
The duke returned then to the balcony outside,
waved the national flag, and handed it down to those
who stood below. An old archbishop was fetched
out of his house to intone a Te Deum instantly,
and then the people set to work upon grave
questions of dress and accoutrement, with all
the zeal of a small family of children busy over
a new doll. The Grand-Duke meant well and
yielded weakly. He would take no hint from
Vienna to call soldiers in and stop the current
of reform, but he yielded again weakly to the
pressure of his imperial cousin and to the abrupt
change which occurred in the Pope's mind; for
this Grand-Duke never was a self-dependent
man. Troops which he had refused as helpers
in resistance to the wishes of his people, he did
at last rely upon for support, in the abolition of
all he had sworn to maintain.

An accidental conflict between the Florentines
and the sbirri, or spies and informers of the
Buon Governo, caused a two days' tumult without
plunder or bloodshed. Tumult was a
new thing in Tuscany, and although in England
many an election riot is a graver matter in itself,
there it meant the approach of revolution. At
the same time Austrian soldiers in Italian towns
were prompted to redouble their provoking
insolence. In Milan a venerable magistrate was
accidentally trodden down and killed under the
defiant gallop through the streets of Austrian
cavalry, scattering the populace to right and left.

It was in these days that Lord Minto went
on his Italian mission. The Pope's nuncio had
asked for a more active moral support from
England in aid of Italian progress; and, in reply
to a question from our government, that moral
support had been defined as the presence of
some persons " in the confidence of her
Majesty's government, who could have a temporary
opportunity of personally communicating with
the Pope and his minister." Lord Minto was
sent, therefore, to express England's belief that
human right is human right, as opposed to the
Austrian doctrine that wrong is divine right.

In January, 'forty-eight, Naples received a
constitution. On the eighth of the next month
Piedmont received the same, and, on the seventeenth,
was promulgated the fundamental statute,
which was the base of a new constitution,
endowing Tuscany with a complete representative
system. On the twenty-fourth of the same month,
monarchy fell in France.

Great changes, stirring hope and fear, then
followed rapidly in Europe. Soon, there was
insurrection in Vienna, followed immediately by
the rising against Austria of Lombardy and
Venice. On the twenty-third of March, Charles
Albert, King of Sardinia, decided upon crossing
the Ticino, after much misgiving overcome by
the entreaties of the Lombards and the
importunities of his own subjects. He knew that he
could not trust the other sovereigns, that the
Pope had now reached the extreme end of his
tether, that there was no sound help to be had
from the republicans of the Mazzini school—that
he would stand, in fact, alone.

The belief that it was possible to associate a
permanent spirit of progress and reform with
governments under the influence of the Pope or
the Emperor of Austria had been in those days
the capital mistake of the Italians. But the
Lombard insurrection suddenly stirred among
the Tuscans a belief that if Italy was to advance
fairly she must cease to carry Austria upon her
back. Students and enthusiasts in Florence
assembled in front of the municipality, demanding
of that sole remaining fragment of the old
republican manner of government "arms and
all else necessary for their immediate departure
to defend the frontier." The municipality at
once applied to the Grand-Duke, and within
two hours Leopold the Second had assented to
the movement. When his assent was placarded,
he proclaimed that he was " pressing on the
conclusion of the powerful Italian league which
he had always wished for," and he ended with
the loyal cry of "Long live constitutional
Italy!" Long might she live, indeed—she was
not born!

It is asserted that a quantity of papers which
had belonged to Radetzky were purchased for a
very considerable sum in Milan, and that among
them was a letter from the Grand-Duke, written
at this time, telling him that he had sent him
twelve thousand " canaille," which he hoped he
would rid him of.

The subjects of the Pope formed volunteer
bodies of "crusaders," and marched out "to
the frontiers," blessed by his Holiness, with
Father Gavazzi at their head as chaplain-
general, and General Durando for their leader.
Charles Albert had ordered Durando to invest
Mantua, but Durando waited in vain for the
necessary orders from the Roman ministers.