MASSIMO D'AZEGLIO'S POLITICAL CORRE- SPONDENCE.*—[SEcoNo NOTICE.] ArrEn his resignation in
1852, Massimo d'Azeglio never again figured as the ruling Minister. Henceforth he occupied, indeed, an exceptional position as a great unattached, who still in critical momenta was instinctively invoked, and did good service of a special nature, such as no other man in the country was capable of rendering ; but still, as regards the campaigns of parliamentary life, he was somewhat in the position of a pensioner who has gone off from active service. It was not in human nature that Azeglio should not harbour some soreness about the cavalier way in which he had been tripped up by his successor, but never did this feeling blind him to the greatness of his rival, or make him for an instant hang back from enlisting under his banner at those transcendent conjunctures which were the creation of that daring genius. Nor did Cavour slight the assistance which could be furnished him in moments of supreme appeal to the national feel- ing by having the highminded, chivalrous, spotless patriot standing by his side. Azeglio had been plying the brush and the pen in retirement, though not without an ever living interest in what was going on, when the " bombshell " of 1859 burst on him. Immediately he hastened to inform Cavour, " that in spite of the objections I had formerly entertained against his policy, in the present state of things I thought it no longer time to discuss it, but only to combine all our efforts for its success." " Thus," he continues, " here I am enrolled, and a Cavourian ! What good I can be put to I do not know, but I wait." Cavour at once accepted the patriotic offer, and Azeglio was despatched on succes- sive missions to Rome, Paris, and London. When war really broke out, the veteran's blood could not be calmed, and he organized a division of volunteers until Cavour sent him on special service. The Romagnoles had expelled the Pope's ant horities, nowhere did the national movement present more delicate complications, from the peculiar relations in which France stood to the Pope. It was indispensable to modify and direct the anti-ecclesiastical intensity of these fiery populations, and Azeglio was deputed to do this. The choice was excellent, for his name was especially dear to a province whose wrongs and sufferings he had proclaimed in 1844, in a pamphlet the burning eloquence whereof had vibrated through- out the peninsula. But Azeglio's action at Bologna was of short duration. The preliminaries of Villafranca put an end to his powers, and as a Piedmontese officer he was recalled to Turin, in accordance with the conditions of the treaty, an order which he, however, but partially obeyed, presenting himself to the King on reaching Turin as ready to go before a court- martial. Cavour was then away gnawing the bitterness of his heart in solitary retreat on the shore of the Lake of Geneva, and the Government was in the hands of Rattazzi, the one politician whom Azeglio could never brook. He felt the strongest desire to put his services at his country's disposal in that season of supreme crisis, when all was yet fluid, and apparently at the mercy of angry elements piled up on all sides, and yet he knew not how to join the ranks of one whom in his heart he thoroughly mistrusted. Nor did he. He contented himself with writing pamphlets abounding in manly and opportune counsel, that con- firmed the populations of Central Italy in the national effort which the shuffling Administration at Turin actually discountenanced, until the moment arrived when, in January, 1860, he could say, " Rattazzi has fallen, and I console myself for everything Now, please God, we shall go on honourably, and fa ira I" Azeglio was immediately named Governor of Lombardy by Cavour; and this post he held until the Garibaldian movement in Naples, when he threw up his appointment, because he refused to connive at opera- tions which he considered both illegitimate and impolitic. After this Azeglio never again appeared as a public man, except occa- sionally in the capacities of senator and political writer, but yet, whether in his cherished retreat at Cannero, or in his favourite resi- dence, Florence, he followed the political questions of the day with a zeal and a degree of attention and lively interest whereof this correspondence has first given the public any knowledge.
' I:Italie Je 1847 h 1885. Correspondancs Politique do Mauimo &Aught', a -cow pagnie dune Introduction et de NOM Par EUgeoe Hendu. Purls. 1e€7.
After reading these letters, Azeglio has grown in our estimation as a statesman. There is a largeness and comprehensive justness of judgment in his views on the great and burning questions affect- ing Italy, a thorough and undimmed participation to the last in every genuine national demand, with yet a clearsighted rejec- tion of factitious cries, even when caught up with contagious impulse under the influence of momentary excitement, which makes the ample utterances in these volumes in the highest degree instructive, especially in reference to the particular question which Azeglio ever looked upon as the keystone in the Italian arch, and now is apparently in course of actually being decided,—the ques- tion of what position Rome is to be placed in between Italy and the Pope.
It will be remembered that when Cavour made the famous declaration in Parliament about Rome the metropolis, which was caught up as the national formula by a people in the heyday of excitement, Azeglio published a pamphlet which exposed him to much obloquy, wherein he opposed the popular doctrines, and advocated the measure which three years later was carried, the transfer to Florence of the seat of Government. Then Azeglio was cried out against as one worn out, upon whose spirit had descended the mist of superstition, whose mind was dimmed by priestly influence to the light of political rights. Let those who so freely lavished ignorant vituperation on the head of a true man, read the records of his undying faith on the crowning question for his country's existence, and blush for their hasty judgment. The greatest claim of Azeglio to the quality of farsighted statesmanship is the keen vision throughout life he had of the true drift of the Roman question, and the un- varying conviction he entertained as to the only conditions under which it could admit of practical solution. From first to last, on this head, his views were characterized with the steadiness of a vision that takes in the whole object without the intervention of haze. " Well does one see that they do not understand the Monsignori type," he writes at the time, in reference to the President's famous letter to Edgar Ney ; " that 1 etter has too much of the furie francese. First, one should have a well determined plan— this was the needful—and then have followed it out with a calm firmness, full of courtesy, yet inflexible. Instead, one has given way, given way at the outset, and then one assumes an air of menace, on second thoughts. Never should one give the Mon- signori a pretext for taking the attitude of victims." Three years later, he gives the following opinion on the practical results of the French occupation :—" The expedition to Rome, the ecclesias- tical reaction, the exaggeration of your Catholic party, the in- trigues against England, the underhand war against constitu- tional institutions and Piedmont, have rendered the Pope impos- sible without foreign occupation." " I grant federation to be the most practical solution, provided one has the means to persuade Austria," writes Azeglio, on the 9th February, 1859, in allusion to the celebrated pamphlet Napoleon III. et then just out ; " I grant also that its centre, the Diet, should be in Rome. Even I grant, although with some effort, that the Pope should preside, but it would be dangerous to indulge in much illusion ou this head. The success of the scheme depends on an exact appre- ciation of realities—of what can be in the actual state of men and things—otherwise, in vanum laboraverunt The Pope of the Italians is not the Pope of the rest of the Catholic world For it the Sovereign disappears under the Pon- tiff while for the Italians the Sovereign eclipses the Pontiff They have the Curia Romana under their eyes,
and how can you expect them to be hoodwinked as to it ? The dis- trust in the Italians of the temporal power of the Popes, and of their mode of looking at great national interests, is a fact beyond the power of an individual to cancel, and which must be taken largely into account in any definite and practical scheme of arrangement." And immediately after Villafranca, he says, " I see many complications rising on the horizon, in the wake of the peace so suddenly concluded. All that has been said and done for the organization of Italy events and the force of circumstances are about to brush away, and Rome will find herself in a totally new position. Well, before all, politics are here at stake, and, at all hazards, the salvation of my country. Therefore, it behoves the Pope, as the other Italian Princes, to come to terms. How to defend the Pope-Pontiff is no doubt the duty of every faithful Catholic ; but to uphold absolutely the Pope-Sovereign, to present the tem- poral power such as we see it as a necessary condition for the main- tenance of religion, will, forsooth ! not be the means of keeping up faith. I know Rome well. Be sure that the more she feels herself protected, the more will she lose herself. What has brought Rome down to her actual wretchedness is the excess of protection." In September, 1862, there appeared in the Moniteur, a letter written four mouths before, by the Emperor to his Minister for Foreign Affairs, wherein he proposed a " combination which, while leaving the Pope master at home, should yet level the barriers that now divide his States from the rest of Italy." On this idea, Azeglio makes the farsighted observation, which since has receivedthestamp of realization in the September Convention, "that the transformation and organization of the new order of things under Pontifical suzerainty could be effected only after an understanding between the Italian and French Governments." He then protests against the notion of preserving even on a limited territory a direct Government of priests. " With that idea, one will spoil the matter with the Italians ; whereas, in proposing the Italianiza- tion of Rome, with a nominal sovereignty as in the Middle Ages, Roma, citth sante,' &c., one would rally all who do not seek a republic and the demolition of Catholicism on the Capitol." Here we have the pith of Azeglio's convictions on the Roman question. The man whom inflated politicians denounced as a recreant, from deference to superstitious influences, because he demurred boldly to the cry for the physical establishment of the seat of Government in Rome, persistently declared no solution acceptable which allowed the Pope any effective temporal sovereignty. "My knowledge of Italy, and of Rome in particular," writes Azeglio, in reference to a plan advanced by De in Gueronniere,—one of the thousand and one which it has pleased French publicists to hatch for their private amusement,--" have long'
ong 'since produced fixed convictions in me. I understand nothing but the nominal sovereignty." And then, in allusion to the hints of an idea to impose on Italy the acceptance of the plan, the old patriot—who yet had never liked the annexation of Naples— exclaims, " If a Congress were really to undertake the undoing of Italy, who would be charged with carrying out the sentence? From Turin to Messina there would be a large party, —the party of national dignity, as it would be termed,—that would rise, armata manu, in defence of Unity ; and you may be sure of it, I would be in it I Therefore I see no means of breaking up Italy again into two portions." The views so entertained Azeglio lived to express publicly on a memorable occasion. It is known how the Piedmontese aristocracy fretted at and opposed the Conven- tion. Even a man of Ponza di San Martino's eminence allowed himself to be dragged into opposing it in Parliament. Azeglio was then broken down with infirmities and sufferings, but the occasion went straight to the heart of the breaking patriot, and gave him the strength to show yet again a last parting example of his undeviating love of country, unsullied by any consideration of personal interest. Himself a scion of the noblest blood in Piedmont, Massimo d'Azeglio, in the midst of his sullen peers, deposited in the ballot-box his vote for transferring the capital away from his native city, after an oration which, as he was too ill to speak, had to be read by another, wherein, with the noble language of his always elevated thought, he impressively gave kis reasons in favour of the treaty. It was a fine deed, done with the grace of a sincere love of country ; and when it was so done, Azeglio went home yet for a few months, but not to live to see that completion of Italy's emancipation from the foreigner for the first time since the irruption of the Barbarians which we now look upon. A second Moses, who had quickened and led and directed the steps of his people in its first efforts to get away from bondage, he was not permitted to do more than look across into the state of final freedom ; but how clearly and distinctly the last gaze of his dying eyes was steadily set in the direction of the point of crowning interest to his beloved country, and descried what lay ahead, is shown in the words,—almost endowed with second sight, —of -the very last letter in the volume, written a few weeks before death :—" Rome is still at the same point ; all that world which the Convention has pushed into a cal de sac would gladly get out of it somehow or other, and when the heel of your last soldier shall have been seen, if then the system of suzerainty be not set up, and the Roman municipium be not establiShed outside of any direct ecclesiastical power, the Pope's power, floating in a sphere raised above secondary interests,' as the Emperor said in his letter, in truth I do not know what will happen." The moment has come, and the imbroglio is there, exactly as foreseen by one who, take him all in all, constitutes as perfect a specimen of devoted intelligence and spotless political honour as history has ever produced.
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