TURIN AND VICTOR EMANUEL.
ALITTLE too much is being made of the quarrel between Victor Emanuel and Turin. It is of course an incident which the friends of Italy must regret, but it does not endanger either the kingdom or the monarchy, and must from its very nature die away with time. The truth is that Piedmont is for the moment in a position very analogous to that of Scotland after the accession of James I. Her people bear to other Italians just the relation which the Lowlanders bear towards the remaining inhabitants of Great Britain. Few, poor, and frugal, shut in by mountains whose lowering magnificence makes their imaginations hard, persevering, energetic, and intensely local, these Scotchmen of Italy had from 1847 to 1862 done more for the Peninsula than all the remainder of her sons, and naturally looked to their reward in the sway of the bright provinces which they had so greatly helped to enfranchise. When "their King," as the Turinese loved to style him, ascended the greater throne, the Pied- montese reached to all appearance the goal of their hopes, swarmed down southwards, claimed all the best offices, obtained all the most influential posts, competed for all contracts, and even in many cases seized the reins of municipal administration. More honest, sterner, and better disciplined than any Italians, except perhaps the Romagnese, whose hatred of the Papacy has annealed their characters, they had Rattazzi to protect and the King to lead them„ and for a time it seemed as if they were to be the permanent ruling caste. Unluckily the very causes which made them so efficient, their sternness, and directness, and courage, and eager greed of promotion, made them also unpleasant to men not crushed into adamant by an incessant mental struggle against Alps, and there arose a cry throughout Italy against Piedmontizing twenty millions who were no subjects of Piedmont. The mountaineers never- theless felt themselves secure at least until Rome had been obtained. The King, they knew, was with them, the higher grades of the bureaucracy were with them, the nucleus of the army was with them, and their dominion, as they thought, would last for at least a generation. So they built, and planted, and served, and planned in the full assurance that Italy could be governed from the little corner under the Alps which had sent forth so many statesmen, so few of the other names which have made the country great among all civilized mon. The French Convention came on them like a thunderbolt They saw at once that their dream dispelled, that all Italy would begin to start fairly in the race, that to be a Piedmontese was thenceforward to be a provincial, that Tuscany would be the military centre of the kingdom, and first Florence, then Rome the political, that the House of Savoy would cease to be specially their own,—that in short, Italy had annexed Piedmont, not Piedmont Italy. The change, bitter to all classes, was to two among them almost unendurable. The upper classes of the little kingdom have been for ages remarkable for a somewhat narrow patriotism and an intense attachment to the House of Savoy, the strong race with the strange history which, reign- ing over a petty province while Charlemagne was rebuilding the Western Empire, saw the rise and survived the fall of all the great Italian families, outlived Sforzas, and D'Estes, and Viscontis, and even the Venetian Ten, supplied men of genius as if it could beget them to order, saved France, saved Austria, saved Italy, worked a thousand years for a throne which it yet could never gain, then aided by the genius of a Pied- montese aristocrat ascended it, and—as the Turinesebitterly add —kicked down the ladder which had led so high. The higher nobles, Catholic as Spaniards, proud as our own Highland chiefs, had died by the side of Charles Albert at Novara, and followed Victor Emanuel at Magenta, not because either represented Italy, but because he was the heir of the family their fathers had followed even in intervals of dethronement. Ultramontanes, they stood by the King who, though excommunicated, was still Victor of Savoy; Piedmontese to the bone, they still assisted, as they believed, to enlarge their master's territory. When Piedmont was declared a province they felt like old Lord Belhaven, as if the great future could not compensate them for breaking with so great a past, as if they had rather retain their history and their poverty, their obscurity and their in- dependence, as if it were better to die than hear the "last of that auld sang." The Turinese, influenced for ages by their ideas, ready to follow Cavour almost as much because he was of them as because he was the first statesman and intriguer of earth, had besides their special grievance. They could not bear to see their city dethroned. Englishmen, the least municipal of mankind, who will de nothing for London, who despise all civic honours, and who do not care a straw which city they live in, so that they can but ac- cumulate the wealth which is to lake them out of it into the country, oan scarcely appreciate the strength of Italian feeling for their great towns, the municipal pride partly produced by habit of residence, partly the heritage of the time when every city was a State, when Milan was the capital of statecraft and the imperial power, and Florence of the Arts and repub- lican feeling, and Venice of the aristocratic principle, anti Genoa of commerce, and Rome of the Christian world. Municipal pride is as strong in Turin as in any of these cities, and made more bitter by the localism which results from its- size and its situation. The Turinese felt as Parisians would feel if sovereignty were transferred to Avignon, and thin feeling, not in itself an ungenerous one, was exasperated by another of a much more sordid kind. The removal of the capital ruined them. Except as the seat of a great govern- ment Turin cannot be a great city. It has no trade and no capability of trade, no manufactures and no source of income except the expenditure of Piedmontese gentry and officials. On- the strength of its metropolitan character it has overbuilt it- self, and with the removal of the Court, the Parliament, the tribunals, and the central offices of the great companies it must dwindle away to a third-rate provincial town. That is no loss to Italy, for the process is but a transfer, but it is ruin to- Turin. It is nonsense to talk of the Parliamentary vote of money. It is easy to reimburse the city and even individuals, but with the Government all that gave life, and colour, and vitality to Turin, all that kept Italy circulating under those colonnades, and made the Turinese hosts to an empire, has. finally passed away. No wonder that the Turinese clamoured, or that after an imbecile Ministry had repressed their clamour- with needless slaughter their exasperation should deepen into hatred. The proposal of Ricasoli that the Tarinese Peterloo- should be gravely and heavily censured, but not investigated: —a proposal made in the interest of the whole monarchy—gave the last touch to their tempers, and their rage at the provincial character assigned to Piedmont, at the dethronement of their- city, and at the " treachery" of their King broke out in a. frantic burst of insult to the most visible figure in the drama. The King was hissed at the theatre, openly and visibly hissed, the guests at his ball, even ambassadors, were insulted, and its at least one instance pelted, and the National Guard refuse& to act. There was nothing for it if the prestige of the monarchy were to be maintained but to hold Turin by force or to retire. The gentler and wiser course was adopted by the King, whose character, deformed as it is by Southern, licence, has in it a singular nobility, and he abandoned a city he is known to love at least as heartily as it ever loved him.. Everywhere on his route he has been warthly received, and Florence, which will for the present be his abode, ware enthusiastic in her reception.
The love will probably not return, but respect and obedience will. Scotland has probably never loved the Hanoverians as it loved the Stuarts, but it has been, fifty times as obedient and as tranquil. The local dis- content must die away with time. Capital will find other- sources of return, the enterprising will drift away to new' centres, the young will not feel the difference of colour,. and will feel keenly the importance of the careers which national unity opens to their enterprise. The railways will gradually extirpate localism, though the Italian habit of liv- ing in towns wilt probably keep the municipalities much more separate and independent than those of England, and the country as a country does not suffer materially by the- removal of its capital. If it loses a local market it gains free trade with all Italy, and with just and gentle government will soon learn to feel for the Italian kingdom the loyalty it felt for the Piedmontese. Even the nobility will, we believe, come back. The present heads of families may remain sullenly isolated, but the disaster of France, the irreparable breach be- tween fact and hereditary claim, has not occurred in Italy, the new generation will want careers, and even an IT1tramontane Marchese dare not say that his son would be degraded by serving under the House of Savoy. There is no Faubourg- St. Germain possible in Piedmont, and the violent separation between " society " and the State which occurs in France, and which enables a witty man of the world to say that " Napoleon has been trying all his life to enter good society, and has not succeeded yet," is no more likely in Italy thus in Holland or Great Britain. On the other hand, the retreat from Turin has rendered the transfer of capital certain and rapid, and has removed from the minds of Italians the secret fear that in accepting at the hands of a Piedmontese state.. man a Piedmontese King they have in fact been conquered b one of their own provinces.
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