96 



CAVOUR. 



These studies naturally tended to confirm the 

 liberal opinions he had already begun to enter- 

 tain, and in 1832 the unguarded expression of 

 these opinions led to his consignment, as a pun- 

 ishment, to the gloomy garrison of the Fort du 

 Bard, in the valley of Aosta. It was from this 

 dismal prison that he wrote to a noble lady of 

 Turin that remarkable letter, which in such 

 express terms predicted his future, at a time 

 when nothing seemed more improbable than 

 that he, the younger son of a noble house, a 

 mere lieutenant of engineers, but twenty-two 

 years of age, and already undergoing punishment 

 for his liberal opinions, should rise to the posi- 

 tion of premier of a nation whose existence 

 was yet in the hardly possible future. "We give 

 the letter in full, premising that it was in reply 

 to one from the Marchioness, condoling with his 

 misfortunes : " I thank you, Madame la Mar- 

 quise, for the interest you take in my disgrace ; 

 but you may be assured that my career will 

 not be changed by it. I have a great ambition, 

 an. enormous ambition, and when I shall be- 

 come Minister of State, I hope that I shall jus- 

 tify it ; since 4n m y dreams I already see my- 

 self Minister of the Kingdom of Italy. 0. Ca- 

 vour." That ambition, enormous, as he styled 

 it, never left him from that day forward ; but 

 it was not a rash ambition, or one seeking only 

 personal aggrandizement ; it was the Kingdom 

 of Italy he desired to see, and of that alone 

 that he hoped to become premier, and for that 

 end he could labor and wait. Soon after this 

 letter was written he resigned his commission 

 in the army, and being denied by the Austrian 

 Government, ever suspicious of men of liberal 

 opinions, admission to Lombardy, which he de- 

 sired to visit, though subsequently allowed un- 

 der strict surveillance to visit Milan, he soon 

 returned home, where, however, his views 

 were extremely unpalatable to his father, who 

 held fast the old aristocratic traditions of his 

 race and rank. In 1835, Count Cavour left 

 Italy for the first time, and spent the next seven 

 years in Switzerland, France, and England. 

 The last was the country of his choice ; he 

 studied its institutions with the utmost care 

 and thoroughness, suffering nothing either of 

 principle or detail to escape him. The debates 

 of the House of Commons, during the passage 

 of Sir Robert Peel's modifications of the com- 

 mercial policy of the nation, the development 

 of agriculture, the measures of finance, and the 

 extension of commerce, were all carefully and 

 critically observed; and to his own country 

 were addressed two political pamphlets of great 

 ability, embodying the results of his observa- 

 tions the one, an essay on " The influence 

 which the New Commercial Policy of England 

 will exert upon the Economy of the World, 

 and particularly on Italy; ".the other, a noble 

 defence of a constitutional government, in a 

 treatise on " Communistic Ideas and the means 

 of Combating their Development." His ob- 

 servations on political matters in France were 

 equally thorough and searching. In the over- 



throw of the monastic system, with its vast 

 landed estates which had formerly escaped 

 taxation, he saw the true policy for his own 

 country ; but its overthrow by violent convul- 

 sions and the upheaval of the very foundations 

 of society, was not to his liking ; he preferred 

 milder and more constitutional methods of pro- 

 cedure. In 1842 he returned to Italy, where 

 still the government was despotic, the monks 

 idle and licentious, the people poor and sorely 

 oppressed by taxes, and the threatening power 

 of Austria hanging like an incubus over the 

 national spirit and ready to repress the slight- 

 est movement. There was no opening for him 

 to act directly on the legislation of the country, 

 but he possessed his soul in patience. In con- 

 nection with some of his friends he organized 

 an Agrarian or Agricultural Society, and as- 

 sumed the editorship of an Agricultural Jour- 

 nal in connection with it, which had a wide 

 circulation in Sardinia, and introduced greatly 

 improved methods of culture, which were much 

 needed ; and under the pretext of discussing the 

 rotation of crops, or the value of different 

 manures, occasionally broached social problems 

 and enunciated principles, which sunk the 

 deeper into the hearts of his readers from the 

 apparently accidental way in which they were 

 introduced. On the accession of Pius IX. to 

 the Papal See, when the strong cry of liberty 

 was aroused, the Agrarian Society became the 

 focus of the liberal movement in Sardinia, and 

 Cavour, in connection with Caasare Balbo, 

 D'Azeglio, Santa Rosa, Alfieri, Buoncompagni, 

 and others, established a liberal paper, under 

 the title of the " Risorgimento" (Resurrection.) 

 The party which Cavour and his friends repre- 

 sented, were the advocates of constitutional 

 freedom, in distinction from an aristocratic and 

 ecclesiastical despotism on the one hand, and 

 the anarchy of red republicanism on the other. 

 The ability of the journal, and the position oc- 

 cupied by its editor and contributors, were 

 soon manifest, and brought down upon it the 

 bitter hatred of Austria and the equally in- 

 tense hostility of the extreme democrats. 

 Early in 1848, Cavour and Santa Rosa pre- 

 sented to the king a petition for a constitution, 

 which was granted two days later. Cavour 

 was elected for the first time to the Sar- 

 dinian Chamber of Deputies in the spring of 

 1848. He was at first unpopular, for he op- 

 posed extreme measures, and the extremists 

 were in the majority. His maiden speech was 

 greeted with hisses, because he attacked in it 

 the wild excesses of the red republicans of 

 France, and opposed the principle that Italy 

 was able then to defend itself against its foreign 

 foes. But either in the Chamber of Deputies 

 or in the columns of the Risorgimento, he was 

 constantly and powerfully discussing the great 

 questions of the day. In the election of 1849, 

 the prejudice of the extremists against him was 

 so strong that an unknown radical of low birth 

 and small capacity was elected in his place. 

 But he made himself even more powerfully felt 



