"The development of our institutions depends mainly upon the harmony between constitutional monarchy and democratic influences. We are warm and earnest advocates of monarchy thus tempered, not certainly through any instinct of servitude, or prejudice, or custom, or interest, but upon principle and we make it our boast herein to tread in the steps of our Sovereign, who, having spontaneously agreed, an example most rare in history, that his people should be free, so rises above all vulgar sentiments, that his soul is prepared for sacrifice even the most extended. So that, if he still enjoins us to guard the crown and the monarchy, he does it in the conviction that it is the form of Government needful for the weal of Italy. This political creed is also our own, deeply convinced as we are that nothing but constitutional monarchy can endow our country with unity, force, and power, to face both intestine disorder and the attacks of strangers.

"Yet monarchy, if severed from popular sympathies, could not meet the wants and the wishes by which the nations are now stimulated and inflamed. On this account we readily accede to the wish expressed by many for a democratic ministry, and we will do our best to give it practical effect. Democratic we will be, in taking especial care of the hardworked, and of the unfortunate classes, and in our vigorous efforts to protect and instruct, to better and refine the impoverished multitude, by exalting it to the condition and dignity of a people. Democratic we will be, by our rigid maintenance of an inviolate equality for all citizens in the face of their common laws. Democratic we will be, in promoting, with vigilant solicitude, the interests of the Provinces, and in our watchfulness not to postpone them to those of the Capital. Democratic we will be, in embellishing the Monarchy with popular institutions, and in adapting to their tone all our public measures, those, in particular, which have reference to the public security, the constitution of the municipalities, and their Palladium, that is to say, the National Guard.

"Democracy, thus defined, need alarm no man, and should

prompt no misgivings. In this sense alone does it answer to its name, or is it truly worthy of the people as a principle virtuous and high-minded, the ally of order, of property, and of the Throne; as the most averse to licence, to violence, and to blood; and not only as not repelling those classes which were formerly termed the privileged, but as extending to them the hand of friendship, and inviting them to combine with itself in the sacred work of conferring safety and happiness on their country.

"The distinguishing characteristic of such democracy lies herein, that it is in the highest degree harmonising; and we rejoice to be enabled to close our address with this idea of harmony. Gentlemen, we have stated to you our principles with candour: but they cannot become fruitful, nor pass from the sphere of ideas to that of practice, without the efficient aid of the nation, and of those who represent it. Such, then, is the request which we address to your generosity, not wholly undeserving in this respect, that if our slender powers stand in need of your co-operation, we yet feel our spirit to be one worthy of your confidence.

The new Piedmontese Ministry, which, in compliance with the fashion of the time, took the name of democratic, sent Buffa forthwith to Genoa, to keep down its unruly temper, and dispatched the Marquis of Montezemolo and Monsignor Riccardi, Bishop of Savona, as Ambassadors extraordinary to Gaeta.

CHAP. VI.

EFFECT OF THE

PROCLAMATION OF THE CONSTITUENT ON THE TEMPER OF THE DEPUTIES. -STERBINI AND HIS WAYS.-AVERSION OF THE CONSTITUTIONALISTS TO HIM. AND OF THE REPUBLICANS.

REMAINS OF THE LEGISLATIVE COUNCILS. -PLAN OF

PANTALEONI.

PLAN OF AUDINOT. THE PARLIAMENT CLOSED. TEXT OF THE PROCLAMATION BY THE GIUNTA FOR A CONSTITUENT. REMARKS ON THE PARLIAMENT OF ROME, AND REPLY TO THE ACCUSATIONS OF FOREIGNERS. - THE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT.- RESIGNATION OF GALLIENO. -OF THE PRELATES IN THE GOVERNMENT OF PROVINCES.- OF CARDINALS MARINI AND AMAT. - OF THE LAY PRO-LEGATES, EXCEPT ROTA. HIS CASE. NEW PRESIDENTS OF PROVINCES APPOINTED. -WEAKNESS OF THE NEW GOVERNMENT. THE CONSTITUTIONAL PARTY; ITS OFFERS TO THE SOVEREIGN. — ITS PROJECT OF ARMED RESISTANCE TO THE REVOLUTION. .—VIEWS AND PROCEEDINGS OF THE CLERGY AND THE PARTISANS OF ABSOLUTE CLERICAL RULE. GROWING POWER OF THE REPUBLICANS. ACCURSI. AFFILIATION OF THE CLUBS. —PREPARATIONS TO CONTEST THE ELECTIONS. TEXT OF THE MONITORY OF HIS HOLINESS, DATED JANUARY 1.

THE announcement, that a Constituent Assembly would be convened, stripped the Parliament of the trifling authority it had retained: both the one and the other Council regarded with fear, or with disdain, the men who had placed themselves in the van of the popular fortunes. Sterbini, who, whether as being master or as being servant to the Club of the People, had the swarms of workmen fed by the public money at his beck, behaved haughtily to those relics of the

Constitutional Councils, and would not brook their differences from him. Of a turbulent temper, a thoroughpaced mad-cap, without courage or civil prudence, he had all the properties of a mob-despot; precipitancy, fear, avarice, pride; a sway stronghanded, disorderly, and daring through fear, was the only one that suited him. The Sterbinian Dictatorship bore hard on the Constitutionalists, and was misliked by the Republicans: since, now that the Sovereign was in exile, the city disquieted, and men's minds in expectation, they wanted to complete the revolution, and to take its helm. Sterbini was afraid lest the Mazzinians should interfere with his authority: against them, therefore, as persons arrived from abroad, he whetted local jealousies at the very moment when he was disseminating mistrust of the Parliament; one day he would reassure the timid, the next he frightened them; now he would arouse disorder, now repress what he had himself aroused; and by such vulgar stratagems he thought to govern Rome, her States, and her fortunes, while he could not even govern himself, so unruly were his temper and his understanding. Thus the Constitutionalists thought meanly of him, as being the individual chiefly responsible for all those disorders at Rome which ended in the catastrophe of the middle of November, while the Mazzinians abhorred him as one who seemed to be an hindrance to the accomplishment of their designs. His ill fame pervaded the Provinces, and blackened the character of the Government, in which there were really honourable men; and not the least among the causes which

prompted the desire and demand for a popular assembly were humiliation and chagrin at the Dictatorship of Sterbini.

Galletti, who had been the Pope's Minister of Police in three Constitutional Administrations, and was now a fourth time in office by the will of the Club of the People, imagined in good faith that he was still Minister and General to the Pope, declared he would keep within the terms of the Statute, looked sour upon Sterbini, and wavered, now this way, now that.

Thus the design of convoking the people to give their votes had no serious obstacle to encounter, either in Rome or in the provinces. The High Council, exhausted in numbers and force, had ceased to sit: as though extinct, it was no longer named. The Council of Deputies, again, dragged on but a consumptive existence. In vain was it to look there for spirit, or activity, or purpose; except in Canino, always chattering and boisterous, Pantaleoni, ever bold and straightforward, Audinot, upright and aiming at the lesser evil, and Potenziani, with Ninchi and a few others, who ill endured Sterbini's abortion of a government. Pantaleoni wanted to set about proving by argument, that the Constituent would be fatal to the State and to liberty; Audinot sought to introduce a bill, under which the Council of Deputies and the High Council should hold the government, by the hands of Commissioners, until the meeting of a General Assembly, which was to refer the weighty questions, relating to the temporal power of the Popes, to the disposal of the Federative Constituent, and to settle them by