and, while every good citizen was labouring to reduce the public mind to repose and concord, they toiled for the indefinite increase of perturbation and division. Garibaldi had now arrived in Rome. He derived great weight, with the excited multitude, from his reputation for signal prowess, and a hardihood quite unique. Others were scouring the provinces, haranguing the Clubs, combining them in a league, affiliating them to a centre, and inflaming them with the notion of electing, by direct and universal suffrage, a popular assembly, to establish a pure democracy in the Papal States. The various Clubs sent delegates to Forlì first, and afterwards to Ancona, to decide on the petition for it, which they intended to transmit to those in power at Rome. Such as were hostile kept in the background; there was a general concurrence, except that some from Bologna and Romagna voted subject to this condition, that the alternative of convoking a Constituent was not to be embraced, until all hope of an accommodation with the Sovereign should have been lost. From Ancona, the emissaries of the provincial Clubs repaired to Rome, to solicit and make interest in the sense of the decision which had been taken. Many and various petitions arrived thither. Gatherings commenced, as did upbraidings and threats against the Ministry, who were trying to compose matters, and to procrastinate; most of all against Mamiani, because he resisted the plan of a Constituent outright. He was sincerely resolved to carry on the government in right of the constitutional Throne, and not to permit a change in its foundations; while he was meditating to close the Club of the People, and by force to maintain public order, should any seek to disturb it by force. The rest of the Ministers were swayed by his views, if we except Sterbini. He did not venture in council to oppose Mamiani, who was endowed with all the gifts that win the feelings and convince the understanding in discussion; but he would go and thwart him in the Club of the People, where he denounced his projects of resistance. In the palace he made a show of holding back, but out of doors he egged us on. Meanwhile, tumult was growing rife, and its promoters insolent. Mamiani several times called to arms the Civic Guard, which the honourable Gallieno was labouring to muster for the support of order, and which he brought to parade in the public squares, by way of indicating that the turbulent would be opposed. In the city there were such complaints of the foreigners, as those who fomented passion, that on some days the conspirators seemed not to be in heart to make any attempt. One evening it chanced that a miscellaneous crowd, which, after cheering Garibaldi, had set to going about Rome with flags and shouting for the Republic and the Italian Constituent, was dispersed, between the Piazza di Venezia and the Piazza Sciarra, by the Civic Guards and the citizens. Complaints against the reputed authors of the disturbances were on the increase; and the Ministers directed Accursi to expel Cernuschi, with one or two more daring or crafty strangers, from Rome; but the order was not executed. Next evening the Civic Guards were mustered in the Piazza de' Santi Apostoli, and it was said they were about to ask for the dismissal of the foreign sedition-mongers; but when an individual had begun to speak in favour of the Constituent, Sterbini arrived, and so inflamed the minds of those who leant to every novel or foolhardy project, that a shout for the Constituent arose from the ranks of this burgher force. Thereupon a petition was produced, which indeed few subscribed; still, it sufficed for the seditious to have sown such a seed: they then spread the news, that the Civic Guard was for the Constituent; and so they got by cunning what they could not by force. Thus was government falling to pieces. Lunati had already withdrawn from the Finance Department, upon learning how strong was the resentment of the Pope; and soon after, Sereni, Minister of Grace and Justice, had resigned in like manner. Mamiani determined to make a final effort at resistance; and on the 21st of December he proposed to the Council of Deputies, that they should give the Ministry a power, for two months, to expel from the capital and the country all such foreigners as they might conceive ill-disposed to public order; but Canino keenly opposed him, and carried it that the motion should be referred to the Committees. And now all endeavours were in vain; for the Supreme Giunta had on the preceding day published the Proclamation, which I subjoin. Supreme Giunta of State. "People of the Roman States! "Although we are conscious of being but too unequal to the lofty rank and office, to which the Legislative Councils have called us by their decree of the 11th current, yet, as witnesses of the extreme and universally felt necessity of furnishing the State with a government, and public liberty with a bulwark, we have mastered our warrantable misgivings, and obeyed the imperious summons of our country. It will be our incessant care, with the aid of the other authorities, to maintain internal order, to facilitate the development of our free institutions, to restore prosperity to every class, and to co-operate with all our might in the pursuit of National Independence. We, however, simultaneously announce, that we assume an office so weighty only provisionally and for the moment, until a Constituent Assembly for the Roman States shall have determined on our political institutions: and we promise to promote by our eager exertions, to the best of our power, the convocation of such an Assembly, now demanded by the universal wish of the people, at the earliest possible period. 66 People of Rome and of the Provinces ! rely you on our zeal, even as we rely on concord among you, and on the earnestness with which you will set to baffling the evil designs of our foes, by maintaining, inviolate and unalterable, tranquillity and obedience to the laws. "From our residence at Rome, 20th December, 1848. TOMMASO CORSINI. As the Constituent Assembly had thus been announced, Mamiani forthwith gave up his office, or rather his offices, as a minister; for during their last days they were almost all concentrated in his hands, inasmuch as he was in extra charge both of the finances and of the Home department. In the Ministry of the 16th of November, Mamiani had used his very best endeavours to keep within the bounds of due respect for the Sovereignty of the Pontiff. He had, indeed, made complaint of the invasion threatened by Cavaignac; but, in order to soften its effect, he had shortly after, in a despatch to Bastide, the French Minister for Foreign Affairs, testified his desire to be on good terms and in alliance with France. He had likewise sent Canuti, a person firm in his allegiance to the Constitutional Throne, to Paris and London, with letters to the Prince of La Cisterna at Paris, and to Carlo Pepoli in London, on each of whom he conferred the office of provisional envoy. When they had declined the charge, he appointed Canuti himself to hold communications with the Governments of France and England, in order to obtain their interposition as peacemakers and mediators between the Pontiff and Rome, with a view of arriving at a durable accommodation, and a stable settlement, with a complete severance of the spiritual from the temporal power. He had simultaneously taken up the negotiations for the Italian Confederation, or, as it was then called, the Federative Constituent Assembly, of which he had laid the plan before Parliament; and with this aim he had dispatched Spini and Pinto as envoys to Turin. He was censured, indeed, for the choice, because they had the character of being busy-bodies for the Clubs, not practical negotiators. He likewise had held correspondence with the Tuscan Government, but fruitlessly, because he would not enter into the scheme of a Constituent with unlimited powers, as that Government suggested and its agents urged. As to domestic affairs, Mamiani had introduced a |