The festivities in honour of the English Free-trader were promoted all over Italy by Italians who were soon to become famous. The fact that Cobden was an Englishman, even more than the outwardly harmless object of his campaign, deterred the different governments from interfering with him. Cavour proposed the health of the guest of the evening at the Cobden banquet at Turin, but almost immediately after, he retired to Leri, as he did not wish it to appear that he meant to embark on public life while the existing political dead-lock lasted. There was only room for conspirators or for those who extended toleration to the _régime_ in force. It is doubtful if anything would have driven Cavour to conspiracy against his own king, and he would have considered it a personal disgrace to be mixed up with the men then in power. He thought, therefore, that he could best serve his country by keeping himself in reserve. He realised the futility of small concessions, and the childishness of agitating to obtain them. He was the only strong royalist who understood how far reform must go when it once began--farther towards democracy than his own sympathies would have carried him. If you want to use a mill-stream you must let it flow.
The situation in Piedmont was briefly this: Charles Albert's heart was with the growing cry for independence, but he wished for independence without liberty. This was the "secret of the king" which has been sought for in all kinds of recondite suppositions: this was the key to his apparently vacillating and inconsistent character. Yet he revealed it himself in some words spoken to Roberto d'Azeglio, the elder brother of Massimo. "Marquis d'Azeglio," he said, "I desire as much as you do the enfranchisement of Italy, and it is for that reason, remember well, that I will never give a constitution to my people." While his government was a priestly despotism, he employed his leisure in translating the sublime appeals to national sentiment in the history of the Maccabees, of which, by a curious coincidence, Mazzini once said that it seemed written for Italians. Charles Albert made the mistake of forgetting the age in which he lived. His ancestors fought the stranger without troubling themselves about representative government--why should not he? But his ancestors represented in their own persons the nerve and sinew of the State, its most adventurous spirit, its strongest manhood, whereas Charles Albert represented only the party of reaction which was with him in his absolutism but not in his patriotism. He was accused of having changed sides, but, even allowing his complicity in the movement of 1821 to have been greater than he admitted, it is plain that the one thing which drew him into that movement was its championship of Italian independence. Unlike the Neapolitan revolutionists who disclaimed adventures for the freeing of Italy, at least till they had made sure of their own freedom, the liberals of Piedmont rose with the avowed purpose of rushing into an immediate war with Austria. A madder scheme was never devised, but the madness of one day is often the wisdom of the next. In politics really disinterested acts bear fruit, whatever be their consequences to individuals.