of which should be that
Neapolitans and Sicilians should be allowed to decide their future
destinies for themselves. Garibaldi, who loved and trusted the honest
King, replied that the actual state of Italy compelled him to disobey
his majesty. "When," said the noble-hearted patriot, "I shall have
delivered the populations from the yoke that weighs them down, I will
throw my sword at your feet, and will then obey you for the rest of my
life." In truth, Italians of all ranks were now so roused that neither
Victor Emmanuel, Cavour, nor even Garibaldi himself could have stayed
the movement.

The overpowering strength of foreign armies could alone have put it
down. Circumstances, however, happily prevented so gross an abuse of
mere force. For once Italians were allowed to do as they wished in their
own country instead of being compelled by foreign powers to do as those
powers commanded. Many things concurred to bring about this result. The
French Emperor had just received Savoy and Nice; he had been spending
the blood and treasure of France in giving the first blow to the old
despotisms of Italy; how could he now fly in the face of his own
principle of the national will in order to save the worst of those
despotisms? He could not declare that Sicilians and Neapolitans should
not dare have the opportunity of doing what he had at last permitted in
Central Italy and profited by in Nice and Savoy. To have allowed Austria
to do so would be to stultify himself in the eyes of Europe, to enrage
Italians, and to lead France to ask what was the use of calling on her
to make sacrifices for the overthrow of Austrian domination in the
Peninsula if within a few months that domination was to be in a large
measure restored.

Austria too had her own difficulties to encounter, and they were both
numerous and complicated. Her military and priestly despotism had
suffered defeat; her people disliked its rule and desired freer
institutions; her finances were terribly disordered.

The Emperor was beginning to see the necessity of a change of system--a
change by no means easy to effect--for the Hungarians were demanding the
restoration of their ancient constitutional rights. Russia and Prussia
contented themselves with protests which had, it may be, some diplomatic
value, but were wholly without practical effect. England was favorable
to the extension of Italian liberties, and France was her ally in Syria
and in China. So it was that Garibaldi,