Spaventa and Braico had been prisoners in Italy for about ten years.

To get clear what Lord John's share was in the creation of Italy, we must
remember what hampered him at home and what difficulties he contended with
in the councils of Europe.

The Palmerston Cabinet, as far as ability went, was exceptionally strong.
Lord Granville, himself a member of it, had failed in his own attempt,
because Lord John had stipulated that he should lead the Commons, and that
foreign affairs should be in no other hands but Palmerston's; while
Palmerston, who was as necessary as Lord John to any strong Whig
Government, had declined to serve unless he led the Commons. The motive of
Lord John's demand that Palmerston should be Minister for Foreign Affairs
is clear; he did not trust Lord Granville where Italy was concerned. He
thought extremely well of his qualifications as Foreign Minister--he had
previously appointed him his own Foreign Secretary--but Lord Granville had
objected shortly before to Lord Clarendon's dispatch to Naples, in which
Ferdinand II's misrule had been condemned in terms such as might have
preceded intervention. This dispatch had had Lord John's ardent sympathy,
while Lord Granville had disapproved of it on the grounds that in diplomacy
threatening language should not be addressed to a small State which
prudence would have moderated in dealing with a powerful one, and that the
whole tenor of the dispatch was calculated to draw on a European war.

It was these views upon Italian questions--namely, that peace was
all-important and that little kingdoms, however corrupt and despotic,
should not be browbeaten, which made Lord Granville so acceptable to the
Court. Throughout the next two years he was the principal agent through
whom the Queen and the Prince Consort attempted to mitigate the pro-Italian
policy of Lord John and Palmerston. The Cabinet itself was divided on the
subject; the "two old gentlemen," as Sidney Herbert called them, were for
stretching England's "neutrality" to mean support of every kind short of
(and even at the risk of) committing us to intervention; while the rest of
the Cabinet, with the important exception of Gladstone, were more or less
in favour of abstaining from any demonstration on one side or the other.
When Palmerston came into power the matters stood thus: Austria, after
losing the battle of Solferino, was securely entrenched within her four
strong fortresses of Verona, Mantua, Peschi