he had only just reached maturity, he
volunteered to restore his father's dilapidated fortune. It was for
this that he chose the Ministry of Finance: Piedmont, as he saw, could
never sustain a national and Italian policy abroad without having
first set its own house in order. He started with two principles:
taxation must be increased and the resources of the country must be so
developed as to enable it to pay its way without sinking into hopeless
stagnation. It was a disappointment to some to see Cavour devoting
himself with more ardour to putting on new taxes than to producing any
of those decorative schemes for hastening the millennium which are
expected from a new and ambitious minister. But, though ambitious, he
cared for the substance, power--not for the shadow, popularity.

If there had been no other reason for the compact with the moderate
liberals, the necessity for fresh taxation would have been a sufficing
one. The Extreme Right and Left proposed to meet the existing
difficulties by cutting down expenditure, but, if sound in theory,
in practice this policy would have reduced Piedmont to complete
impotence. While a part of the Left Centre voted with the extremists,
it was only by the greatest efforts that a grant of L100,000 was
obtained for the fortifications of Casale, which had been declared
by the war minister, La Marmora, to be absolutely necessary for the
defence of the State. The radical deputy Brofferio said that States
wanted no other defence than the breasts of their citizens. From the
Chamber, as then constituted, there was little hope of obtaining
the imposition of new burdens, in part designed to meet Sardinian
liabilities, but in part also to render possible the reorganisation of
the army, which was urgently required if the future was not to witness
disasters worse than those already experienced. Prince Metternich had
said that, even if Piedmont were so troublesome as to persist in her
liberal infatuation, she would have to keep quiet, at a moderate
computation, for twenty years--just the time which it took her king to
unite Italy. The two campaigns of 1848-1849 and the war indemnity had
cost about 300,000,000 frs. The annual expenditure was doubled. Added
to this, the one source of wealth, agriculture, was almost ruined by
the oidium disease which destroyed the vines, and by harvests so bad
that the like had not been seen since the celebrated scarcity which
followed the wars of Napoleon. As Cavo