endid
capital of the Italian kingdom."

On March 25, 1861, Cavour seized a chance opportunity to repeat and
emphasise his views. The question of Rome was, he said, the gravest
ever placed before the parliament of a free people. It was not only of
vital importance to Italy, but also to two hundred thousand Catholics
in all parts of the globe; its solution ought to have not only a
political influence, but also a moral and religious influence. In the
previous year he had deemed it wise to speak with reserve, but now
that this question was the principal subject of discussion in all
civilised nations, reserve would not be prudence but pusillanimity. He
proceeded to lay down as an irrefragable fact that Rome must become
the capital of Italy. Only this could end the discords and differences
of the various parts of the country. The position of the capital was
not decided by reasons of climate or topography, or even of strategy.
The choice of the capital was determined by great moral reasons, by
the voice of national sentiment. Cavour rarely introduced his own
personality even into his private letters, much less into his
speeches; for the last ten years of his life he seemed a living
policy, hardly a man. But in this speech there is a touch of personal
pathos in the passage in which he said that, for himself, it would
be a grievous day when he had to leave his native Turin with its
straight, formal streets, for Rome and its splendid monuments, for
which he was not artist enough to care. He called upon the future
Italy, established firmly in the Eternal City, to remember the cradle
of her liberties, which had made such great sacrifices for her, and
was ready to make this one too!

They must go to Rome, he continued, but on two conditions--the first
was, concert with France; the second, that the union of this city with
Italy should not be interpreted by the great mass of Catholics as the
signal for the servitude of the Church. They must go to Rome without
lessening the Pope's real independence, and without extending the
power of the civil authority over the spiritual. History proved that
the union of civil and spiritual authority in the same hands was fatal
to progress and freedom. The possession of Rome by Italy must put an
end to this union, not begin a new phase of it by making the Pope
a sort of head chaplain or chief almoner to the Italian state. The
Pope's spiritual authority would be safer in the charge of twenty-six
mil