sh Cabinet to pull up a runaway horse. Lord Minto
had been sent to urge the Italian princes to grant those concessions
which Austria always said (and she was perfectly right) would lead to
a general attack upon her power, but when the attack began, the
British Government strained every nerve to limit its extension and
diminish its force. That Lord Palmerston in his own mind disliked
Austria, and would have been glad to see North Italy free, does not
alter the fact that he played the Austrian game, and played it with
success. He strongly advised every Italian prince to abstain from the
conflict, and it is further as certain as anything can well be, that
his influence, exercised through Lord Normanby, alone averted French
intervention in August 1848, when the desperate state of things made
the Italians willing to accept foreign aid. What would have happened
if the French had intervened it is interesting to speculate, but
impossible to decide. Their help was not desired, except as a last
resource, by any party in Italy, nor by any man of note except Manin.
The republicans wished Italy to owe her liberation to herself; Charles
Albert wished her to owe it to him. The King also feared a republican
propaganda, and was uneasy, not without reason, about Savoy and Nice.
Lamartine would probably have been satisfied with the former, but it
is doubtful if Charles Albert, though capable of giving up his crown
for Italy, would have been capable of renouncing the cradle of his
race. When Lamartine was succeeded by Cavaignac, perhaps Nice would
have been demanded as well as Savoy. That both the King and Mazzini
were right in mistrusting the sentiments of the French Government, is
amply testified by a letter written by Jules Bastide to the French
representative at Turin, in which the Minister of Foreign Affairs
speaks of the danger to France of the formation of a strong monarchy
at the foot of the Alps, that would tend to assimilate the rest of
Italy, adding the significant words: 'We could admit the unity of
Italy on the principle and in the form of a federation of independent
states, each balancing the other, but never a unity which placed the
whole of Italy under the dominion of one of these states.'

Whether, in spite of all this, a political mistake was not made in not
accepting French aid when it was first offered (in the spring of 1848)
must remain an open question. When the French came eleven years later,
they were actuated by no