28 Via del Tritone, Rome: Monday [May 1860].

I have tried and taken pains to see the truth, and have spoken it as I
have seemed to see it. If the issue of events shall prove me wrong about
the E. Napoleon, the worse for _him_, I am bold to say, rather than for
me, who have honored him only because I believed his intentions worthy
of the honor of honest souls.

If he lives long enough, he will explain himself to all. So far, I
cannot help persisting in certain of my views, because they have been
held long enough to be justified by the past on many points. The
intervention in Italy, while it overwhelmed with joy, did not dazzle me
into doubts of the motive of it, but satisfied a patient expectation and
fulfilled a logical inference. Thus it did not present itself to my mind
as a caprice of power, to be followed perhaps by an onslaught on
Belgium, and an invasion of England. These things were out of the beat;
and _are_. There may follow Hungarian, Polish, or other questions--but
there won't follow an English question unless the English _make_ it,
which, I grieve to think, looks every day less impossible.

Dear Mr. F., have you read 'La Foi des Traites,' written, some of it, by
L.N.'s own hand? Do you consider About's 'Carte de l'Europe' (as the
'Times' does) 'a dull _jeu d'esprit_'? The wit isn't dull, and the
serious intention, hid in those mummy wrappings, is not inauthentic.
Official--certainly not; but Napoleonic--yes. I believe so. And I seem
to myself to have strong reasons.

But you are sorry that Cavour loves popularity in England. I cried
rather bitterly, 'Better so!' A complete injustice comes to nearly the
same thing as a complete justice. Have we not watched for a year while
every saddle of iniquity has been tried on the Napoleonic back, and
nothing fitted? Wasn't he to crush Piedmontese institutions like so many
egg-shells? Was he ever going away with his army, and hadn't he occupied
houses in Genoa with an intention of bombarding the city? Didn't he keep
troops in the north after Villafranca on purpose to come down on us with
a Grand Duke at best, or otherwise with a swamping Kingdom of Etruria
and Plon-Plon to rule it? and wouldn't he give back Bologna to the Pope
bound by seven devils fiercer than the first, and prove Austria bettered
by Solferino? Also, were not Cipriani, Farini, and other patriots, his
'mere creatures' in treacherous correspondence with the Tuileries;
'doing his dirty work,' 'keeping things in suspense' till destruction
should arrange itself on falsehood? Have I not read and heard from the
most intelligent English journals, and the best-informed English
politicians (men with one foot and two ears in the Cabinet) these true
things written and repeated, and watched while they died out into the
Vast Inane and Immense Absurd from which they were born?

So I would rather have a rounded, complete injustice, as we can't have
the complete justice. After all, the thing done is only a nation saved.
Hurry up the men who did it on the same cord! Ought not Cavour to be
there?

And if the Savoy cession is a crime, he is criminal, he, who undeniably
from the beginning contemplated it, not as the price of the war, but as
the condition of a newly constituted Italy. And the condition implies
more than is understood, more than the consenting parties dare to
confess--can at present afford to confess--unless I am deceived by
information, which has hitherto justified itself in the event. Be
patient with me one moment--for if I differ from you, I seem to have
access to another class of facts than you see. If Italy, for instance,
expands itself to a nation of twenty-six millions, would you blame the
Emperor who 'did it all' (Cavour's own phrase) for providing an answer
to his own people in some small foresight about the frontier, when in
the course of fifty or a hundred years they may reproach his memory with
the existence of an oppressive rival or enemy next door? Mr. Russell
said to me last January 'Everything that comes out proves the Emperor to
have acted towards Italy like an Italian rather than a Frenchman.' At
which we applaud; that is, you, and Mr. R., and I, and the Italians
generally applaud. But--let us be just--_that_ would not be a
satisfactory opinion in France of the Head of the State, would it, do
you think? It was obviously his duty not to be negligent of certain
eventualities in the case of his own country, to be a 'Frenchman'
_there_.

Oh, Savoy has given me pain: and I would rather for the world's sake
that a great action had remained out of reach of the hypothetical
whispers of depreciators. I would rather not hear Robert say, for
instance: 'It was a great action; but he has taken eighteenpence for it,
which is a pity.' I don't think this judgment fair--and much worse
judgments are passed than that, which is very painful. But, after all,
this thing may have been a necessary duty on L.N.'s part, and I can
understand that it was so. For this loss of the Italians, _that_ is not
to be dwelt on; while for the Savoyards, none knew better than Cavour
(not even L.N.) the leaning of those populations towards France for
years back; it has been an inconvenient element of his government.
Whether there are or are not natural frontiers, there are natural
barriers, and the Alps hinder trade and make direct influence difficult;
and what the popular vote would be nobody here doubted. Be sure that
nobody did in Switzerland. The Swiss have been insincere, it seems to
me--talking of terror when they thought chiefly of territory. But I feel
tenderly for poor heroic Garibaldi, who has suffered, he and his
minority. He is not a man of much brain; which makes the subject the
more cruel to him. But I can't write of Garibaldi this morning, so
anxious we are after an unpleasant despatch yesterday. He is a hero, and
has led a forlorn hope out to Sicily, to succeed for Italy, or to fail
for himself. It's 'imprudence,' if he fails: if otherwise, who shall
praise him enough? it's salvation and glory.