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When Farini's fatal illness set in, Minghetti replaced him as Prime Minister, and Visconti Venosta took the Foreign Office. They found the country in a lamentable state, embittered by Aspromonte, still infected with brigandage, and suffering from an increasing deficit, coupled with a diminishing revenue.
Calling on the former prime minister, Minghetti, who had been an associate of Cavour, I found him very interesting, as was also Sambuy, senator of the kingdom and syndic of Turin, who was with him. Minghetti said that the Italian school system was not yet satisfactory, though young men are doing well in advanced scientific, mathematical, historical, and economic studies.
Commemoration speeches were pronounced in the great hall of the ducal palace by Signor Minghetti and Senator Massarani. The commemoration ended with a cantata composed by Signor Rossi. The Via Raffaelle was illuminated in the evening, and a gala spectacle was given at the Sanzio Theater.
Political opponents in Italy are more likely to meet with seconds than at a friendly dinner party, as used to be the case in the days of Minghetti and Sella, and this passionate personal antagonism for purely political motives which influences all political and social intercourse in Italy is one of the gravest causes of political decline.
What is not doubtful is, that, accustomed as they were to being lectured and bullied by foreign courts, the Italians derived the greatest encouragement from the openly expressed sympathy of well-known English visitors, whether they came in an official capacity like Lord Minto, or unofficially like Mr Cobden, who travelled as a missionary of Free Trade, and was received with rapture with which, it is to be feared, Free Trade had little to do by the leading Liberals in Italy: Massimo d'Azeglio at Genoa, Mancini at Naples Cavour and Scialoja at Turin, Minghetti at Bologna, Ridolfi at Florence, and Manin and Tommaseo at Venice.
Italy has three or four domestic brands: the Minghetti, the Trabuco, the Virginia, and a very coarse one which is a modification of the Virginia. The Minghettis are large and comely, and cost three dollars and sixty cents a hundred; I can smoke a hundred in seven days and enjoy every one of them. The Trabucos suit me, too; I don't remember the price.
Austere, aristocratic, immovable from his purpose, indifferent to praise or blame, Ricasoli aimed at one point the unity of the whole country; and neither Cavour's impatience for annexation to Piedmont, nor the scheme of Farini and Minghetti for averting the wrath of the French Emperor by a temporary and preparatory union of the central states, drew him one inch from the straight road, which was the only one he had ever learnt to walk in.
Then she described how she read George Tressady aloud to her invalid daughter till the daughter begged her to stop, lest she should cry over it all night she said charming things of Helbeck, talked of Italy, D'Annunzio, quoted "my dear old friend Minghetti" as to the fundamental paganism in the Italian mind, asked me to write my name in her book, and to come and see her in Berlin and it was time to go.... She is a very attractive, sensitive, impulsive woman, more charming than I had imagined, and, perhaps, less intellectual altogether the very woman to set up the backs of Bismarck and his like.
Pius IX. seemed to throw in his lot definitely with the revolution when, on the 19th of March, he too granted a Constitution, having previously formed a lay ministry, which included Marco Minghetti and Count Pasolini, under the presidency of Cardinal Antonelli, who thus makes his first appearance as Liberal Premier.
Minghetti hoped much, eventually, from Cavour's idea of toleration, and spoke with praise of the checks put by the American Constitution on unbridled democracy, whereupon I quoted to him the remark of Governor Seymour in New York, the most eminent of recent Democratic candidates for the Presidency, to the effect that the merit of our Constitution is not that it promotes democracy, but that it checks it.
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