We should extend to Napoleon
III. the same charity that we extend to men who have long been
historical characters, and judge him by his actions and their results,
and not criticise him by the canons of faction.
Italy was delivered by the war of 1859, and that war was terminated by
the peace of Villafranca. For the moment, it seemed as if there were
to be a restoration of the petty princes who had fled from Tuscany and
Parma and Modena, and that an Italian Confederation had been resolved
upon, in which the noxious influences of Austria and Naples and Papal
Rome should stifle the pure principles upheld by Sardinia. A few months
sufficed to show that these evils existed in apprehension only. The
Italians, by the withdrawal of the French, were thrown upon their own
resources, and by their conduct they dissipated the belief that they
were unequal to the emergency. Had the war been continued, had Venetia
been conquered, and had the last of the Austrians been driven beyond the
Isonzo, Italy would have been the prize of French valor and genius; for
all this must have been done on the instant, and before the Italians,
less the Sardinians, could have taken an effective part in the war.
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