"With regard to the fifteen millions of Italians, their concentration
was already far advanced; it only wanted maturity. The people were daily
becoming more firmly established in the unity of principles and
legislation, and also in the unity of thought and feeling--that certain
and infallible cement of human thought and concentration. The union of
Piedmont to France, and the junction of Parma, Tuscany and Rome, were,
in my mind, only temporary measures, intended merely to guarantee and
promote the national education of the Italians. The portions of Italy
that were united to France, though that union might have been regarded
as the result of invasion on our part, were, in spite of their Italian
patriotism, the very places that continued most attached to us.
"All the south of Europe, therefore, would soon have been rendered
compact in point of locality, views, opinions, sentiments and interests.
In this state of things, what would have been the weight of all the
nations of the North? What human efforts could have broken through so
strong a barrier? The concentration of the Germans must have been
effected more gradually, and therefore I had done no more than simplify
their monstrous complication.
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