No life of Cavour has been written since the publication of his correspondence, and of a mass of documents which throw light on his career. It has seemed more useful, therefore, within the prescribed limits, to endeavour to show what he did, and how he did it, than to give much space to the larger considerations which the Italian movement suggests. Of the ultimate issue of the events with which he was concerned it is too soon to speak. These events stand in close relation to the struggle between the civil and ecclesiastical powers, which dates back to the first assumption of political prerogatives by the Bishops of Rome. Cavour did not suffer his sovereign to eat humble pie like King John, or to go to Canossa like Henry IV., but neither did he ever entertain the wish to turn persecutor as Pombal was, perhaps, forced to do, or to browbeat the head of the Church as the first Napoleon took a pleasure in doing. He aimed at keeping the two powers separate, but each supreme in its own province.
Content you with monopolising heaven, And let this little hanging ball alone; For, give ye but a foot of conscience there, And you, like Archimedes, toss the globe.
The Italian revolution was bound up, also, with the principle of nationalities, which is still at work in South-Eastern Europe, and with the tendency towards unity which led to the refounding of the German Empire. Students who care for historical parallels will always seek to draw a comparison between Cavour and the great man who guided the new destinies of Germany. The points of resemblance are striking, but they are soon exhausted. Each undertook to free his country from extraneous influence, and to give it the strength which can only spring from union, and each was confident in his own power to succeed; either Cavour or Bismarck might have said with the younger Pitt: "I know that I can save the country, and I know no other man can." The points of disparity are inexhaustible. Prince Bismarck never threw off the aristocratico-military leanings with which he began life. He aimed at creating a strong military empire, in which the first and last duty of parliament was to vote supplies. Though the revolutionary tide set in towards unity still more in Germany than in Italy, he preferred to wait till he could do without a popular movement as an auxiliary. He did not admire the mysticism of King Frederick William IV., but he fully approved when that monarch, "the son of twenty-four electors and kings," declared that he would never accept the "iron collar" offered him by revolution "of an Imperial crown unblessed by God." Bismarck started with the immeasurable advantage that his side was the strongest. Cavour had to solve the problem of how a state of five millions could outwit an empire of thirty-seven millions. All along, the German population of Prussia was far more numerous than that of Austria, and she had allies that cost her nothing. Napoleon, as Cavour pointed out, fought for Prussia in Lombardy as much as for Piedmont. If Bismarck foresaw unification with more certainty than Cavour foresaw unity, it must be remembered that, while Cavour was held back by doubts as to whether the whole country desired unity, such doubts caused no trouble to Bismarck, since he was ready to adopt a short way with dissidents.