But these thoughts remind us that the precious boon of emancipation for the Vaudois did not descend upon them without an intervening period of doubt and struggle.
The political changes first announced in October, 1847, did not include the Vaudois within their range. Hence they had to ask for a special act by which their freedom should be conceded. All the liberals supported this demand. At a banquet at Pinerolo, Audifredi, an advocate, said, "Twenty thousand of our brothers stand, so to speak, enclosed and isolated between two torrents in our delightful valleys. They are honourable, laborious, strong in mind and body, equal to other Italians. With enlightened dispositions and by severe sacrifices they have educated their children, but oppressed by burdens they do not enjoy the rights of other citizens. To us it belongs, as their nearest brethren, to vote that by an universal brotherhood there shall no longer be the embankment of these torrents, that the country should be their mother and not their stepmother, and that as they are judged suitable to defend their country by the arm, so it should be allowed that they can enlighten and elevate it by the mind. _Evviva la emancipazione dei Valdesi._"[F]
An immense petition was drawn up, headed by the names of Marquis Roberto d'Azeglio, Count Cavour, Cesare Balbo, and, strange to say, the Bishop of Pinerolo. The attorney-general, Count Sclopis, supported the memorial, because, said he, by careful examination of the criminal records of the government, "no other population of the country could be compared with the Vaudois in morality and virtue." At length the _statuto_ was published in the _Official Gazette_ on the 25th of February, 1848 (though dated the 17th of that month). On the evening of that day the residences of the English and Prussian ambassadors were brilliantly illuminated, as likewise the houses of nearly all the Protestants in Turin. Moreover, the news of this happy event soon spread itself over the valleys. At nightfall some hundreds of bonfires were kindled on the hills, and even upon the tops, yet crowned with snow, and thus the joyous demonstrations of the Protestants of the capital were united in by their brethren on the hill sides.