It is well to dismiss this book of Balbo's first, because its only worth is that it shows what scraps of comfort were caught at eagerly by Italians at this period; but, as a matter of fact, its publication was slightly later than that of the "Primato" of Vincenzo Gioberti, to which Balbo alludes in the preface to his book.
Gioberti has already been mentioned as having been a contributor to the journal of the Giovine Italia. Previously to that time, he had chiefly been known as a writer on ecclesiastical or theological subjects. Before the age of twenty, he had written a philosophical treatise on Man, God, and Natural Religion; and early in life he had also written on the "Wickedness of the Popes," and had tried to prove that that wickedness was due to their temporal power. At the University of Turin, the Professor to whom he looked up with the greatest reverence was driven from his post by the Jesuits, and this event awakened in Gioberti his bitter hostility to that Order. Gioberti's connection with the Giovine Italia brought him under the suspicion of the Piedmontese Government; and he was banished from the country shortly before Mazzini's expedition to Savoy.
In that expedition, however, Gioberti had refused to join; and he remained at Paris, where many of the Italian exiles were gathered. Among these, two of the most prominent were Pellegrino Rossi and Terenzio Mamiani. Both of these writers may have confirmed him in his dislike of the Jesuits; though they may also have exercised some influence in alienating him from the Republicans. He returned, indeed, at this period to those philosophical writings for which he was much better fitted than for the active life of politics; and, in 1842, he was offered a Chair of Philosophy at Pisa. But Solaro della Margherita, the Minister of Charles Albert, succeeded in persuading the Grand Duke of Tuscany to withdraw this appointment. Such had been Gioberti's career up to the time when he brought out the book which, by a curious combination of circumstances, was to make his name famous.