Pope. The principal editors, with other influential citizens of Turin,
met at the Hôtel d'Europe to consider how the deputation should be
received, and if their demands were to be supported. The list of the
journalists present comprises the best names in the country; it would
be difficult to find more distinguished or disinterested pressmen than
those who were then writing for the Piedmontese newspapers. Valerio
was there to represent his new journal, _Concordia_, in which he
carried on war to the knife with Cavour. His high personal character,
as well as his talents, made him no inconsiderable opponent. It was at
this meeting that Cavour first entirely revealed himself. He showed
that faith in _the prudence of daring_ which was the keynote to his
great strokes of policy. The demands of the Genoese, he said, were not
too large, but too small. They hit wide of the mark, and the second of
them was idle, because the king, while he remained an absolute prince,
was certain not to consent to it. The government was now neither one
thing nor the other; it had lost the authority of an autocracy, and
had not gained that of a _régime_ based on the popular will. The
situation was intolerable and dangerous; what was wanted was not this
or that reform, but a constitution.

Constitutions seem tame to us now, but to speak of a constitution at
Turin on January 18, 1848, was almost as audacious as it would be to
speak of it at St. Petersburg at the present time. Europe stood at the
brink of a precipice, but knew it not. The news had only just spread
of the first symptom of revolution--the rising in Sicily. Cavour's
speech was a moral bomb-shell. Most politicians begin by asking for
more or less than the measure which finally contents them; those
who cried for a republic have been known to put up with a limited
monarchy; those who preached the most moderate reforms, at a later
stage have danced round trees of liberty. Cavour asked at once