Religious toleration had been proclaimed in Piedmont as one of the
first reforms, the concession having been obtained from Charles Albert
by the Marquis Robert d'Azeglio, a conservative and a profoundly
convinced Catholic, but a lover of justice and mercy, who esteemed
it the happiest day of his life when, through his interposition,
the faithful Vaudois were granted the rights of free citizens. But
legislation had not yet touched the extraordinary privileges arrogated
to itself by the Church. One of these, the _Foro ecclesiastico_, a
special court for the judgment of ecclesiastical offenders against
the common law, it was now proposed to abolish. It was a test
measure--like throwing down the gauntlet. Cavour had been re-elected
when the king dissolved Parliament by what is known as the
Proclamation of Moncalieri, and in the debates on the _Foro
ecclesiastico_ for the first time he made his power felt in the
Chamber. He spoke as one who had long thought out the subject and had
chosen his policy: "Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's,
and to God the things which are God's."

At this first stage in the long struggle the Roman curia might have
settled the matter in a friendly way, but it would not. Cardinal
Antonelli replied to a respectful invitation, that "the Holy Father
was ready to go to the ante-chamber of the devil's house to please the
king of Sardinia, but he really could not go inside." Yet, at the
same date, the Archbishop of Paris (Sibour) admitted to a Piedmontese
visitor that the Sardinian Government had no option under the new
institutions but to establish the equality of all citizens before the
law, and in Austria they were laughing at the progressive monarchy in
its laborious efforts to obtain reforms carried out in the despotic
empire by Joseph II. The reason that Rome refused to treat was that
she thought herself strong and Sardinia weak. Writers on this period