become unadapted to a change of circumstances. The traditionary holders of
power see their interests threatened. They are jealous of innovations.
They look on agitators for reform as felonious persons desiring to
appropriate what does not belong to them. The complaining parties are
conscious of suffering and rush blindly on the superficial causes of their
immediate distress. The existing authority is their enemy; and their one
remedy is a change in the system of government. They imagine that they see
what the change should be, that they comprehend what they are doing, and
know where they intend to arrive. They do not perceive that the visible
disorders are no more than symptoms which no measures, repressive or
revolutionary, can do more than palliate. The wave advances and the wave
recedes. Neither party in the struggle can lift itself far enough above
the passions of the moment to study the drift of the general current. Each
is violent, each is one-sided, and each makes the most and the worst of
the sins of its opponents. The one idea of the aggressors is to grasp all
that they can reach. The one idea of the conservatives is to part with
nothing, pretending that the stability of the State depends on adherence
to the principles which have placed them in the position which they hold;
and as various interests are threatened, and as various necessities arise,
those who are one day enemies are frightened the next into unnatural
coalitions, and the next after into more embittered dissensions.

To an indifferent spectator, armed especially with the political
experiences of twenty additional centuries, it seems difficult to
understand how Italy could govern the world. That the world and Italy
besides should continue subject to the population of a single city, of its
limited Latin environs, and of a handful of townships exceptionally
favored, might even then be seen to be plainly impossible. The Italians
were Romans in every point, except in the possession of the franchise.
They spoke the same language; they were subjects of the same dominion.