In the great offices of the State, and in the Prefectures, it was easy enough for the Piedmontese to appoint their own partisans; but how do this throughout the rural districts, the small towns, and the villages? In these the choice lay between a Royalist—that is, a Bourbonist—and a Mazzinian. If you would not accept a follower of the late King, you must take one who disowned sympathies with all royalty. The Syndics and “Maires” of the smaller cities have been almost to a man the enemies of the Northern Italian. It is through these all the difficulties of propagating “union” sentiments have been experienced. It is by their lukewarmness, if not something worse, that Brigandage is able still to hold its ground, not so much because they are well affected to the Bourbons, or that they cherish sentiments of Mazzinianism, but simply that they disliked Northern Italy, nor could any rule be so distasteful to them as that which came from that quarter. That the French occupation of Rome has tended to maintain and support Brigandage cannot for a moment be disputed. The policy of France, from the very hour of the treaty of Villafranca, has been to perpetuate the difficulties of Italian rule—to exhibit the country in a state of permanent disorder, and the people unquiet, dissatisfied, and unruly—to reduce the peninsula to that condition, in fact, in which not only would the occupation of Rome be treated as a measure of security to Europe at large, but the graver question urged whether a more extended occupation of territory might not be practicable and possible. If Garibaldi’s expedition had not terminated so abruptly at Aspromonte, it is well known the French would have occupied Naples. When they would have left it again, it is not so easy to say. It is clear enough then to see, how little soever the French may like that Brigandage that now devastates the South, they are not averse to the distress and trouble it occasions to the Italian Government, all whose ambitions have been assumed as so many menaces against France. Had you been content with the territory we won for you—had you remained satisfied with a kingdom of six millions, who spoke your own language, inherited your own traditions, and enjoyed your own sympathies, you might have had peace and prosperity, say the oracles of the Tuileries; but you would be a great nation, and you are paying the penalty. “This comes of listening to England, who never aided you, instead of trusting to us who shed our blood in your cause.” France never has consented to a united Italy; whether she may yet do so is, however improbable, still possible; one thing is, however, clear—until she does give this consent, not in mere diplomatic correspondence, but in heart and wish, the southern provinces of the peninsula will remain unconquered territories, requiring the presence of a large force, and even with that defying the power of the Government to reduce them to obedience.