In the first place, it must be sufficiently obvious to any one, ever so little acquainted with the character of the Italian people, that the different nations and tribes of that peninsula are by no means all in the same degree of preparation and advancement for receiving the boon of constitutional government. There is a very wide difference between the inhabitants of Milan and those of Naples, between the denizens of the Bolognese and the shepherds of the Abruzzi, and generally between the dwellers in Italian cities and the agricultural population in the bosom, or on the skirts, of the Apennines. But to apply the same kind of political institutions to all the inhabitants of a district, without regard to their various degrees of moral preparation for it, is to confer on them a punishment rather than a boon, and to do them evil rather than good. We have too melancholy an example of it at our own doors, where the exaggerated philanthropy of Englishmen has given to the Irish the same political privileges as they enjoy themselves, to wish that such a fruitful source of evil should fall to the lot of any other people. And so it would be with nine-tenths of the people of Italy: however advanced may be the notions of the upper classes, however ripe for political freedom may be the citizens of Florence or Rome, the peasants of Lombardy and Campania would not know how to use the advantages put within their reach, and they would but change the rule of the few for the more terrible despotism of the many.