Another grand difficulty in Piedmont was the absence of a middle class,--wealthy, intelligent, and independent. No one felt that he had rights, and you never heard people saying there, as you may do in Britain, "this is my right, and I will have it." A feeling of individual right, and of responsibility,--for the two go together,--was then just beginning to dawn upon the popular mind. This was accompanied by a certain amount of disorganizing influence; not that of Socialism,--which, happily, scarce existed in Piedmont,--but that of self-action. Every one was feeling his own way. The priests, of course, were exceedingly wroth, and loudly accused Protestantism as the cause of all this commotion in men's minds. Alas! there was no Protestantism in Piedmont, for it had been one of the most bigoted kingdoms in Italy. It was their own handiwork; for a tyranny always produces a democracy. As if by a miracle, a powerful and popular press started up in Turin. The writers in the _Opinione_ and the _Gazetta del Popolo_, acting, I suspect, on a hint given by some Vaudois that there was an old book, now little known, that would help them in the war they were now waging, went to the Bible, and, finding that it made against the priests, were liberal in their quotations from it. Their most telling hits were the extracts from Scripture; and finding it so, they quoted yet more largely. The priests were much concerned to see Holy Scripture so far profaned as to be quoted in newspapers, and exposed freely to the gaze of the vulgar. But what could they do? Their own literary qualifications did not warrant them to enter the lists with these writers: they had forgot the way to preach, unless at Lent; they could work the confessional, but even it began to be silenced by the powerful artillery of the press. At an earlier stage they might have roused the peasantry, and marched upon the Constitution, whose life they knew was the death of their power; but it was too late in 1851. An attempt of this sort made a year or two after, among the peasantry of the Val d'Aosta, turned out a miserable failure. Thus, a movement which in other countries came forward under the sanction of the priesthood, from the very outset in Piedmont took a contrary direction, and set in full against the Church. Since that day liberty has been working itself, bit by bit, into the action of the Constitution, and the feelings of the people; and now, I believe, neither King nor Parliament, were they so inclined, could put it down.