“M. Rossi at first hesitated. He knew what formidable problems there were to solve. To conduct, according to constitutional principles, a government that had been heretofore absolute; to administer by the hands of laymen the affairs of a country that had been hitherto subject to Ecclesiastics; to unite in an Italian league a state that had been almost always opposed to a political union of the Peninsula; in a word, to establish all at the same time, a Constitutional Government, a Civil Administration, a National Federation, were not the only difficulties that he would have to overcome. The minister of a Prince, whose confidence others would dispute with him, a stranger in a country, where he would exercise public authority, he would be liable to be left without support notwithstanding his devotedness, and without approbation notwithstanding his services; to be attacked as a revolutionist by the blind advocates of abuses, and disavowed as an enemy of liberty by the impassioned partisans of chimeras. He continued to decline for a considerable time. The conditions which he at first proposed to the Sovereign Pontiff not having been accepted, M. Rossi thought that he had escaped the lot that was in store for him. But the Pope, after having essayed in vain a new ministry, pressed him more urgently, in the month of September, 1848, to come to his aid, offering him at the same time his full confidence and unlimited authority. M. Rossi accepted.”