Almost every thing that has worked its difficult way in art, in literature, or in political activity, is plebeian. In Italy the initiative of progress has always belonged to the people, to the democratic element. It is through her communes that she has acquired all she has ever had of liberty: through her workmen in wool or silk, through her merchants of Genoa, Florence, Venice, and Pisa, that she has acquired her wealth; through her artists, plebeian and republican, from Giotto to Michael Angelo, that she has acquired her renown; through her navigators,--plebeian,--that she has given a world to humanity; through her Popes--sons of the people even they--that until the twelfth century she aided in the emancipation of the weak, and sent forth a word of unity to humanity. All her memories of insurrection against the foreigner are memories of the people: all that has made the greatness of our towns, dates almost always from a republican epoch: the educational book, the only book read by the inhabitant of the Alps or the Transteverin who can read, is an abridgment of the history of the Ancient Roman Republic. This is the reason why the same men who have so long been accused of coldness, and who had in fact witnessed with indifference the aristocratic and royal revolutions of 1820 and 1821, arose with enthusiasm and with a true power of self-sacrifice at the cry of _St. Mark and the Republic, God and the People_! These words contained for them a guarantee. They awoke in them, even unconsciously to themselves, the all-powerful echo of a living past, a confused recollection of glory, of strength, of conscience, and of dignity. With such elements how would it be possible to found a monarchy surrounded with an aristocracy? How can one speak of a balance of powers, where there are but two forces--foreign absolutism, and the people? How could one organize a constitutional monarchy where the aristocracy is without a past, and where royalty inspires neither affection nor respect?