But the spark which Charles Buonaparte had lighted required other hands to keep it alive; and it appeared that there was no one in the Venetian Congregation bold enough to take up the part which had been played at Milan by Nazari. Under these circumstances, Daniele Manin, the lawyer, who had already opposed the Austrian Government about the Lombardo-Venetian railway, came forward to take upon himself the office from which the official members of the Congregation had shrunk. He presented a petition calling on the members of the Venetian Congregation to imitate the example of Nazari, ending his appeal with the words, "It is unjust and injurious to suppose that the Government has granted to this kingdom a sham national representation." This address of Manin's was sent to the Congregation on December 21st. On the same day Niccolo Tommaseo addressed a letter to Baron von Kübeck, one of the Viennese ministry, asking for permission to print a discourse which he had just delivered at Venice on the Austrian press law. In this discourse he had shown that the Austrian law was in theory more liberal than the Piedmontese law, but that it was not carried out, a fact which he illustrated by the signatures to a petition which was then being circulated in favour of the proper enforcement of the Austrian law. "If this petition be granted," said Tommaseo, "the country will find peace, and Austria an honourable security." He ended with a remarkable warning--"If the movements of the brothers Bandiera alarmed the Austrian Government, how much more will there be danger now that the altar is no longer on the side of the throne?" Tommaseo had already been marked out by the Government as a dangerous person. He had been the first to introduce Mazzini to the public by securing the publication of his article on Dante which had been refused by the "Antologia," and he had joined with Mazzini in the revolutionary struggle of 1833. It was therefore as a pardoned man that he had been allowed to return to Venice; and the authorities were doubly indignant that he should venture to come forward again. But Manin's attempt to stir up the Venetian Congregation attracted the hostility of the Government more than Tommaseo's petition. He had already protested against a new form of official cruelty--the shutting up of a political prisoner in a lunatic asylum; and Palffy had threatened to let the prisoner out and shut up Manin instead. But it seemed for a time as if his attempt to stir up the Venetian Congregation would fail, for he could get no member to present his petition for him. Nothing daunted, however, he printed it, and sent it himself to the Congregation. This act soon attracted attention, and several provincial governments sent in similar petitions.