Metternich struck the final blow at the independence of Cracow. The account given above shows that there was little independence left to be destroyed in that unfortunate city; but somehow the actual destruction of liberties never excites so general a horror, especially in the diplomatic world, as the final removal of the _forms_ of liberty. And Lord Palmerston, who does not seem to have responded to the previous appeal from the Assembly of Cracow, now addressed indignant remonstrances to Metternich, and uttered the remarkable words, "If the treaties of 1815 are null on the Vistula, they may be null on the Rhine and the Po." Thus the occupation of Cracow seemed to many to be an abandonment by Metternich of the semi-legal position which till then he had, in the eyes of diplomatists, maintained; while his supposed complicity in the massacre in Galicia roused against him the feelings of those humanitarians who do not understand the wickedness of choking out the moral and intellectual life of a nation, but who shrink with horror from any physical cruelty. It is, therefore, no unnatural inference that the delay which Metternich showed in making any stern protest against Charles Albert's new position in Italy may have been due to the paralysis caused by the storm of indignation roused against Austria by the Galician massacres and the annexation of Cracow. Charles Albert profited by this weakness. He had been shifting as usual in his policy, encouraged on the one side in moderate reforms by the Liberal minister, Villamarina, and dragged, on the other side, into extreme clericalism by Solaro della Margherita. But, just about the time when D'Azeglio arrived in Piedmont, events were occurring which riveted on Charles Albert the hopes of many who had not hitherto believed in the sincerity of his desire for reform; and the same circumstances gave him that position of champion of Italian independence which, in the eyes of perhaps a majority of Italians, he continued to maintain till the fall of Milan in 1848. The chief cause of this change of feeling is to be found in the following circumstance. In the year 1751 a treaty had been made between Austria and Piedmont by which the former granted to the latter the right of sending through Lombardy the salt which they were selling to the Republic of Venice. In consideration of this boon the King of Sardinia renounced his trade with the Swiss cantons; and the treaty was renewed in 1815, after Venice had passed under the Austrian rule. In 1846 Ticino, desiring to open a trade in salt with Marseilles, asked the Piedmontese Government to allow them to transmit their salt through Piedmont, and Charles Albert consented.