Thus began the third period in the emancipation of Italy, the period of Cavour, who became head of the Piedmontese cabinet in 1850. His aim was first to make Piedmont the model State and champion of all Italy. He believed fervently in liberty--"Italy," he said, "must make herself by means of liberty, or we must give up trying to make her"--and he was at the same time one of the ablest and most practical statesmen who have ever guided the destinies of a nation. In ten years he made the State of the north-west an oasis of freedom and good government which attracted the best intellects of Italy to its service, and henceforth Piedmont became the centre of Italian aspirations. A new propaganda movement was set on foot, called the National Society, which rejected both federalism and republicanism and declared in favour of a united Italy under the crown of Victor Emmanuel of Savoy; and when the chance of French support came in 1858, Cavour felt it was time to act. This time the end crowned the work. Austria was deprived of everything but Venice; Tuscany and Romagna declared for incorporation by plebiscite; Garibaldi conquered Sicily and the south; and by the end of 1860 the King of Sardinia was king of practically the whole of Italy. All that still remained to be won was Venice, which Austria ceded in 1866; Rome, which the French had occupied in the name of the Pope, and were forced to evacuate in 1870; and the Italia Irredenta of to-day, viz. the Trentino, Trieste, and Istria, which may be recovered as a result of the present war. It is worthy of note also that the trans-Alpine provinces, Savoy and Nice, which had been part of the dominions of the Sardinian kingdom, were ceded to France in 1858-1859 as a return for her aid, thus rounding off the western frontier of the new kingdom of Italy so as to correspond fairly closely with the boundary of nationality. The foundation of modern Italy shows us the "national idea" at its best; it was accomplished by noble means and by noble minds; and the latter, in their perpetual struggle against the forces of reaction, were never allowed to forget the claims of individual as well as of national freedom. Three tests of true nationhood, it will be remembered, were suggested at the beginning of this chapter: a state-frontier co-extensive with the nationality-frontier, a unitary state-system, and a form of government recognised by the inhabitants as an expression of their general will. Italy fulfils all these conditions; for, though the first has not yet been perfectly realised as regards Italia Irredenta, the exception is after all a trifling one. Thus the development of the national idea in Italy is almost a model of what such a development should be, and we have dwelt somewhat at length upon it for that very reason. The work of Mazzini and Cavour provides us with a standard of comparison which should be found very useful in dealing with the national idea in other countries.