Rassegna storica del Risorgimento

THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT AND THE PROPOSED ROMAN CONFERENCE OF 1867
The general attitude of Lord Stanley, the Britisli Foreign Secretary froin 1866 to 1868, was by no means unfavourable to Italy. He approved of the logicai conclusions of Italian Unity and looked with eatisfaction upon the transfer of Venetia in 1866. Idcally he also looked forward to Italy's acquisition of the Trentino and Home, hot, as Avith so many Britisli statesmen, his sympathy for Italy was less strong than his abhorrence of a war in which Great Britain might become involved. Thus he had maintained an atti­tude of strict impartiality in the Italian claims on the Trentino in August 1866, althongh his personal opinion was very muoh in favour of the claims (Documenta I and II). Stanley adopted a similar point of view with regard to Napoleon III's attempts to make the Roman Question an international responsibility on the expiration of the Convention of September 1864. Stanley's immediate concern was not for the sentiments or interests of France or Italy but for the position of Great Britain. He refuscd independently to renew the British offer to the Pope of asylum in Malta if his position in Rome were threatencd, although he admitted in private that he would not be able to deny this protection ìf it were directly sought. l) Stanley's reaction to the first tentativo French 6uggcstion that some international provision be made for the safety of the Pope was immediately to warn his representative in Rome, Odo Russell, that he was in no way to involve the British Government in the Roman Question (Document III). Stanley main­tained this attitude until the attack on Rome by Garibaldi's followers in the autumn of 1867 seemcd likely to rcsult in war between Italy and France. This danger forced Stanley to make his policy clear. He tried to restrain France by arguing that English opinion was in favour of Italy but he had to stress that in no case would the British Government intervene. "His atti­tude, therefore, really worked in opposition to his sympathies: to France he posed the harmlcss spectre of an outraged public opinion in Great Bri­tain but to Italy he offeied the fate of an isolated victim (Documents IV and V). It was France he disapproved of but it was Italy who was to sur-render.
In a circular dated 28 October Moustier, the French Foreign Ministcr, seized the opportunity of the crisis to renew the Emperor's suggestion of a conference on the Roman Question. 2) This proposai, not a Franco-Italian war, was what Stanley .had cxpected and feared for he believed that both France and Italy had been Burprised by the dangerous situation in which they found thcmselves and that ncithcr was anxious for war (Document VI).
1) Lord Stanley to Henry Elliot, British Minister in Florence, no. 27, 12 September 1866, Public Record Office, London, FJoreign] 0[ffice] 45/84; and Lord Stanley to Lord Cowley, Britiab Ambansador in Paris, private, 7 Novembor 1866, Cowley Paper, F. 0. 519/182.
2) Les Origine* diplomotiquee de la Guerra de 1870-71, 27 vola.. Paria, 1910-1930, XIX (1926), pp. 102-4, no. 5908.