CHAPTER XXX.

HOLIDAY AND RETURN TO PARIS.

1860. Most men would have been content, after such an achieve:
Ar. 56. ment as the Treaty, to sink instantly into the repose of 2
long holiday. If Cobden had been so exclusively interested
in a mere increase of trade as his adversaries believed, be
would have cared very little for the Italian question. As
matter of fact he cared intensely for it, and thought clearly
about it. He had as definite ideas and as deep an anxiety
about foreign affairs as Lord Palmerston himself, It was 1%
method that the vast difference existed between them, nob
in the supposed fact that one had a foreign policy and the
other had none. Cobden went straight from the Foreig?
Office, where he had just signed the revised Treaty, to the
Austrian Embassy. Prince Metternich was not at home
but Cobden returned the next day and delivered his soul
on the subject of Venetia, which was then jeoparding the
European peace.
Wo have to remember that all this time the entanglement?
of Ttaly had been distracting the Powers. Throughout th°
negotiations on the Treaty, which, as we shall see, lasted
until the autumn of 1860, the group of difficulties known 8°
the Italian question engrossed the attention of every states
man in Europe. The Emperor of the French was more
dangerously involved in these difficulties than any one else
not excepting Victor Emmanuel himself, The I'reaties of