Francesco Crispi Author:William James Stillman Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: onism, or worse. He paid the expenses of La Riforma, the only journal which supported him, but, so far as I could learn, he subsidised no other, and to the forei... more »gn Press—French, German, or English—he was either contemptuous or indifferent, even to rudely refusing interviews. So far as The Times was concerned, after our first brush he was respectful, but never made the slightest advance towards a private understanding as to my tone in my correspondence, or hinted, either personally or through another, at any favour to be granted on account of it, nor did he ever attempt to influence me in what I should write, further than by giving me authentic information which he did not give to other correspondents, which was natural, considering the importance of The Times. From my first interview to my resignation in 1898 I never heard from him, or any friend or subordinate, a word, or saw an indication which indicated a desire to influence me. After he became, during the convention of Naples, convinced that I was really a friend of Italy, he gave me the Cross of the Crown of Italy, more as an admission, I supposed, of his having misjudged me in the past than from any other motive, but neither to him nor me had this a serious value, for distinctions of that kind are empty honours to him as to me. I made no overture for it, and could not in courtesy refuse it—I was, in fact, indifferent to it, and it was only given just before he fell. The critics of my Union of Italy have charged me with abasing the great figure of Cavour in comparison with Crispi. The reader will see in the following pages what I think of the affairs in which they came in contact, but a comparison between them is impossible. Cavour was a parliamentary statesman, perhaps the ablest of his day in Europe, but he believed i...« less