Composed of six different nations, you will be now united under a constitution the best possible for your social and material condition.

...

The selections I have made for your chief offices have been made independently of all idea of party or feeling of locality.

As for that of President, I have found no one among you with sufficient claims on public opinion, sufficiently free from local feelings, and who had rendered great enough services to his country, to intrust it to him....

Your people has only local feelings: it must now rise to national feelings." In accordance with this last grand and prophetic remark, the name Italian was substituted for that of Cisalpine: and thus, for the first time since the Middle Ages, there reappeared on the map of Europe that name, which was to evoke the sneers of diplomatists and the most exalted patriotism of the century.