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THE ITALIAN MOVEMENT AND
ITALIAN PARTIES.
TWO LECTURES
DELIVEEED AT THE
PHILOSOPHICAL INSTITUTION, EDINBURGH.
" *
SPEECHES
g
DELTVEBED IN
THE HOUSE OF COMMONS AND AT THE WAKEFIELD
MECHANICS’ INSTITUTE.
BY
JAMES STANSFELD, Esq., M.P.
PUBLISHED AT THE REQUEST OF THE GARIBALDI ITALIAN UNITY COMMITTEE.
LONDON:
JAMES RIDGWAY, 169, PICCADILLY,
EFFINGHAM WILSON, 11, ROYAL EXCHANGE.
EDINBURGH: ADAM & CHARLES BLACK.
��fenMbi (JMxmt Bnxtg gummite-
The following Lectures and Speeches are published at the request of
the Executive of the Garibaldi Italian Unity Committee, viz.:—
P. A. Taylor, M.P., Chairman.
W. H. Ashurst, Treasurer.
J. Sale Barker,
W. J. Linton.
W. T. Malleson, B.A.,
William Shaen, M.A.,
R. E. Wainewright, B.A.
J. M. Moir, M.A., Secretary.
March, 1862,
10, Southampton Street, Strand, London.
s
��TWO LECTURES,
&C.
■
LECTURE I.
It is not unusual, I believe, for a Lecturer to commence his
address by some prefatory remarks, intended to demonstrate
the interest and importance of his subject to his hearers. But
my subject needs no such introduction, and if I fail to make it
interesting, the fault will be my own.
Nevertheless, it may be well at the outset of what I have to
say, to endeavour not to prove the interest of my subject, but
to ascertain what are the essential elements and the attributes
of the Italian Question which make it one of so great interest,
of such special import to ourselves.
Tn the first place then Italy has the greatest past of any nation.
She has been mistress of the Pagan and of the Christian
world. She has suffered centuries of decay, of disintegration,
of what seemed death—and it was death—but death precedes
resurrection, and Italy is being born again and to a purer life.
How can we then choose but look upon her regeneration with
the interest which belongs to so great a past, and with that
mingled sense of veneration and of joy, with which we greet
the spectacle, with all its wondrous meaning, of a nation’s life
providentially renewed.
Let us descend from the height of this generality to think of
the living human tender interest inspired by a nearer view of
d;he more immediate past. Count, if you could count them,
B
�2
>
Italy’s martyr heroes in exile, in the dungeon, on the scaffold,
or dying on the field ; from Silvio Pellico to Petroni, from the
brothers Bandiera to Pisacane and Rosolino Pilo, from Joseph
Andreoli and Menotti to Ugo Bassi, Ciceroacchio and the
Canon Tazzoli. From those times so near us as some twenty
years ago, when Joseph Mazzini wrote “ The shadow of des
*
potism is cast on the whole land, on virtue as on vice, on life
and death; one would imagine that the very steps of the
scaffold were clothed with velvet, so little sound do those youth
ful heads make which roll down from them”—down to these
later days when the task of silent martyrdom is over and the
struggle is in the face of day.
And yet alas, even now how many are the noble men
who suffer death that Italy may be, and we know them not, or
their names die from us in the great whirl of time, save for the
few with whom the accidental privilege of personal relation
ship—sad and anxious privilege as it has often proved—has
made them rank us brothers. I have been of these few; for
this reason I am here to-night, for I may say that this Italian
Movement as far as their part in it has been concerned, has been
since 1848, a large part of my daily life. No forlorn hope has
since then been led—precursor of the successes which now fill
us with delight,—that has not numbered personal friends of
mine among its bravest leaders. The dungeons of the Pope
are still crowded with men whose crimes will rank as virtues
when her capital is restored to the Italian nation, amongst
whom I could name men of the highest character and of the
purest devotion, for whom, those whom I love have been pining
night and day for years. Let me recal two names, especially
dear to me of those who are no more. I knew Colonel
Pisacane the forerunner of Garibaldi, who fell in 1857 in an
unsuccessful attempt to raise the Neapolitan provinces against
their deceased king. He was a man of great military capacity,
of enlightened intellect, of high soul and of an absolute devo
tion ; and it was my privilege to call him friend. Rosolino
Pilo too, I knew, and cherish his memory with a peculiar'
affection. You may remember his name, though I know not,
* “ State and Prospects of Italy,” Monthly Chronicle, May, 1839.
�3
for he died too soon to reap the reward of an extended fame—
Rosolino Pilo, the gentle and the brave, without whom the late
insurrection in Sicily might have been crushed out at once, he
kept it alive in the mountains round Palermo until Garibaldi
could come to save it, with his genius and his prestige—and was
then wounded to the death. I might almost say that it was from
my own threshold that he went forth to buy with his life’s blood
the redemption of the country which had been his cradle, and
which was to become his grave.
But let us turn again to considerations of a more general
nature. The Italian movement is above all else one of
national reconstruction or rather of national regeneration.
A few years ago my first business would have been to
prove this, to show that this and not merely some portion
of liberty and reform was the goal towards which all Italy
was striving, and which she was destined to attain. Now
I may start with the assumption of that which all of us
believe, and, this brings me to the next attribute of special
interest in this Italian movement, which I desire to note.
By virtue of its national character, of which it has forced
the consciousness upon us, it has opened our eyes to the
fact that what we call the question of nationalities, is the
great European question of the day. The example of Italy is
contagious and acts directly on the peoples; wherever there is
a sense of national individuality unrecognized or oppressed, the
peoples are astir. I speak not merely of such well recognized
nationalities as those of the Polish and the Magyar races, but
of all those various tribes which people the South East of
Europe, and which are kept together for the time in unnatural
bonds, by the iron rule of Austria or the decaying empire of the
Turks. The organization of these minor nationalities is a
necessary work, perhaps of the immediate future. Italy tells us
so, she heralds and she hastens the advent of the problem to
be solved. The fact of Italy’s reconstruction has another prac
tical interest for us. She has been for centuries the battle-field
of rival ambitions in Europe, and the spoil of the victor. She
will now cease to be a cause of war; she should become a
guardian of the peace. One great element in the creed of
b 2
�modern European statesmanship, is what is called the “ Balance
of Power,”—a phrase dating from Richelieu, who feared or pro
fessed to fear the preponderance of the House of Hapsburg,
which was often used against France, during the wars about the
Spanish succession, and which is referred to in the treaty of
Utrecht between England and Spain (February 1713) as “the
best and firmest support of a mutual friendship and of a durable
understanding.”
Now this phrase the il Balance of Power ” is beginning to be
considered by some as the expression of a rather antiquated
doctrine. But the truth is that it is only the old methods,
dynastic alliances, or treaties to counteract them, that are be
coming out of date. A true “ Balance of Power” is still essen
tial to European peace, and to that confidence which should
save us the cost and the danger of constantly preparing for
war; but it needs to be constructed on some fixed and per
manent basis, and to have added to it, as an equally important
safeguard, the removal of occasions and temptations which lead
to war. Now the principle of the organization of European
states according to nationalities, would, as far as the’west and
centre of Europe are concerned, give us this fixed basis and this
additional safeguard,—an united Italy, and an united Germany,
would be France for all aggressive purposes disarmed.
An additional source of practical and immediate interest to
us in the Italian national movement, is to be found in the
influence it has had upon our own foreign policy, an influence
beneficial in two ways. In the first instance it has, I might
almost say, given us for the first time, a foreign policy based
upon an intelligible principle. The principle is that of “Non
intervention;” not the barren fact, without sympathy, or sense
of duty, or of right, but the principle, to be observed, to be
upheld, and as far as reason and prudence may allow, to be
enforced in the counsels of Europe. I may say that it is the
doctrine of Nationalities which has served to moralize the
doctrine of “ Non-intervention” and to elevate it to the height
of a principle capable of ruling the foreign policy of our
country.
A short time ago, some time in September I think, a well
�known statesman, and a brilliant writer and orator, Sir Edward
Bulwer Lytton, addressed the Hertfordshire Agricultural
Society, on the great political changes which had in the course
of the preceding year passed over both the old world and the
new. His speech was not a party speech, or I should not refer
to it here. He spoke for all Britain, and for statesmen of all
parties. He said that foreigners all misunderstood the foreign
policy of this country; and he undertook in a few words to
explain it. He said that England was a free nation, and that
therefore her Statesmen and her Ministers must consult popular
opinion, but popular opinion sided with the free; he said that
it was our interest that good government should be established
everywhere, because under good government the interchange of
commerce could be promoted, and the spread of freedom
abroad widened the market for English manufactures ; that we
had an interest therefore not in tyrannies and in revolutions,
but in the rise and prosperity of free peoples who would accept
our own temperate form of constitutional government; and if
we must further explain our policy, he added, it was that in the
rise of a free people we might expect an ally in our sympathies
for freedom, and a customer in that prosperity which is the
companion of free political opinions. “ There was the whole
key to the great principle of British foreign policy.”
Now I not only object to this as a definition of what our foreign
policy ought to be, but as a definition of what it is. I don’t think
tthat interest qualified by popular sympathies, is the key of the great
principle of British foreign policy. Iam sure that this is not what
is at the bottom of the mind and of the heart of Britain in the
matter. The leading doctrine of our foreign policy zof to
day is, as I have said “ non-intervention ” and thanks to Italy,
non-intervention in the sense in which I have explained it. Now
this doctrine was born of the desire of peace. We all desire
peace, for we know the cost of war; and England specially
desires peace, because if she were to find, in principle or in
sympathy, a righteous cause of war, she feels no sufficient
assurance that the war would be so conducted or would so
^eventuate as to serve the cause she might have it at heart to
aid. Non-intervention began then as a kind of rule for our
�selves. It was our interest for the sake of peace and it kept us
out of mischief’s way. But considered simply as a rule for
ourselves you will see that it tended logically and inevitably to
the negation of all foreign policy; and it has by some been
carried almost this length. But this was not what England
meant or what she ever would or ever will, I trust, accept. She
sought a foreign policy which should be intelligible, abiding and
at her own control; for this she had need of a principle, and
she found it in the doctrine of non-intervention elevated and
moralized, as I have said. And at the bottom of such doctrine
so accepted and imposed is I say not the notion of interest—that
would never lead us to a principle—but the notion of duty and
of right. We say that each people has the right to shape out
its own national life, and that no foreign power has the right to
interfere to prevent it. We sympathize with a people struggling
to liberate itself from domestic tyranny, but we believe that it
must effect its own emancipation. Where our consciences
point out to us a people dismembered, or partly, or wholly
under the rule of a foreign power, we recognise its right to
work out or to re-establish its national independent existence,
and we say that no other nation has the right to aid such foreign
power in forcibly retaining its wrongful rule. And we believe
it not only to be our interest but our duty, to do what we can
wisely do, to promote an acceptance of this principle and to
procure an observance of this rule of public right and wrong.
Our statesmen used to talk about non-intervention between the
different states of Italy, as if those states could have any rights
which were not subordinate to that of the whole Italian people.
“Non-intervention” led them some short time ago to the
absurdity of saying, that if Venice sought to free herself from
the yoke of Austria, she must do so without the aid of that
portion of Italy already free. We have widened the basis and
raised the level of our idea ; we now deny the right of Germany
to aid Austria, when Italy shall feel the time is ripe to claim
her own.
The Italian question has helped to moralize our foreign
policy in another way. It has roused us, the nation, to dictate
and to control that policy, and it inaugurates the new era, in
�7
which public opinion and public sympathy assert their supe
rior right to the secret or traditional diplomacy of statesmen or
of Courts.
Lastly, the Italian question is deeply, solemnly interesting to
us as a Protestant community. I use the word in no narrow or
antagonistic sense; I mean to us as a community believing in
freedom of conscience as between man and man. We have
not to wait for the destruction of the temporal power of the
Papacy; the temporal power that now supports the Pope is not
that of Papacy; it is that of France. The sham that still re
mains will ere long be swept away. But what we may with
confidence look forward to as a future result of the conflict
between Italy and the Papacy, as a first fruit of that new and
conscious freedom and responsibility which this national up
rising is already calling forth, is a Reformation of the Catholic
Church—not our Reformation, for history does not repeat her
self, and nothing spontaneous can be a copy of what has gone
before, but, nevertheless, a movement of religious reformation
pregnant with the most vital consequences to the Christian
world, and certainly beneficial in its influence on the spirit of
freedom and of faith; and this we shall owe to Italy—born
again into the world, not without purpose in the evolution of the
providential scheme.
We believe in Italy at last. We think that we understand her
movement, and that we can no longer be deceived. Indeed
since we have mastered the notion of national regeneration as
the aim of Italy, we rightly feel that we hold the clue to that
movement, the key to any phenomena it may present, the test,
largely speaking, of the accuracy of what people may wish to
persuade us of in point of facts. And, in truth, since this cha
racter of the movement has become patent to demonstration,
not only to us, but to Europe, none but a few Ultramontane
journals have ventured to dispute the right or the tendency of
the Italian people.
I need hardly say that success has had much to do with this;
there is indeed nothing which succeeds like it, as the French
say. It helped England to the completion of her faith in Italy
—it gave to her her faith in Cavour, in spite’of his French
�alliance and the sacrifice of Savoy and Nice. But the inB
fluence of this faith and of this success cannot alone lead
us to an accurate comparative appreciation of what I may
call the inner life of this movement, of the action and counter
action of the various parties in Italy, each, in their own
way, contributing to the solution of the national problem. Any
man, not somewhere behind the scenes, dependent on the
daily press alone for his impressions, must, if he endeavours
to form precise notions at all, become sadly perplexed by the
conflicting views presented to him. Newspaper corresponden
cies and leading articles, too often like multiplied addresses of
counsel learned in the law, skilled in the arts and trained to
the habit of advocacy, perplex the mind of the Jury of the
nation, if it has nothing else on which to build its verdict, until, like
common juries, it is apt to take refuge in mere impressions,
and almost to resent any appeal to its more careful discrimi
nation. Such task of careful discrimination indeed we cannot
undertake from day to day; we cannot always keep on guard
against the possibility of false impressions; and it is for this
reason that I think, and that I assume you think it to be of use
and of interest occasionally to compare notes, somewhat deli
berately, to endeavour again to build up the elementary outlines
of our knowledge, to refresh ourselves with a text-book of our
own making, and to renew our tests of truth.
In the outline which I shall now give of the Italian move
ment, I shall naturally, though without any very formal plan,
perform this office for myself as for those who hear me. I
shall do this from a certain point of view, for how can there be
opinions of any value without a certain point of view ? That
point of view, I believe, you know. My familiarity is not with
the Ministerial but with what is called the National party in
Italy ; my interest in the question dates from them ; you have a
right to say that my prepossessions will be in their favour; but
I do not think that they have met with such plentiful advocacy
of late as to induce you, on that account, to regret hearing me.
I shall state their case as I see it, but in doing so I shall ask
you to believe me when I say that I have never, in my own
mind, confounded retaliation with defence. I do not trace in
�9
myself the slighest predisposition to react against injustice by
the like. I have ever felt that true friendship never doubting of
itself or fearing doubt, pays its best homage in endeavouring to
be just. It is an homage undoubtedly due to the National
party of Italy, for, all things considered, it is a generous party,
and furnishes instances of the highest self-abnegation, of the
truest-minded self-devotion to the country and the cause.
What, however, I shall say of and for that party, I shall ask
you to depend upon, as knowledge, not opinion merely; for 1
have known that party, and some of its leaders, in the greatest
intimacy, for years.
Italy was one under the Romans, and yet it was not Italy but
Rome that ruled the world. In those days of universal
dominion, the principle of nationality had not yet begun to play
its part in the organization of the world. Then came the decay
of that mighty empire of the Romans, for its work was done,
and a new work was to begin. The northern hordes, migrating
en masse from northern Europe and from Asia, overran the whole
of Europe, sometimes sweeping away whole populations, some
times assimilating with them, remaking and redistributing the
material of European communities; modern nationalities, not
even yet all wrought out into an abiding harmony, being their
result. Two or three centuries of this work of assimilation
sufficed for Italy, and you already find her leading minds, Dante,
Machiavelli, with others of less note, dreaming of a Nation
to come. The first form of renewed life and progress in Italy
was, as elsewhere, municipal. In those barbarous and feudal
times industry collected itself in walled cities and organized for
defence. In Italy because, on the one hand, of the fecund
genius of the people, and on the other of the absence of any
great ruling central power, this new life of Europe had the
most brilliant results. Italy took the lead at once in com
merce and in arts; her merchant princes rivalled monarchs in
splendour and ambition, and excelled them in culture ; cities
became states, aimed at supremacy over their fellows, and in
dulged in the luxury of war. It has been, until a very recent
date, an almost universal habit to cite these wars and jealousies
�10
q
of the Italian Republics of the Middle Ages, as evidences that
Italy was not and could not be, even now, ripe to become a
nation. We borrowed this notion from M. Sismondi, the great
author of the “ History of the Italian Republics.” The destruc
tion of the republic of Florence, and the peace between
Charles V. and Pope Clement VII. in 1530, seemed to him the
death of Italy ; but we now know that neither Emperor nor
Pope, neither Guelph nor Ghibelline, neither foreign or priestly
rule, have any hold whatever on the mind or on the heart of the
Italian people. It was a question of faith or want of faith in
progress and the future. Was Italy, or was she not, at some
future time, again to take her place among the nations ? With
out such faith, the mind naturally, dwelt among the divisions of
the past—and none more likely to do so than the man who had
made of that past his special study—and found in it confirma
tion of its scepticism. But once given that general faith in the
future and a just retrospect of the past tells a very different
tale. The life of the Italian republics was not a national but a
municipal life, on however splendid a scale ; those wars and
jealousies were not between incipient nations but dominant
municipalities, Milan, Florence, Como, Pisa, Sienna, Venice,
Bologna, and so forth. And since those times these very
cities have for centuries been joined under successive though
varying territorial governments ; forgetting their rivalries under
centuries of common slavery, or giving a proof of their readi
ness to unite in a common national life, as when, for instance,
Napoleon included them all in the kingdom of North Italy in
1802. A nation wants good boundaries, an indubitable capital,
and a greater power of attraction of the whole upon its several
parts than any neighbouring national unit can exercise upon
them. This (or even less than this) gives you the virtual
nation, which once realized in fact, must hold itself together
and increase in its cohesive force. Italy has the Alps and the
sea for her boundaries, and Rome for her capital; and I confess
that from the first moment that I turned my thoughts to the
Italian question, it seemed to me clear that the problem was to
found the nation, but that once constituted, it would have the
elements of a nationality as compact and homogeneous as that of
�11
France herself. Napoleon himself said at St. Helena that
Unity of manners, of language, of literature, must at a future
more or less remote, end in bringing her inhabitants under
one government.” In 1814 Napoleon walking along the sea
shore of the island of Elba, with a young Italian, and looking
across to the peninsula, suddenly asked, “ What do the Italians
think of me ? ” “ They would love your majesty more had you
given them unity,” was the reply; “ they are right,” said the
Emperor; “ I did not think that they would go so far towards
that goal. They have exceeded my expectations.”
Immediately before Napoleon, Piedmont and Savoy belonged
to the House of Savoy, but Genoa was republican, and so was
Venice; then all the rest was Austrian, or under Austrian in
fluence ; the Pope at Rome, the kingdom of rhe Two Sicilies
reigned over by the Spanish Bourbons, Lombardy Austrian,
and the dukedoms of Modena, Parma and Piacenza, and Tus
cany ruled by princes of the House of Austria. You will mark
here sources of rivalry between Governments, but no element
beneath the surface likely to be antagonistic to the reconstitu
tion of the nation. The only indigenous governments were that
of the kingdom of Savoy, then a despotism, and the republics
of Genoa and of Venice; all other frontier lines marked out
simply the possessions or the indirect dependencies of Austria.
Then came the period of Napoleon—a step towards unity;
after various changes the kingdom of Italy down to Ancona
in the Papal States, except Parma in the hands of a sister of
the Emperor, Naples and Sicily ruled first by Joseph and then
by Murat, all, in fact, Napoleonic, with the nominal exception
of Rome.
The downfall of Napoleon and the treaties of Vienna of 1815,
brought Austria back in more than her former power. Venice
was given with Lombardy to Austria, with the right of garrison
ing Ferrara and Comacchio ; Tuscany, with the addition of
the island of Elba, to Ferdinand of Austria; Parma to Marie
Louise, who was Austrian ; Modena to the Austrian House of
Este ; Genoa was added to the territories of the House of
Savoy ; the Roman states of course went to the Pope; the two
Sicilies to the Bourbons again. The Allied Powers seemed to
�12
think only of dispossessing France ; they recognized no right
in the Italian people, I will not say to national unity, but to
Governments which should at least not be foreign to the soil.
And yet they had endeavoured to turn Italy against Napoleon
by promises of independence, and at the time of his fall they
had the ample evidence of addresses from the army and the
national guard, from commercial bodies of men, and from deputies
of the kingdom of Italy, sent to Paris immediately on the abdi
cation of Napoleon, to show them that what above all things
Italy dreaded and protested against was the being given back
to Austrian rule. In the report of those deputies to the Presi
dent of the Regency at Milan, I find that after fruitless commu
nications with the representatives of Russia and of Prussia,
they addressed themselves to our representatives, Lord Castlereagh and Lord Aberdeen. Count Frederick Confalonieri,
their spokesman, saying, “Although our country has never tasted
the advantage of a political and national existence, she has
been taught these twenty years to desire such an existence.
The sheer hope, and the bare name of nation have impelled
her to sacrifices of all kinds * * * we are not the men of
twenty years ago, and it is impossible for us to become so, save
by renouncing habits and sentiments grown part of our system
and dear to a nation endowed with intelligence, energy, and
passions, that has acquired a large experience of political mat
ters, and that has learnt also to war * * The best interests of
*
.
our nation (the Count is here in truth speaking of Northern
Italy, which Napoleon erected into a kingdom and which fur
nished him with some of his best troops), requires and demands
a king; and let this king be even an Austrian, our wishes will
be accomplished; all that we desire is to obtain an existence
independent of other states, and a Constitution or National
Representation.” But it was not to be; Italy was conquered
from Napoleon, and was parcelled out as so much booty in the
general spoil. From these iniquities sprang the partial revolu
tions of 1820, 1821, and 1831; the national rising of 1848, and
the late war, together with the number of minor or abortive
attempts, and the constant conspiracies which have followed
each other almost year by year since the Treaties of 1815.
�13
The insurrection of July 1820, took place in Naples, the
army bore part in it; in six days, without resistance or blood
shed, so universal was the movement, the king yielded, and
granted a Constitution. In March, of the following year, an
Austrian army entered the kingdom and despotism was restored.
The insurrection of March, 1821, was Piedmontese, it was
also the work of the army, and succeeded without bloodshed in
three days; on the fourth day the king, Victor Emmanuel, bound
by oaths to Austria not to grant a Constitution, abdicated, and
a Constitutional system was proclaimed. In April it was sup
pressed, and despotism and the king restored by Austrian arms.
Both of these movements were the work of the Carbonari,
amongst whom were enrolled Prince Francis, of Naples, and
Charles Albert, then Prince of Carignano, and heir to the
throne of Savoy. The former was a traitor from the first—the
latter having approved of the movement on the 8th of March,
prepared the next day to prevent it at Turin, but it broke out
on the 10th at Alexandria, and he was himself proclaimed
Regent on the abdication of the king.
The insurrection of Central Italy in 1831, had its source in a
conspiracy dating from the previous year, in Modena, which
had proposed to place the Duke of Modena at the head of the
Italian movement. But this part of the scheme was afterwards
abandoned. The conspirators, with young Menotti at their
head, were betrayed; on the 2nd of February the Duke sur
rounded his house—the conspirators resisted, cannon were
brought to play against them ; at the sound the people rose in
all the neighbouring towns, and in three weeks Parma, Modena,
and the northern half of the Papal States, embracing some two
million and a-half of inhabitants, were in arms. The instinct
of the people was already Italian, they sought to invade Tus
cany and Naples, and to bring about an insurrection at Genoa,
and to march on Rome ; but the Provisional Governments of
Parma, Modena, and Bologna, opposed and prevented all such
movements.
They were not men of revolutionary capacity, they did not
even take any efficient means to prepare for defence, they
sought to moderate the movement and to give it an inoffensive
�14
aspect to the powers of Europe, they believed that if they, not
the originators of the Movement, but being now placed at its
head, proved themselves peaceful and unaggressive. Austria
would not invade, and they knew that otherwise they had no
thing to fear. They had some plausible reasons for their belief.
France had just declared strongly for enforcing non-intervention
with a high hand. On Dec. 1, 1830, M. Lafitte president of the
Council, anticipating disturbances in Italy, had said in the
chambers, “ France will not allow the principle of non-interven
tion to be violated ; but she will labour to prevent peace being
compromised if possible, and if war becomes inevitable, it must
be proved that we had no choice between it and the abandon
ment of our principles.” A note was shown at Bologna, whose
authenticity has however been denied, signed by the French
Ambassador at Naples, pledging France beforehand “to support
Bologna on condition that the government should not assume
an anarchical form, and that it should recognize the principles
which had been declared in the face of Europe—true or not,
the provisional governments, on the faith of it, tempered or
rather emasculated the movement, and relied on France. It is
said that Louis Philippe, to avoid the fulfilment of his pro
mises, and to give time to Austria, kept back from his Minister
Lafitte for five days, the despatch of the French Ambassador
at Vienna, announcing the Austrian invasion. The Austrian
intervention took place first in Parma and Modena, Austria
declaring that she did so to protect her reversionary rights—for
these duchies you will remember were given by the treaties of
1815, to Austrian princes—and that if Bologna remained peace
ful she would be respected. This was in the beginning of
March—on the 20th, the Austrians were at the gates of Bologna
—on the 26th, the capitulation including an amnesty was signed,
to be# afterwards violated by Rome; then followed a mass of
proscriptions and imprisonments. Young Menotti died on the
gallows on March 23rd. He had been wounded on the 2nd
February at Modena, taken prisoner by the Duke, and dragged
away with him in his flight. Italy was again at peace,.
I must ask you to note here that with the failure of the move
ment of 1831 died out, in Italy, the institution, if I may say so,
�15
of Carbonarism. Our notions of Carbonarism have been, in
this country, of the vaguest. We have been accustomed to
hear of it as of a terrible system of secret societies, democratic
in their origin, anarchical in their views, shunned by all decent
men and yet hardly now extinct, and with the dagger as their
sole weapon and device. These notions of ours have not only
been vague, but also about as inaccurate as notions could be.
Carbonarism existed in Italy already in the time of Napoleon.
It was a system of secret societies without a positive political
programme of faith, and in this it was an offspring of the times ;
it was an expression of a state of mind whose function is to
render impossible an existing state of things and to destroy it;
analogous, I might say, to those periods of religious anarchy
and scepticism which precede the dawning of a new faith.
Italy had not yet begun to formalize the faith of her regenera
tion, though I have already given evidences of the existence at
that date of the germs of such faith. Carbonarism was an un
reasoning instinctive creation. Italy conspired a tout prix leav
ing to chance, opportunity, or the discretion of unknown leaders,
to decide the time and the aim : at any rate such action could not
be for the worse, must in fact, be for some measure of liberty
and independence. Then as to the method of conspiracy, this
also partook of the^nature of the times and the character of
the association. It was necessary to ensure secresy and fidelity,
and they were sought for in the modes which had been handed
down and familiarized to men’s minds by the secret societies of
the middle ages, by processes of initiation, by oaths and gro
tesquely fearful ceremonies, intended to impress the imagina
tion of the adept, and to ensure his blind obedience and his
faith. Terrible penalties hung over the heads of those who
should henceforth falter or betray ; and vengeance followed
treason, actual or supposed;—though the love of the -terrible
and the unknown has undoubtedly exaggerated the number of
such instances of vengeance or punishment. On the other hand
Carbonarism was not anarchical in its objects, because the
spirit of Italy was not anarchical, but was already, though half
iinconsciously, seeking a new and better, a more stable and
orderly as well as a freer life. The movements of 1820 and
�16
1821, which I have described, were entirely the work of Car-j
bonarism, that of 1831 also partially, although it was already on
the decline, and in those movements we have seen want of
national faith, want of energy and direction, and hence failure,
but of the spirit of anarchy, nothing. Lastly, Carbonarism
has been laid as a convenient reproach at the door of Italian
Democracy. Reproach or not, this is the greatest mistake of
all. Its great efforts were the movements of 1820 and 1821,
revolutionary but not democratic movements, the heirs apparent
of Naples and of Piedmont were its sworn adepts, the army its
instrument. The last effort, only partially its own, was the
revolution of the centre in 1831. Then it passed away, and
then, and not till then, appeared upon the scene the small be
ginning of that national democratic agitation, which has since
played so important and in some respects, I think, so little
understood a part in the reconstruction of the unity of the
Italian nation.
On the ruins of Carbonarism was founded the society “ La
Giovine Italia” (young Italy) the work of Joseph Mazzini.
Its initiators, with their chief, were all young men, full of the
enthusiasm of a national faith, deeply impressed with the
illusions and the failures of 1820 and 1831, and professing a
republican creed. There was nothing to hope from Italian
princes—they had ceased to conspire and betray: nothing to
hope from cautious diplomatic courses intended as in 1831, to
conciliate Europe, and to ward off the intervention of Austria;
everything to fear from the weak leadership of men, who from
motives of such sort would be certain to denationalize and to
emasculate any movement, the control of which should be en
trusted to their hands. No possible salvation save in proclaim
ing at once their great end, the liberty, independence, and
unity of the whole nation, and in setting themselves to the task
of arousing the whole nation to its conception and accomplish
ment. I will give you the creed and the policy of the new
association in the words of its author.
*
“They had examined
* Vide “ Letters on the State and Prospects of Italy,” by Joseph Mazzini,
Nos. I. to IV., Monthly Chronicle, 1839, from which much of this historical
sketch of the movements in which Carbonarism played out its part, is derived’
�17
| with care the movements of 1831, and had deduced from this
examination, that there was in Italy no deficiency of revolu
tionary elements but of a guiding spirit * * * they aspired to
be not simply revolutionary but regenerative * ** * to rouse
the different Italian States to revolt was not their object, their
sole endeavour was to create the nation * * * they felt that at
bottom the question was no other than the grand problem of
National Education, and arms and insurrection were for them
only the means, without which, from the state of Italy, it was
impossible to accomplish this * * * the Association resolved to
disguise nothing and to sacrifice nothing. It presented itself
as it was, as the tendencies and exigencies of Italy, it believed,
required it to be, an association republican and indivisible. * * *
It exposed the errors of 1831 ; it separated itself from the past.
It repeated everywhere that the salvation of Italy was in the
people, that the grand lever of the people was action; that it
El was necessary to act without ceasing, without discouragement,
without being intimidated by reverses at first, and always in the
name of Italy and for the whole pf Italy. “ It is possible,” it
said, “ that you will succumb, but even then you will instead of
falling basely and without effect, have educated the country; a
« great principle will survive you, and the generation which fol
lows you will read upon your tombs the programme of the Italy
to come.”
I I have read to you these words of Mazzini, at some length,
because, though written years ago, they continue to be the true
key of every movement of his party in Italy from that day to
the present. It is a programme so utterly at variance with our
ordinary, what we call practical notions, that I believe it to be
difficult for many of us even to realize and to comprehend it;
and yet it is of immense interest as the expression of the actual
I rule of conduct of the Party of Action in Italy for thirty years.
I It has educated the nation to the belief in Unity, and to the
needful determination of incessant action to attain it. Not
only Italy but Europe knows that there is no peace possible
till Italy be one. It is true that the practical accomplish
ment of this task has passed, not, however, as I shall hereafter
show, so largely as is generally believed, into other hands. But
c
�18
what higher tribute, I would ask, could be paid to the sound
ness of a principle or a faith, wThat more conclusive testimony
of the hold which it has obtained upon a nation, than that the
supposed decline of the party who originated it should date
from the adoption, more or less, of their principle and their
object by other parties in the state ? What is called the Pied
montese or Moderate Party dates its successes from the moment
when it also gave itself by its own methods to this nation’s
work ; and to pursue, in some manner, without ceasing, this
task, is even now the very term of its power and existence.
You will note that the republican creed of the founders of
Young Italy was not, if I may so say, of the essence of their
faith. It rather served to define their party; it represented the
actual tendency of the young and rising intellect of the day
in their country and the popular instincts of those most likely
among the people to aid them in their work. It was -well to
proclaim it, because there was then nothing to hope from
monarchy, and because its open avowal would give numbers,
enthusiasm, and unity to their ranks. But the object of their
faith, and the great aim of all their labours being the resusci
tated nation, they could not purpose to impose on it a creed,
which it might or might not accept, and it would always be
their duty to subordinate their special political views to the
accomplishment of the great object to which they had devoted
their lives. And I shall show you, I hope, before I have done,
that they have not failed in the observance of so clear a duty.
The Giovine Italia was, as I have said, reared on the ruins
of Carbonarism. The method of its organization, and of its
labours partook of the nature of the ideas on which it was
founded. I shall give you here again the very words of its
founder:—
“ Having principles and reckoning upon them rather than
on the power of mystery and of symbols, it rejected all the
complete machinery of the Carbonarian hierarchy and all the
pomp which was only calculated to hide the absence of real
purpose. It had a central committee abroad, and interior pro
vincial committees directing the ‘ practical conspiracy having
to initiate a work of education the Association only decreed
�19
' secresy as far as necessity required it, that is to say for its
interior operations; with respect to its existence, its object, its
.^hopes, its principles, it challenged publicity. The journal, La
Griovine Italia, was established at Marseilles, another journal in
Switzerland; catechisms of the new faith were printed and
clandestinely distributed with great labour, courage, and inged nuity throughout the peninsula. Their circulation was immense
and their effect also; organization commenced at every point,
and the first work of propagandism was an immense success.”
I quoted from the programme of Young Italy a few moments
ago, the doctrine of incessant action, of perpetually renewed
■ revolt. The party of Young Italy, or the Party of Action as
they came consequently to be called, have abided by that
doctrine; they have had some brilliant successes. I will in
stance the republic at Rome and the recent conquest of Sicily
and Naples to the new kingdom; but their career in action has,
as a logical and inevitable consequence of their fidelity to this
doctrine, been otherwise a succession of forlorn hopes ending
in temporary failure. Some of these have, within my know
ledge, only just escaped success; Austria could tell you how
nearly the attempt at Milan in February, 1853, succeeded in
■renewing the five days of 1848; but they did fail, and as failures
■they were judged, and not unreasonably judged by the world at
► large. But if we, outside of Italy, and only desiring rightly to
understand the regenerative movement of the country in all its
phases and in all its parts, would look this question more
closely in the face, we should have to remember that it is per| mitted to forlorn hopes, that it is of their very nature to be un
dertaken in the face of a preponderance of adverse chances,
because of the proportion ably great results of a successful issue;
and we, should recognise that these long series of attempts have,
after all, achieved their work of arousing the determined con
sciousness of the nation, and that the party which in accordance
with our naturally a priori unfavourable view, ought over and
over again, as, over and over again it has been said to have
been annihilated, has, nevertheless, gone on increasing in in.fluence and in boldness, and is only now less prominent and less
distinct because its preliminary educational task may be said to
c 2
�20
be complete, and it has but to share in the work to which all
parties in the nation havejiow set their hands.
The result of the labours of the Giovine Italia and the pro
gress of the Italian idea will be best understood by a short
reference to the movements of 1848 and 1849; they constitute,
too, the first chapter of the history of the relations of the
national party or party of action with the monarchy of Savoy,
now beginning to play its part also in the nation’s work. You
will remember that all Italy was already in a ferment in 1847,
before the revolution of 1848 in France which dethroned the
Orleans dynasty and gave the signal for the European move
ment of that year. Pius IX. had ascended the Papal chair in
1846, had granted an amnesty and promised administrative
reforms. The instinct of the Italian people seized upon the
occasion to further the national design. I will give you the
opinion of Prince Metternich of the nature and meaning of the
movement in the Roman states—it was afterwards amply veri
fied by facts. Writing to Count Dietrichstein, in a despatch
dated August 2, 1847, he says, “ Under the banner of Admini
strative Reform the factions are endeavouring to accomplish an
undertaking which could not be confined within the states of
the Church, nor within the limits of any one of the states which
in their ensemble constitute the Italian peninsula. The factions
seek to merge these states into one political body, or at least
into a confederation of states, subject to the direction of a cen
tral supreme power.”
The times were, indeed, evidently ripe for a great movement;
it was no longer a question of forlorn hopes; events might at
any moment precipitate the nation into the arena, and this
state of things brought a new party upon the field—the Mode
rate or Piedmontese party.
We left Charles Albert in 1821 affiliated to the Carbonari;
he had been a party to their conspiracy ; but with the weakness
peculiar to his character, he had sought at the last moment to
avert the insurrection. It succeeded, nevertheless, till Austria
intervened. Since his accession in 1831 Charles Albert had
reigned a despot; he, or those who represented him, for I donot wish to make him responsible for every mean or cruel
�21
act perpetrated in his name, had visited with a refined and
ferocious cruelty the insurrectionary attempts of patriots who
Still trod the path he had once professed to enter,—T allude
especially to the arrests of 1833. But the increasing ferment
of the Italian mind had taught him to look back upon the ambi
tion of his younger days, and to feel that the time was at hand
pwhen he might have, mutatis mutandis, to re-enact his part. The
idea of the Moderate party was to renewr the kingdom of Italy of
Napoleonic days, that is a kingdom of the north, to gain Charles
Albert to the cause by offering Lombardy and Venetia to be
snatched from Austria, as the price of his assistance, and thus
at the same time to stem the revolutionary tfde which might
unmake monarchy in building up the nation. I must ask you
to bear in mind this, the leading idea of the Moderate party of
a northern kingdom, for it is the key to the whole of their subse
quent policy. It was their aim in 1848—it ruined that move
ment, it ruined that campaign. It was the aim again of the
compact of Plombieres, and of the Franco-Italian campaign of
1859. That the nation went beyond it is due, not to the policy
of the Moderate party, but to the true instincts and the single
purpose of the Italian people. I shall proceed to illustrate the
truth of what I say. On the 18th March, 1848, Milan was in
insurrection against the Austrians, on the evening of the 22nd
Radetski fled, Charles Albert declared war against Austria on
the 23rd. Piedmont was already sharing in the excitement of
all Europe responsive to the revolution in France. On March
4th, the king having reigned seventeen years a despot, granted
a Constitution ; known as the statute, now the law, very inade
quate to its requirements, for a whole Italian people, for all
Italy save Rome and Venice- The king refused the first re
quest of Milan for his aid ; on the 21st he offered assistance on
condition that they should previously give themselves to him; on
the 23rd the Milanese had triumphed and he declared war;
on the same day Mr. Abercromby, our ambassador at Turin, re
ceived from the Foreign Minister a despatch stating the causes
and motives of the declaration of war. It justified that step on
the ground that the whole country was in insurrection, that
“ after the events in France the danger of the proclamation of a
�22
republic in Lombardy was imminent * * * that the situation of
Piedmont was such that at any moment, at the announcement
that the republic had been proclaimed in Lombardy, a similar
movement might burst forth in the states of his majesty, and
that the king thought himself obliged to take measures to pre
vent such a catastrophe for Piedmont and the rest of Italy.”*
When Charles Albert crossed the frontier the Lombard insur
rection was already victorious in every point. To the Austrians
remained only the Quadrilateral and 50,000 men, and all Italy
was hastening to the war; the Grand Duke of Tuscany, the
Pope, and the king of Naples, were compelled to furnish con
tingents for the crusade. Now, see the position; every other
ruler in Italy save Charles Albert was necessarily an unwilling
contributor to the common cause ; they had nothing to gain, for
if the north were freed it could not come to them, and with the
true instinct of self-preservation they feared the national move
ment which must ultimately sweep them away. The people,
with that weak faith in the professions of their princes, which
was one of the leading characteristics of the European revolu
tionary movement of 1848, believed them, in those moments of
common enthusiasm, to be sincere, but they did nothing wil
lingly against Austria, and, one by one, withdrew what troops
they could when dissension had crept in and the policy of the
monarchy of Savoy had chilled the enthusiasm and the hopes
of the nation.
Charles Albert, on the other hand, and his counsellors, had a
hope and a fear ; the hope was the kingdom of North Italy, the
fear was the republic. It w as this foolish fear which ruined the
campaign. Because of this fear the volunteers were dis
couraged, and the services of such men as Garibaldi and
Cialdini refused. Garibaldi summoned by Mazzini had already
sailed from Monte Video, before the news reached of any
Italian or European movement having taken place. When he
arrived Charles Albert was in the field, and his offers were
refused.
The provisional government of Lombardy, under the in
* Lord Ponsonby to Lord Palmerston.
Corr. Pt. II. p. 338.
Vienna, April 10, 1848.
Italian
�fluence of the King, refused to summon for a war of insurrec
tion in aid of the regular forces of Sardinia, the Italian exiles
who had gained their military experience in the insurrectionary
movements of Spain and Greece, and many of whom are now
to be found distinguished in the service of the present kingdom.
They said that no one knew where they could be found, Mazzini insisting, obtained authority to summon them. Among
them came Enrico Cialdini; he was refused, and said I “ will
not have journeyed here from Spain for nothing, before I
return I shall seek an Italian wound as a common soldier at
Venice”—he went there and was wounded in the ranks. Be
cause of this fear the king keeping near Milan and with his own
frontiers and capital protected by his rear, set himself to the
siege of the four fortresses, neglected the passes of the Alps,
which volunteers alone would have sufficed to seize and guard,
and kept altogether aloof from Venetia where the republican
flag was unfurled under Manin, even instructing his navy to
enter into no hostilities with Austrian men of war. He wanted
the courage to feel that if he trusted the nation and did the
nation’s work, his reward was assured. It was folly to fear
that a people which at the moment of a successful revolution
had abstained from pronouncing upon its future form of govern
ment leaving that to the nation after the successful termination
of the struggle, to decide, would have hesitated in accepting a
King who should have led them to victory.
The army of Radetsky though reduced to 50,000 was safe
within the Quadrilateral, and capable in any case of a prolonged
defence. If its communications were allowed to be kept up
with its base of operations, and reinforcements to be received,
it could only be a question of the time necessary for it to re
ceive sufficient reinforcements, for Radetsky again to take the
field with an army superior to any which the limited resources
of Piedmont could oppose. It was therefore vital to seize
Upper Venetia and the passes of the Alps, to cut off his sup
plies, and to isolate him within the line of his defences. In
that case, in the midst of a hostile population it could again
have been only a question of time, how soon he would have
been compelled to lay down his arms. These are of the very
�24
elements of strategy which any civilian may comprehend.
Charles Albert’s fearful policy made time the ally of his enemy
—and it was a fatal policy. In the beginning of August,
Charles Albert was already in retreat upon Milan, which under
a committee of defence of the nomination of Mazzini, accepted
by the provisional government, and of which General Fanti
was a member, in that moment of supreme danger, was making
most energetic preparations for defence. When Fanti and
Restelli went on the 3rd to Lodi to see the king and ascertain
his intentions, they were informed by General Bava, that the
king would march to the defence of Milan. The king entered
on the 4th, renewing the promise of defence—on the 5th, he
declared that the capitulation was already signed. The popu
lation incensed to fury, threatened his life—he declared that,
moved by their unanimous determination, he would remain and
fight to the death,—in the night he fled in secret and the cam
paign was at an end.
Of the events of 1849, I can hardly now stay to say a word.
We all know how republican Venice under Manin, continued
for a year to resist all the power of Austria by sea and land.
We can never forget the defence of Rome, whither or to Venice,
the republican volunteers repulsed from serving the country in
Lombardy repaired—the heroic defence of Rome under the
Triumvirate of which Mazzini was the chief—the brightest and
saddest page in the history of the Italian Movement. A defence
which, hopeless as it proved to be, was the greatest moral
victory, the most pregnant with consequences for the future,
which Italy has yet achieved. Rome fell after three months
siege, to the overpowering force and the matchless perfidy of
the French. I say that its hopeless defence was the greatest
of all moral victories for Italy. It was so, because it gave to
the unaided people a proof and a consciousness of its own
dignity and of its own faculties; it was so, because it upheld
for three months against the forces of France, Austria, Naples,
and Spain, the national flag in Rome, the future capital of the
nation, and because it shewed what Italian volunteers could do
against all present hope for the future of their country. Twice
were the French troops attacked at the point of the bayonet
�25
and repulsed far beyond the walls. The first occasion was on
the 30th of April, 1849; within a few days a Neapolitan army
of 15,000 men, led by the king in person, encamped at Albano,
some 15 miles from Rome, and on the 10th of May the French
troops again attacked and were again repulsed. On the 19th
of May an armistice was concluded, and negotiations com
menced with Lesseps the French envoy, pending which the
little army at Rome marched against the Neapolitan king at
Velletri, and put him ignominiously to flight; laying the founda
tion for Garibaldi of that wondrous prestige which enabled him
a year ago to free Sicily and Naples, with a handful of volunteers
opposed to an army of 100,000 men, to enter the capital alone,
and to drive the son of Bomba to seek refuge in an almost im
pregnable fortress. On the 31st of May the French envoy
signed a convention between the Roman assembly and himself,
on the ratification of which, by General Oudinot and the French
Government, the gates were to be opened to the army of France,
with a new armistice to be, in case of non-ratification of the
convention, prolonged for fifteen days. The General refused
his assent and produced private instructions of his own, but
promised not to recommence the attack before
the
*
4th of June.
To his eternal infamy, and that of the government which he
served, he forfeited his word, attacked by surprize in the night
of the 2nd and the defence was at an end. And throughout
the whole of this unequal struggle, not only Rome but all the
Roman states remained faithful to the Assembly and Govern
ment of their own choice, and to the flag of the nation which
they had commissioned them to raise and to defend. That
unanimity was the downfall of the temporal papacy, the
thunders of the Vatican were henceforth to rank as stage tricks
to an accustomed audience,—the papal chair must rest on
French bayonets or tumble to the ground. And the protest of
that sublime defence was more, it determined the nature of her
future efforts to all Italy, it rendered impossible at any moment
the adoption by Italy of any other goal but unity, it bound
Italy, without the possibility of being led, or driven, or com
pelled astray, to its accomplishment. Rome for her capital, the
sea and the Alps her frontier lines, were the inevitable future
�26
of the Italian people. And I beg you mark, as if to enhance
the value of this protest and this proof, the triumvirate of men
who ruled Rome during the defence, was chosen for this spe
cial task, on the receipt of the intelligence that Charles Albert’s
renewed campaign had terminated within a few days of its com
mencement, with the disastrous and fatal defeat of Novara.
And thus it was that Italy made her experience of Monarchy
and Republicanism, as agencies towards the achievement of
the national unity.
Such were the efforts, and such the
failures of 1848 and 1849.
My next theme will be the lessons which Italy thereby learned,
and the future action, and the future relation of parties, and of
the instinctive nation, to the present time.
�LECTURE II.
There were certain things made evident to demonstration
by the events of ’48 and ’49. I will clear the ground by stating
these results at once.
First, it was made clear that all Italy was, and would continue
to be, bent on driving out Austria and on accomplishing her
entire independence from foreign rule; and that Austria could
never hope to hold Venice and Lombardy save by the sword,—
in fine, that she was but encamped upon Italian soil, and that
it was a mere question of time and opportunity when the at
tempt to expel her would be again renewed.
Secondly, it was proved that the tendency, the instinct of the
nation was towards unity. To make this assurance doubly sure
there was the fact that with the exception of Piedmont, every
Italian government was necessarily pro-Austrian and antipopular, having nothing to hope and everything to fear from the
national tendency, bound therefore by the logic of its position
to suppress liberty even within its own territories at any risk;
and then there was also to be taken into account the fact of the
existence of a large, active, and restless popular party, with its
ramifications in all parts of the peninsula—the national or re
publican party, pledged and devoted ora e s&wpre to the accom
plishment of the unity as well as the independence of the
country.
Further, however weak and wavering might have been the
policy of Charles Albert, Piedmont stood alone as an Italian
state which had fought for Italy against Austria, and which could
be relied upon as hostile to Austria, which could afford to be
�28
faithful to the constitution which the events of ’48 had induced
it to accord to its own subjects, and which might have hopes for
the future in allying itself again with the nation’s cause.
Charles Albert had abdicated after the defeat of Novara, and
died broken-hearted in exile. His son, Victor Emmanuel,
reigned in his stead, a soldier of undoubted courage, loving
danger and the field, not indeed a man of high intellect or cha
racter, but without special kingly faults, and eager to avenge the
reverses which had brought his father to the grave. Then
there was the fact of the great emigration, especially from
Lombardy and Venice, of the youth who had fought as volun
teers, and who, establishing themselves in Piedmont, made that
state the home of the most eminently Italian element in the
country, and which constituted, or might be made to constitute,
a new link between Piedmont and the Italy which was to be.
All these were capabilities for Piedmont, and moving causes in
the direction of a national career.
There was another cause likely to induce constitutional Pied
mont with more or less of decision towards some sort of active
national policy. If Piedmont should refuse in any manner to
lend herself to the national cause, the nation would inevitably
throw herself into the arms of the republican party pledged to
action. Piedmont had to choose between abandoning Italy to
the republican party and ranking herself with the other doomed
princedoms of the centre and the south, or endeavouring, by a
possible active policy of her’ own, to draw the people to herself
and to centre their hopes upon her alliance.
Piedmont was bound, therefore, to some sort of Italian
national policy; and considering how much Italy has already
accomplished of her unity, so much so, indeed, that no policy
save that of an absolute completion of the task is any longer to
be dreamed of or suggested, and considering, too, how pre
dominately the credit and the practical fruits of that success
have, in the opinion of the world and in the possession of
power, enured to the benefit of the Moderate party, it would
seem natural to imagine that they, too, must have had the unity
of their country long in view, and that they can have differed
only from the National party as to the policy best adapted to
�29
the attainment of a common object; and yet I believe the ac
ceptance of the idea of Italian Unity, as an object of practical
statesmanship, by the leaders of the Moderate party, must be
admitted to be of a very recent date.
I will go back to Gioberti, who was the founder of that party:
in the Sardinian Chambers on the 10th of February, 1849, on
the eve of the short campaign which ended in the defeat of
Novara, Gioberti said—“ I consider the unity of Italy a chimera.
We must be content with its union.” And if you look to the
writings, the speeches, the acts, of all the leading men of the
Moderate party until a very recent period, you will find them
all, without exception, not only not propounding or advocating
unity, or directed to its accomplishment, but explicitly directed
to a different solution. You will find the proof of what I say
in Balbo’s “Hopes of Italy;” in Durando’s “ Essay on Italian
Nationality,” advocating three Italies, north, centre, and south;
in Bianchi Giovini’s work entitled “ Mazzini and his Utopias
and in Gualterio’s “Revolutions of Italy.” Minghetti, Ricasoli,
Farini, each and all have been the advocates of a confederation
of Princes rather than of a united Italy.
Let me come to Cavour. An attempt has recently been
made to claim for him the credit of having since the days
of his earliest manhood conceived the idea of making him
self the minister of a future united Italy. In an article in the
July “ Quarterly,” by a well known pen, a letter of Cavour,
written about 1829 or 1830, is cited in implied justification of
this claim. He had been been placed under arrest a short time
in the Fort de Bard, on account of political opinions expressed
with too much freedom. In a letter to a lady who had written
condoling with him on his disgrace, he says:—“I thank you,
Madame la Marquise, for the interest which you take in my
disgrace; but, believe me, for all that, I shall work out my
career. I have much ambition—an enormous ambition; and
when I become minister I hope to justify it, since already in my
dreams, I see myself Minister of the Kingdom of Italy.” Now
this is, I need not say, a most remarkable letter, and of the
greatest interest, as showing the confidence in his own future,
at so early an age, of one of the greatest statesman of our
�30
times. But no one acquainted with the modern history of Italy,
and familiar with its recognised phraseology, could read in this
letter the prophecy of that unity which is now coming to pass.
The “Kingdom of Italy” is a well known phrase, borrowed
from the time of Napoleon, and has always meant, until facts
have enlarged its significance, that kingdom of Northern Italy
whose precedent existed under Napoleon, which was the object
of Piedmontese policy in ’48 and ’49, and one of the explicit
terms of the contract of Plombieres in ’59. It is rather a
curious inconsistency in the article in question that it itself
furnishes ample evidence that the unity of Italy was no part of
the practical programme of the Moderate party. “ Cavour,” we
are told, “founded in 1847, with his friends Cesare Balbo,
Santa Rosa, Buoncompagni, Castelli, and other men of mode
rate constitutional views, the Risorgimento, of which he became
the editor, and the principles of the new periodical were an
nounced to be i independence of Italy, union between the
princes and peoples, progress in the path of reform, and a
league between the Italian States.’ ” Again, after saying that it
was Ricasoli and the leaders of the Constitutional party who
recalled (in ’49) the Grand Ducal family to Tuscany, and that
Gioberti himself proposed that the Pope should be invited back
to Rome, the writer goes on to say :—“ It was an immense ad
vantage to the restored Princes to have been thus brought back
by the most intelligent and moderate of their subjects. It
rested chiefly with them to render the reconciliation permanent.
The occasion was lost through distrust and fear of those they
governed (not an unusual accompaniment of restorations), and
by a reckless disregard of their rights and feelings. A mode
rate, conciliatory, and just policy might at that moment have
united princes and peoples. All that the wisest and most influ
ential men in Italy asked was a federal union of the different
states in the Peninsula upon a liberal and constitutional basis,
from which even the House of Austria was not to be excluded.
But concession was obstinately refused. The Italian States
again brought under the direct influence of Austria, were
governed in a jealous and severe spirit, and some of them with
a cruelty which aroused the indignation of Europe. In their
�31
bitter disappointment the hopes of the Italians were turned to
Piedmont, and that kingdom necessarily became the rallying
point for Italian freedom; so that the position which she has
since held was made for and not by her.”
I must trouble you with one more quotation. At the con
ference of Paris in 1855, after the Crimean war, Piedmont was
represented by Cavour, who brought before the assembled
statesmen the condition of Italy; but unable to enter fully
into the Italian Question at the conferences, he addressed two
state papers on it to Lord Clarendon. “ In them he proved,”
continues the writer, “by indisputable facts, how impossible
it was for Piedmont to develope her material resources, or her
free institutions, whilst hemmed in on all sides by Austrian
bayonets, exposed to endless intrigues, and compelled for her
own safety to make a constant drain upon her finances. It is
evident by his language in the Congress, and by those docu
ments, that Cavour still looked to a solution of the Italian
difficulty in the withdrawal of the French and Austrian troops
from the territories of the Pope, and in a reform of the Italian
Governments themselves. His plan—at any rate for the tem
porary settlement of the question—was a confederation of
Italian States with constitutional institutions, and a guarantee
of complete independence from the direct interference and
influence of Austria; and the secularization of the legations
with a lay vicar under the suzerainty of the Pope. At that
time he would have been even willing to acquiesce in the
occupation of Lombardy by Austria, had she bound herself to
keep within the limits of the treaty of 1815. Had Austria
shown more wisdom and moderation, there can be little doubt
that the excuse for French intervention would have been
removed, and that the great struggle which has since taken
place in Italy might have been deferred for many years.” *
Now, you cannot, I think, have failed to note the glaring
inconsistency of these praises of what is called the moderation
* Letters of Cavour recently published in the Rivisita Contemporanae,
and referred to in the Turin correspondence of the Times of February 11th,
1862, are quite inconsistent with the view of Cavour’s policy and ideas
in 1855.
�32
of Cavour, with the assumption to him and to his party of the
whole credit of Italian unity, and the theory, now too prevalent,
that no other party has contributed anything but follies and ex
cesses, impediments, not aids to the accomplishment of the
great task. I believe such ideas to be as profoundly unge
nerous and unjust as they are evidently self-contradictory, and
I believe that they will be adjudged by history to be, so far as
they are in any degree in good faith, superficial, partial,
and utterly incapable of serving as any explanation of the
method of the evolution of the great problem of Italian
nationality.
I can tell you something about the origin of these ideas—
they take their rise in the very nature of the policy of the
Moderate party.
The polioy of that party, dating from 1848, was based on a
necessity, a hope, and a fear. It was necessary for Piedmont
to play some part for the nation, or the nation would march
over Piedmont to its goal. It was possible to play that part and
to reap the reward of so doing. But it must either be played
boldly as a national revolutionary policy, or it must be played
in some sense, from the first, in opposition and in antagonism
to the policy of the national party. It would indeed have been
a grand and an inspiring spectacle could we have seen the
counsellors of the monarchy of Savoy, on the very morrow of
its great discomfiture, taking heart from the very depth of their
defeat, and giving themselves unequivocally to the service of
the entire nation. They would assuredly have met with their
reward, in the unquestioned and undivided leadership of a
national movement far higher than anything we have yet seen
in its moral meaning, and pregnant with infinitely grander
consequences to the civil and religious progress of the world ;
but I am not idealist enough to tax men or parties with not
accomplishing a miracle of self-transformation or of faith.
Another method was their inevitable choice ; without abso
lutely defining their ultimate aim, they had to bid against the
national party for the sympathies of the Italian populations,
and above all they had to secure the initiative for them
selves.
�33
This policy once entered upon begat unavoidably antagonism
and distrust, and made it more difficult than ever—though
mistakenly, as events have shown—for them to believe that
they could rely on the nation to accept monarchy when the
nation was once roused to arms. Choosing not to rest abso
lutely on the nation they—or I should rather say Cavour (for
from the moment he laid his hand to the work it became his
own) turned to Europe—to its constituted powers and its diplo
macy, and sought there to strengthen Piedmont for eventu
alities which must sooner or later arise. He concluded treaties
of commerce, he cultivated diplomatic relationships, and by his
successful home and foreign policy, and the general vigour of
his administration, he created a new feeling of confidence in
Piedmont as a well-governed, compact, constitutional govern
ment, the one bright spot in the otherwise sombre picture of the
foreign and domestic misrule of the peninsula.
But, in carrying out this vital portion of his policy, he came
to play a double part. And I ask you to note this, for it is the
key of that which I have now to explain. In Italy it was neces
sary to suggest hopes, however carefully undefined, which
should keep in check the influence of the National party;
abroad he had to protest not only against that party but against
those very popular aspirations which at home it was necessary
that he should be supposed to serve. Hence two languages;
one for the secret agencies, discrediting the National party, yet
whispering the same hopes—and one for state documents and
diplomatic communications, ignoring any thought of Italy save
as her condition imperilled or embarrassed the monarchy of
Savoy, and here again repudiating the National party, and
building up upon the fact of their existence and their restless
and troublesome activity, the most cogent arguments in his own
favour which could be addressed to the representatives of exist
ing monarchies in Europe.
Thus we may understand how it became literally a part of the
system of business, if I may so say, of the Moderate party to
discredit, in every way, the objects, the means, the doings, and
even the personal character of the leaders of the party of action.
If you think of the subsidizing of the press in which foreign
D
�34
governments delight, of the influence of the salons and the
ante-chamber on some purveyors of news, and of the instinctive
fear and hatred, of the prejudice devoid of conscience and the
enmity without law, with which anything linked with the names
of democracy or republic is regarded in the high places of
despotically monarchical Europe, you will not wonder when I
say that a measure of injustice has been dealt out to a deserving
party in Italy of which I have never known the parallel, and
which history will condemn as a calumny and a disgrace.
But I have no desire to retort injustice. It were an easy task
to oppose the diplomatic professions of Count Cavour to the
claims of an exclusive patriotism set up on his behalf and on
that of his party, and to leave the matter there. But I and you
are interested in arriving at a just appreciation of the policy and
of the man, and this is what 1 now proceed to attempt. First
then, I believe that Cavour had from his earliest days the idea of
independence firmly rooted in his mind, and that he never
wavered in the intent of driving Austria beyond the Alps. Any
expressions, any proposals of his to the contrary, at any time,
were mere diplomacy—into the morals of which I do not now
enter. If in 1855, he did, as the Quarterly Revieiver says, profess
“ a willingness to acquiesce even in the occupation of Lom
bardy by Austria, had she bound herself to keep within the
limits of the treaty of 1815,” I am not therefore disposed to
infer that he ever contemplated, much less accepted the possi
bility of the struggle which has ensued, being “ deferred for
many years.” Cavour knew too well that there was no real
danger to the speedy accomplishment of Italian independence
in any such professions. I will take another case, and shall
quote from the official correspondence published by the French
government. On the 10th September, 1860, after the invasion
by Garibaldi of the Neapolitan States, Cavour wrote to Baron
• Talleyrand, “ If we are not at the Cattolica before Garibaldi we
are lost; the revolution will invade central Italy. We are
forced to act.” Again, in a circular of M. Thouvenel, of
October, 1860, I find these words:—“Signor Farini (sent by
Cavour) has explained to the Emperor (at Chambery) the very
embarrassing and dangerous position in which the triumph of
�35
the revolution, to a certain extent personified in Garibaldi,
threatens to place the government of his Sardinian Majesty.
Garibaldi was on the point of freely traversing the Roman
States, raising the populations as he went; and had he once
passed that frontier, it would have been utterly impossible to
prevent an attack on Venice. The Government of Turin had one
mode left open to it in order to prevent that eventuality, and
that was to enter the Marches and Umbria as soon as the arrival
of Garibaldi had produced disturbances, and re-establish order
without infringing on the authority of the Pope, and if need
were to give battle to the revolution in the Neapolitan territory,
and request a congress to immediately decide the destinies of
Italy.” Now, certainly these professions of motive cannot be
said to be very creditable to Cavour, and they look as unlike as
possible to the arguments of a patriot having the accomplish
ment of his country’s unity above everything else at heart. And
yet I do not, therefore, argue that Cavour did not willingly take
advantage of that mighty step of Garibaldi, which gave half
Italy to the new kingdom, and which enabled him, despite his
own past professions, to lift his policy at once to the height of
an openly declared national policy. On the other hand, I be
lieve that neither he nor any other statesman actually in power,
in his own country or elsewhere, believed in Italy being as pre
pared for unity as she has proved herself to be. And although
his faith in Italy must have grown with the growth of his own
policy, and although he may from time to time have had visions
of its possible ulterior development, yet I also believe that up
to the close of the campaign of 1859 (and indeed after its close
and until, on his retirement from office, he saw the people of
Italy in the Duchies and in the Romagna, with a singleness
of purpose and strength of will which, under the influence of a
national faith, made them as one man, better his own policy at
the moment of its apparent defeat) his practical idea was a
kingdom of the north.
Now, I think there is abundant evidence in support of these
views. Cavour’s sense of personal mortification and of failure,
as well as his indighation at the peace of Villafranca, are well
known—he had no conception that Italy was in a mental condin 2
�36
tion to take up the diplomatic game at the very moment of that
seeming checkmate, and by the passive resistance of an abso
lutely unanimous population, to defeat the purpose of their too
powerful ally. A curiously-worded telegram has lately been
brought to light, I think, by Guerazzi, in which Cavour notified
to Ricasoli the conclusion of the peace. If its curt picturesque
ness be not quite suitable for ears polite, you will forgive
me, for the interest which attaches to it as part of the res gestae
of the time. This, then, is the telegram:—“ Cavour to Ricasoli,
—Peace with Austria. I resign. Dukes back. All to the
devil.” Fortunately, Cavour was wrong in the direction in
which all was going, as he soon discovered, returning then with
greater energy, and, can we doubt it, with greater confidence
than ever to his task.
But we have better evidence than this. We know the terms of
the compact of Plombieres. You will think, perhaps, that I speak
with too great confidence in saying that we know the terms. I
will tell you the grounds, then, of that strength of assertion.
You will remember when, on January 1, 1859, the Emperor
Napoleon spoke those words of startling import to Baron
Hiibner, which first gave the alarm of war in Europe. Already
before that day particulars of the compact and the general plan
of the campaign had reached this country from two different
but most reliable sources; they were essentially the same par
ticulars as those which were first published, as a revelation in
the columns of the Times sometime not earlier than the follow
ing month of March; and everything that has since happened
or come to light has only tended to confirm their accuracy. A
cause of war was to be sought with Austria, she was to be
tempted to take the offensive, the campaign was to be a short
one—if necessary peace on the Mincio. If Venice and Lom
bardy were gained to Piedmont, Nice and Savoy were to be
yielded to France. Napoleon, the cousin, married to the king’s
daughter, was to find a kingdom in Tuscany.
And now mark, all these particulars reached here, as I have
given them, not as conjectures or beliefs, but as the reports,
coming from two different sources, of what had been actually
agreed upon between the Emperor and Cavour. I need hardly
�37
tell you that Napoleon, Jerome’s son, with his separate corps
d'ctrmee operating across the Duchies, found that there was no
hope for him ; I need hardly remind you that peace was made
upon the Mincio, and that Venice not being gained, Nice and
Savoy did not become, by virtue of the bond, the due of France,
but were claimed because the Duchies and Romagna persisted
in giving themselves to the king.
I ask then, first, is this not sufficient evidence that a king
dom of Northern Italy was the limit of the practical conception
of the great statesman of the Moderate party; and in the
second place, I would also ask whether the complete success of
the programme of Plombieres in its original entirety, would
not, in establishing a northern Italy, and interposing a French
Prince between it and the centre and the south, have rendered
more distant and more difficult the attainment of a united
national existence ? And if the partially defeated programme
has been made to be more fruitful than could have been the
whole, once again I would ask you whether there is even com
mon honesty or common sense in persistently heaping the
whole merit of Italian unity upon one party and one man, and
in refusing to the true instinct of the nation and to the self
abnegating fidelity to their great aim of the National or so called
Republican party, the credit of having contributed to a result
greater than was the aim of the Moderate party itself, and higher
than the limits of its faith ?
Let me borrow an illustration from the science of Dynamics.
The Italian problem may be likened to that which in Dynamics
is explained by what is known as the parallelogram of forces.
Cavour’s policy alone would carry the question to A, the end of
the shorter side,—A being a kingdom of Northern Italy for the
House of Savoy; the national instinct and the National party
would carry it the longer side to B—the nation indivisible per
haps republican. By the resolution of forces, the diagonal is
taken toC, national unity, monarchical, and Piedmontese. Now
it is not unreasonable to think the diagonal the safer course, or
if you will the only possible course to unity, but it is not allow
able to ignore the existence of a force without whose contributed
impulse that point could not have been attained.
�38
But we are not dealing with unreasoning forces; such has
not been the force of the Republican party. This party an
nounced itself as republican at a time (in 1838) when there was
nothing to hope from monarchy, when the necessity, in an edu
cational sense was felt, of a definite Unitarian programme. I
do not mean to say that this was the only cause of the republi
canism of the party; but it was the justification of inscribing
the republican motto on their national flag. But the Republican
party have never for a moment been guilty of the inconsistency
of even desiring to force their creed upon an unwilling people.
Their aim was to constitute the national sovereignty, and the
sovereign nation must decide upon the form of its own future.
And thus it is that the royal House of Piedmont, always the
only possible Ralian monarchy, has had but to give itself to the
nation to have the certainty of being accepted by the nation ;
for who could dream that the nation ever would refuse the
crown to the soldier king who should unite his fate with theirs,
and with them achieve the independence of his country ? Is
not the instance of Garibaldi enough ? Does not the monarchy
know, has not the monarchy always known, that at the moment
of action it might ever rely upon him to lead the youth of Italy,
call them republican or not, to die for it and Italy upon the
battle field ?
But I will not leave the matter here with Garibaldi, the man
of instinct and action rather than the man of thought. I will
speak of the organized party not upon the field of battle. What
has their course of action been ? I assert then, and I speak
here what is matter of my own knowledge, that there never has
been a time since the movement of 1848 inclusive, in fact, since
Piedmont, an exception to all other Italian governments, be
came constitutional and ceased to be the bounden tool of
Austria, that this party has not been ready practically to
accept monarchy, provided always that monarchy committed
its fortunes to those of the unity of the country. And further, I
say that from the moment when it became possible—after the
peace of Villafranca—by a mere act of adhesion so to commit
monarchy, such act was accomplished with an active aid from
them, which should have been held convincing proof of the
�39
^singleness of their devotion to the one great aim of a recon
stituted nation.
k I will give you irrefutable proof of what I say. There is a
man whom I have named as the founder of this party, and who,
though continuing in exile, or traversing Europe or even re
visiting his own country at the risk of his life, has still re
mained its acknowledged head. I speak of Joseph Mazzini,
long my revered friend, whom I, in intimate daily life, know
perhaps better than any other living man, English or Italian,
knows him, of him whom calumny the most unscrupulous and
systematic, so long continued and so incessant as to have
deceived many _of the most liberal minded and justly meaning
of my own countrymen, has made it suffice to name, to suggest
ideas of anarchy and civil war, of ruin to all wise counsels, and
to Italy’s best or only hopes. I will show you his part towards
monarchy, in the pursuit of that which is now, but only now, a
common aim.
During the Lombard campaign of 1848, before the Decree of
Fusion, proposals were made to Mazzini in the name of
Castagneto, the king’s secretary. It was proposed that he
should constitute himself patron of the monarchical fusion,
that he should endeavour to draw over the republicans ; that he
should have in return as much democratic influence as he
could wish in the construction of the Articles of the Constitu
tion which would be given, and an interview was suggested
with the king. Mazzini replied that to assure the independence
and unity of the country he would sacrifice not his republican
faith, but all action for it, and that already the republicans were
silent upon it for the sake of independence and the war. But,
he said, that they regarded the “Italy of the North” as a fatal
conception, too ambitious for their princes and diplomacy,
and not sufficient for the people of Italy. Thanks to this,
popular enthusiasm was beginning to be extinct, the govern
ments were already showing their hostility, and the chances of
war were turning against them. To turn them in their favour
Charles Albert must dare all, raise the banner of Unity, and call
the nation to arms. When asked what guarantees the king
�40
must give of his devotion to unity, he hastily drew up the
terms of a proclamation containing these words :—
“ Ifeel” the king should say, “ that the time is ripe for the unity
of our country; I hear the shudder which thrills and oppresses
your souls. Up, arise ! I lead the way ! Behold, I give you
as the gage of my good faith the spectacle, hitherto unknown to
the world, of the priest king of the new epoch ; an armed
apostle of the idea-people; architect of the temple of the nation !
In the name of God and Italy, I tear the ancient treaties which
kept you dismembered and which are dripping with your blood 1
I call upon you to overthrow the barriers which still separate
you, and to group yourselves into legions of free brethren
around me, your leader, ready to conquei' or to die with you!”
How magnificent a trumpet call to a revolutionary war! I
cite it not, however, you will understand, as showing what
monarchy might then reasonably have done. I fear that at
that time it was already too late for such a policy; but I adduce
it as evidence of the truth of what I said that Mazzini and his
party had always been ready to act with monarchy for unity.
My second proposition was that as soon as monarchy was, or
rather as soon as she could be, by the people’s act, committed
to unity—the National party helped to accomplish that act, and
for the sake of unity gave themselves to monarchy.
I will call into court the testimony of deeds, not words alone.
On the eve of the campaign of ’59, leaving and even desiring
the bulk of their youth to give themselves to the war under
Garibaldi, Mazzini, with certain of the party, stood professedly
aloof, exposing and protesting against the scheme of Plombieres,
the details of which he knew and published, and preparing the
mind of the country to defeat when the time came, so much of
the compact as opposed itself to the unity of the nation. The
time did come, with the peace of Villafranca. Was a single
voice raised to say
royalty has betrayed us, away with
royalty?” Was that moment, when Cavour despaired, seized
upon to undermine his party, and sow dissension in the camp ?
I will tell you. Immediately after the peace of Villafranca on
the 20th of July, in the Pensiero ed Azione, Mazzini wrote,
�41
“ jLwerty and National Unity. Let this be the sole cry that
bursts from those who will not allow Italy to be a dishonoured
slave. * * * What was the aim of those who separated
themselves from us, and gave themselves to the French alliance ?
Their aim was like ours, one free Italy independent from all
foreigners * * * Now circumstances point out the same
ground for us all; now there is no hope left save in the people.
Let all disputes cease. In the name of the honour of Italy let
us unite. Accursed be he among us who cannot cancel the
memory of all mutual reproaches and accusations in the great
principle that by uniting we may and ought to save our country.”
And he and his party have remained absolutely true to this
programme; they co-operated in those acts of adhesion, deeds
not words alone, by which the Duchies and the Romagna per
sisted in giving themselves to the king, who had to play the
part of an ungracious unwillingness to accept this adhesion—
they planned, and urged, and discussed with members of the
government—I speak of Mazzini himself—Garibaldian expedi
tions upon Naples. These expeditions were ultimately for
bidden and prevented for the time ; but they were bent on that
union of the south which, while it gave Italy to the monarchy of
Piedmont, would conclusively Italianize the policy of that
monarchy, enlarge its dimensions, and be another step tending
to emancipation from the thraldom of a too subservient alliance
with France. It was Mazzini himself who planned the Sicilian
[.insurrection in the following year. Rosolino Pilo, of whom I
spoke before, kept up that movement until Garibaldi could
arrive. It was the same party who prepared the way for Gari
baldi’s entrance into the Neapolitan capital alone—the same
party who furnished and organized and despatched the greater
part of those volunteers who gained Naples and Sicily to the
new kingdom.
And all this they did for monarchy, or rather, through
monarchy, for Italy. Truly it has been a wonderful and an un
accustomed spectacle to see a party called revolutionary and
republican, heaping provinces upon a kingdom, and giving to a
policy which was not their own, a success and a justification
which it could not have earned alone. It has been a miracle of
�42
devotion to a great aim. Each fresh triumph for their great
principle and aim has been cutting ground from under their own
feet for their rivals to stand upon. And on the day of complete
emancipation they, the first teachers, the great martyrs, the in
cessant agitators, the forlorn hope of Italian unity, before
fortune’s smiles were won, will disappear and merge into the
common nation.
There is a curiously interesting estimate, though not from a
favourable point of view, of the two rival policies which I have
been discussing, and of the remarkable men with whom they
are identified. It is in M. Guizot’s recent work on Society and
the Church. He says :—“ The Italian movement * * * has only
burst forth and is only being accomplished under the impulsion
and with the alliance of the republican and democratic party,
which has been pursuing in Italy an end much more advanced,
a revolution much more profound, than the mere expulsion of
the foreigner and the reform of established governments * * *
It is the republican party which has been in Italy the first
patron and the ardent propagandist of Italian unity; it is by the
incessant action of M. Mazzini and his adherents that this idea
has been spread and has been accepted. * * * Cavour—had he
from the first a preconceived determination in favour of Italian
unity ? Has he constantly desired and constantly pursued, as
his aim, Italian royalty, one and constitutional, as M. Mazzini
has desired and pursued the Italian republic, one and demo
cratic ? I know not; but it matters little, for if Cavour did not
premeditate all that he has done, if he has been drawn on to more
conquests than those he sought, he has at least resolutely ac
cepted the impulsion, and if he has only reached the end im
pelled by his rival, he has at least conquered his rival by
robbing him of his arms.”
There is much in this passage of keen and true perception,
but M. Guizot fails to see that the arms were not stolen, but
were heaped upon the victor that he might have no choice,
accepting them, but to conquer in the common cause.
There is then now but one great aim, one common cause in
Italy—henceforth no party, no man, can be permitted to intrude
a less or a divergent purpose—and that purpose is the nation
�43
reconstituted in its entirety, from the Alps to the sea. The
question of policy, of method of accomplishment, alone re
mains. The Moderate party, in power, naturally desire to keep
the control of the movement in their own hands, and to go
to Venice and to Rome only when and how they may think
good policy allows. And in this desire they are justified, and
more than justified, for if they are not capable of exercising
such supreme direction and control, they are no fit government
for renascent Italy. But, in endeavouring to exercise it, they
are, as I think, under two influences, which have tended to en
feeble and to lead them astray. The first is their’ old fear of
the so-called Republican party—now a foolish fear but still fed
by the always exaggerated antagonism of parties in a revolu
tionary era, and by the jealousies and petty personal ambitions
which belong to a successful political coterie. Secondly, they are
hampered in their policy and confirmed in their antagonism to
the National party, by their alliance with France. The National
party naturally chafes, as Garibaldi is known to chafe, under
the policy dictated by that alliance. Rome is still held by the
French, and Italy is kept from the easy conquest of her natural
and necessary capital, by her own ally. How can you expect
the Italian people in a revolutionary time—how especially can
you expect that southern population which does not owe its
liberty either to France, or to Piedmont, but to Garibaldi and
his volunteers, and which only gave itself to Piedmont in order
to give itself to a united Italy,—to be content that the destinies
of its country should hang expectant on a policy dictated from
Paris through Turin ?
But enough of these differences and these difficulties, through
which Italy has yet to work her way,' and in spite of which she
will, it is my profound conviction, conquer her salvation. These
are not the features of the great whole, on which I care to
dwell, or on which I shall ever speak unless it be to defend men
who have wrought, and suffered, and accomplished, and merited far
more than the world will yet acknowledge, for their country.
There are men—but few I am proud to say in our own
country, who, not loving Italy as I do, would, if the temper
of the times allowed, gratify their despotic instincts by easy
�criticisms on the morality of the policy of Cavour, and who
would like to see, and to make us see, nothing in this great
Italian movement but the ambition of a dynasty and the
rivalries and jealousies of parties and of public men. But
for me, when I look, endeavouring to raise myself—as it is
the grand merit of some leaders of the National Italian
party to have raised themselves—above all such considerations,
when I look at the grand and glorious outline of this mighty
movement, when, resolutely closing my eyes to all that is
petty and personal and transitory in the immediate present,
I seek to penetrate to the very soul of this great argument,—
I see not the ambitions of dynasties, not the rivalries and
jealousies of parties or of public men—these are but the
exhibition of human passions and human interests working in
subservience to a great and a providential aim ; but I do see, and
Britain sees, with joy and with reverence she sees, the grandest,
the most hopeful, the most inspiring spectacle which this earth
can furnish forth—the regeneration of a people.
�45
MR. STANSFELD’S SPEECH
On
Italian Question, delivered in the House of
Commons in the Debate of July 19th, 1861.
the
Sir,—If this discussion were one which had been, or which
could be confined to the question which has been directly raised by
the hon. member for Bridgewater (Mr. A. W. Kinglake), I should
not propose to myself to take any part in it. Not that I doubt the
importance of the question ; on the contrary, I think it would be
difficult to exaggerate its importance ; for, if the fears which the
hon. member entertains—if the possibilities which he suggests
*
«were unfortunately ever to be realized in fact, it might well be
no less than the shipwreck of that great policy of non-interven
tion which we have done so much to uphold in Europe, in the
jcause of peace. Nor is it, Sir, that I can pretend to say that I
|fcave been entirely reassured by the statements of the noble Lord,
for I fear that 1 must still attach some credit to those sources of
information which revealed in this country—and here I can more
than confirm the statement of the noble Lord (Lord John
Russell)—the compact of Plombieres, and the very plan of the
Lombard campaign, even before those memorable words were
ispoken to Baron Hiibner, which first roused Europe from her
fdream of peace. But, Sir, the truth is that the question cannot
so confine itself—the truth is that it could not even arise for
discussion, were it not for the existence in Italy of a fact and
of a policy which it is of the deepest interest and moment for
us, not only as well-wishers of Italy, but as Englishmen and as
members of the European community, to take into account. Sir,
the policy is that which has hitherto obtained too exclusively in
�46
Italy, of too absolute and too subservient a dependence on
one foreign alliance; the fact is the long standing and anomalous
fact of the occupation of Rome by the troops of the French
empire. Sir, I will address myself to the question of this policy,
which so deeply concerns us. What ought to be, what ought
we to desire to be, the policy of Italy at the present time ? Sir,
Italy has recently lost a great statesman. I have not been one
of his indiscriminate admirers, but this is not an occasion on
which I ought to enter upon any lengthened criticism of his
policy. Suffice it for me to say that, after his great labours and
his great successes, he is gone, and that with him perhaps we
may be permitted to hope are also gone personal engagements
or at least personal entanglements which it would be well for
the honour and welfare of Italy, for the welfare and peace of
Europe, that they should be buried in his grave. What should
be the policy of his successors ? Italy must have Venice and
she must have Rome, nor can she pause or dally long upon the
road which leads to Venice and to Rome, at the risk of fatal
internal dissensions and of national suicide. In pursuit, then,
of these objects which she cannot relinquish, and which hei’
ministers explicitly avow, what is the policy which it is for us a
matter at once of the highest interest and of the strictest duty—
for I hold that in this matter the interests of Italy, of England,
and of Europe are identical—to induce, and, if we may, en
able her to pursue ? Sir, there are but two policies open to the
counsellors of the new kingdom:—The first is the policy of
Plombieres. Sir, I have to confess that that policy—thanks to
the indomitable spirit of unity of the Italian people—has so far
been productive of beneficial results which at the time of its
inception I did not anticipate as possible. But this I think I
may safely say, that not a single member of this House will be
found to rise in his place to night and to recommend us to ap
prove a repetition of that policy. Well, then, what is the only
alternative policy before the kingdom of Italy ? Is it not, I ask,
simply a truly national Italian policy, resting in absolute depen
dence on no single alliance, but, supported by the sympathies
and the moral aid of all free peoples, multiplying and organiz
ing its own forces, so that in due time Italy may suffice to her
�47
self for the completion of her emancipation ? Sir, there are
great dangers to Europe in a Franco-Italian war of indepen
dence—dangers of cessions of territory, suggested in the speech
of the hon. member for Bridgewater, which might sweep away
that last poor remnant of confidence, on which, as on a slender
thread, hangs suspended the peace of Europe—dangers of
dei many being brought into the field, and of our witnessing an
active alliance between Italy and France, not only on the plains
of Lombardy, but on the banks of the Rhine. But, Sir, there
aie also gieat dangers to Italy, and therefore to Europe, in an
exclusive Franco-Italian alliance, things remaining as they
are. We all know that Rome, in the occupation of the soldiers
of the Empire, is the focus of all reactionary intrigues and
attempts. But this is not all. There is some truth in the
statements of disaffection in the south, which have come from
the other side of the House to-night—disaffection on the part,
not of the adherents of the exiled dynasty, but amongst the
ranks of the patriots themselves, and which all the absolute
fidelity to the cause of Italian unity, and all the unexampled
self-abnegation of their leaders has not sufiiced to dispel or to
prevent. Sir, I do not desire to criticise in a hostile spirit the
faults of judgment or of intention on the part of the ministers
of Turin which have caused this disaffection. I wish simply to
indicate the sole remedy, which consists—I say it without fear
of contradiction—in the pursuit of a truly national and indepen
dent policy, in trusting and not fearing the people, in rallying
them to the aid of the Government, and not, in obedience to the
exigencies of an exclusive and subservient alliance, refusing to
utilize and to organize the immense willing force of a nation
which desires to be free. Sir, there are three practical bases on
which such policy should rest. The first is friendly and open
negotiations, in the face of Europe, with the French Emperor
for the withdrawal of his troops from Rome. Secondly, in order
to dispel the feeling in the south, that whereas of their own will
and by volunteer force alone, they freed themselves and gave
themselves to Italy, they find themselves treated as provinces of
Sardinia ; for such purpose, a clearly expressed understanding
that, her capital once regained to the Italian nation, a national
�48
assembly seated at Rome shall revise in a national sense the
laws of the country, in order that the “ statute” of Piedmont,
borrowed for a time, may not permanently remain without re
vision and modification the law of the reconstituted nation. And
lastly, the multiplication and the organization of the armed
forces, regular and irregular, of the country. At present, spite
of protestations and declared intentions, Italy, with already
twenty-two millions of inhabitants, with nothing to live for, or
to dream of, or to make sacrifices for, but the completion of her
own independence, can place no more armed men in line than
the little neighbouring republic of Switzerland, with less than
one-eighth of her population ; and of the 150,000 men she can
so place in a line, 60,000 are required to restore order in the
south ; while of the volunteer element there is no organization
whatever at all worthy of the name. And thus it comes to pass
that Italy is kept in absolute dependence—in wrongful, foolish
dependence—whatever confidence her ministers may have in
his intentions—on the will and the power of her great ally.
Sir, before I sit down, I desire to say something of a party
in Italy of which I have some special knowledge—the party
originally known as the party of Young Italy, then as the
Republican, then as the National party, and now as the party of
Action. Sir, I have never known, I have never heard or read of
any party in any country or in any time which has been so per
sistently misrepresented and maligned. In the ranks of that
party was born the idea of Italian unity ; by them that idea wras
nurtured into a faith. It was their faith, I may say that it was
my faith, when not a single English statesman could be found
to believe in the possibility of its realization. But, Sir, that
party not only created the idea and nursed it into a faith, but
they supplied also the motive power without which its realiza
tion so far would have been impossible. Trace back step by
step the policy of Count Cavour, and at each of such steps,
whether in argument before the assembled diplomacy of Europe,
or in act upon the field of Italy, eliminate the element of the
existence, of the determination, of the restless enthusiasm of
this party—and you will find the step in argument would have
been impossible as it would have been abortive in point of fact.
�49
The latest is the most brilliant and themost convincing illus
tration of the truth of what I say. The House should know, if
the House does not already know, that by far the greater part
of the volunteers who under Garibaldi won Naples and Sicily—
half Italy—to the new kingdom, sprang from the ranks of this
party—men called republicans, led by one of themselves to die
upon the battlefield that monarchy might rule the future desti
nies of a united Italy Sir, this party—I know it well—has
a policy and programme of its own, to which I invite the
attention of the Government and of the House. It is a policy
consistent with the declarations of the present first minister of
the king. He has but to do, what he has not yet done, to carry
out his words in acts, and he will rally this party round him;
he will have with him all the active forces, all the vital elements
of the country, and the moral unity of Italy will be at once and
for ever assured. And, Sir, this programme and policy is neither
more nor less than that truly national and independent pro
gramme and policy, good for Italy and good for Europe, which
I have endeavoured to lay before the House.
E
�MR STANSFELD’S SPEECH
Delivered
at the
Annual Soiree of the Wakefield
Mechanics’ Institute,
on the
31st October, 1861.
■ Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen,—The most natural
topic for discussion upon an evening like the present, is- evi
dently the practical progress of the institution whose anniver
sary we are met together to commemorate; and the persons
most likely to be able to address you with interest and advan
tage to yourselves upon such a topic, are those who have been
practically concerned, during the past year, in the work of
that Institution. But it has come rather to be the habit of
Mechanics’ Institutes, upon these anniversary occasions, to
summon to common council with themselves those also without
their own body who are locally connected with themselves,
or who may be known as taking an interest in all sub
jects bearing upon the question, and ask them to address them
on such occasions as these. Now when that is so, it follows, as
a matter of course, that those who have not been practically
acquainted with the working of the institution are obliged to
fall back upon generalities. They talk to you of the necessity
of education, of the duty of self-education, of the duty of assist
ing in the education of your fellow-men, and they, perhaps, lay
before you the statistics of education in this and other countries.
But information and arguments of this description, although
very true and very well worth hearing, have become by repeti
tion somewhat trite, and hence we have seen of late years, as
�51
your chairman has already said, in meetings of this description,
as well as in agricultural meetings, that speakers are apt to
wander to any kind of subject, however remote it may appear
to be from the objects or institution in connection with which
I they were assembled, but which they think may prove interest
ing to those whom they may have to address. Now your chairI man has referred to a question in which he has been kind
enough to say that I have taken considerable interest, and with
which I have perhaps some special means of familial’ acquaint
ance. And with reference to that remark of your chairman I
have to note, and I think you must have noted, that of all those
questions of general interest which have of late years been
brought to the attention of public meetings of this descrip
tion, no questions have been found more universally interesting
than what we call foreign questions. I think it is not difficult to
understand why this should be so. You have heard from your
chairman a very eloquent and very accurate description of the
foreign question now so deeply interesting to us as a manufac
turing people—the American question, and I would ask you
what have you there ? You have there what I might call an
agglomeration of States—a kind of partnership of populations
not having the natural unity of purpose and of character which
belongs to an old and well-established nationality like our own
I —having, on the other hand, causes of dissension within its
bosom amply sufficient to rend the strongest nation, and at the
bottom of them all that great question of negro slavery,—a
question which I trust, will meet with some solution consistent
with the liberty of men, be they white or be they black, before
the war now commencing between the North and the South
shall be completed. Then, there is another vast nationality in
the East of Europe to which reference is not so often made—
not so often as it appears to me it would be well to make it—I
allude to the mighty empire of the Russias. There is no grander
spectacle, no more magnificent subject for our consideration in
these recent times than that which has been taking place in
Russia. You have there an internal revolution—you have the
emancipation of a serf-nation—you have Russia, thrown back
upon herself after her conflict and defeat in the Crimea, seeking
�52
to raise herself towards the same level of civilization as that on
which we stand in the west of Europe, and to hold her part with
us in the common progress of the civilized world. Then, turn to
Italy; what have you there ? You have a nation which has been
greater than any other nation—you have a nation which has
suffered more than any other nation—which, perhaps, has been
more degraded than any other nation—but which is now rising
to a unity and to a national life which promise to be second to
the nationality and to the life of no other nation in the world.
I need not ask you whether subjects of this description are not
of the deepest interest to all reasoning and thinking men. What
indeed can be more interesting to us in these days of extended
sympathies and of wider views, than what I may call the bio
graphy of nations ? But these questions are not only of interest
to us—I am entitled to say that if, upon these occasions, we
venture beyond the sphere of what we might strictly call educa
tional questions, there are no questions of general interest more
akin to the purposes of your Institution, more fitting as subjects
for your consideration and your study. For what are all these
questions of national movements, properly considered, but
educational phenomena upon the grandest scale—what are they
all but phases and steps in the life and progress of nations—
what are they all but partial evolutions in time and in space of
that great problem of all problems—the problem of the educa
tion of humanity, which in its complex unity contains the whole
progress of individual and collective man. Now, if I take a
view,—perhaps you may say so general, but I say so true of
this class of questions,—I ask whether it does not justify me
in saying that they are subjects for consideration and for study,
not only upon these anniversary meetings, but in the night
meetings of the members of your institutions. What subjects
can be more elevating, or more interesting, or more instructive
than those great national questions ? I would not deal with
them as I would deal with questions of party politics. I would
have you address yourselves to such questions as students, and
endeavour to seize upon their great outlines and to penetrate to
their very core. If you do so, one of the very first conclusions
you will come to, and a conclusion fitted to inspire you with
�53
,
confidence and courage in all the labours and sacrifices of life,
F will be this—that the great law of humanity is the law of pro
gress. I will take even the case of America—with respect to
which, as your chairman has said, there are many in this
country ready enough to say that it is the bursting of the bubble
r of Republicanism. If you will look at that question in the
student-like truth-seeking aspect which it demands, I ask you
whether you will not say there must be deeper causes there
than any question as to the form of government at stake ; and
whether—the North be entering upon a war with the South
blindly and foolishly or not—it is not evident that they are
at least instinctively endeavouring to cut the Gordian knot
of that past relationship between the South and the North,
which rendered the progress of liberty and which made
national dignity impossible in the United States. Now, let me
turn again for a moment to Ttaly. How interesting to look back
upon the Italian movement, and to trace its character from
former times down to this very day. How interesting to ask
ourselves what it is that Italy and the Italian movement have of
late years done for us as a nation 1 Why, all those who are
actively concerned in political life, and who deal at all with
the foreign policy of this country must know that the Italian
question has given us I might almost say a foreign policy. It
has taught us a new code of the rights and duties of nations—
it has done more than that, it has compelled us, somewhat slow
as we are to take any ideas from abroad, to become conscious
of the fact and to take cognizance of the fact, that what is called
j the question of nationalities is one of the greatest, if not the
most important question which is likely to occupy public
councils during the remainder of our lives. Then what is Italy
doing and hoping to do for herself ? Is it a question, however
great that question may be, simply of liberty or internal reforms,
which is being -worked out; is it simply that the Italians prefer
the Constitutional government of Cavour to the government of
the Pope ; or is it simply a question of independence—inde
pendence from all foreign influence, whether that influence be
&e influence of despotic and hostile Austria, or the influence of
a perhaps too powerful French ally ? Tf you look closely into
�54
the Italian question, and if you study its history, you can only
come to one conclusion, which is this—that the Italian question
is not simply a question of liberty—is not only a question of
independence, but that it is really a question of existence. “ To
be, or not to be ; that is the question.” I could trace to you,
did time afford, the history of Italy from former ages, and show
you the march of the nation towards the conception and the
realisation of its unity;—I could take you back to the days
of ancient Rome, and then on to the time of the Papacy,
when the Papacy had yet a mission to fulfil in Europe, and
show you Italy mistress of the Pagan and the Christian world ;
I could bring you down then to the days of the municipal re
publics of the middle ages—that bright period brilliant in arts,
in war, and in commerce; I could tell you that in those days
and from those days downwards, Italian minds, from Dante
and Machiavelli, to the present time, have dreamt of the
unity of their country; I could bring you next to the days of
the Great Napoleon and show you how, under his mighty
despotism even Italy had a foretaste of nationality, and began to
feel her strength upon the field;—I could tell you then of the
treaties of Vienna—those treaties to which it is a disgrace to us
that we were a party—I could tell you of their blasphemous
dividing of God’s heritage and of His people amongst the
scions of their different houses—I could tell you of the futile
protests of the representatives of the North Italian kingdom—
I could describe to you the revolution of 1821 in the North and
the South, and of 1831 in the centre—the institution of “the
Carbonari,” and that other institution much more potent, much
more pure in its objects and efforts—“ La Giovine Italia;”—I
could tell you of the forlorn hopes which were led, and of the
campaigns and movements of 1848 and 1849. I could show
you that even twelve years ago Italy was ripe for unity, and that
the people of every Italian state rose and proclaimed the inde
pendence and unity of their country—I could explain to you
how the jealousy of the different states of which Italy is com
posed frustrated the accomplishment of that idea,—then I
could show you the growth of that idea, and the fixity of pur
pose with which the Italian people have adhered to it down to
�the campaign of 1859, I could explain to you the compact of
Plombieres and the peace of Villafranca, and how the steadfast
ness of the Italian people snatched from a peace which disap
pointed their fondest hopes, the unity of their nationality—■
and having done this, you could come to no other conclusion
than that the object of Italy, that which they think of by day and
dream of by night is the existence of a free, a great, a united
and an independent people. If you were to go into such a
bourse of history you could not fail to feel as deeply as I feel
that unity is the great object of the Italian people, and that
from that unity would result advantage to Europe—the advantage
of that balance of power of which your chairman has spoken,
which ought to find its reality in the natural distribution of
nationalities—and that in the resuscitation of a people, which
has been great and which would yet be greater, there must be
involved a future hopeful and useful to humanity at large. For
if you look beyond the field of the immediate present—if your
eyes could pierce the intermediate haze of mere party questions,
the war of statesmen and the rival ambitions of contending
dynasties, or if amaster-hand in historic and philosophic art could
trace it to you, believe me, that no fairer or more immortal form
could be revealed unto your gaze than that of “ Italia risorta,”
crowned with the Capitol, girded by the Appenines, with
the blue waters of the Mediterranean smiling at her feet, and
holding in her hand the Book of Life, inscribed with a new and
higher moral code of a nation’s duties and a nation’s rights !
��
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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The Italian movement and Italian parties: two lectures delivered at the Philosophical Institution, Edinburgh. Speeches delivered in the House of Commons and at the Wakefield Mechanics' Institute
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Stansfeld, James
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Place of Publication: London and Edinburgh
Collation: 55 p. ; 22 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Published at the request of the Garibaldi Italian Unity Committee.
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James Ridgway, Effingham Wilson, Adam & Charles Black
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[1862]
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G5248
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Italy
Politics
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application/pdf
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English
Conway Tracts
Italy
Italy-Politics and Government-19th Century
Political Parties-Italy