Sidebilder
PDF
ePub

What we want is some common ground, on which the poor and uulearned can witness the application of such views no less than the highly cultivated. Such a ground is furnished by many parts of the sacred narrative, but by none so much as the Book of Judges. If we urge that the Middle Ages must be judged by another standard than our own; that the excesses which are now universally condemned were then united with high and noble aspirations to half the world we shall be saying 'words without meaning.' But if we can shew that the very same variation of judgment is allowed and enforced in the sacred and familiar instance of the Judges, we shall at any rate have a chance of being heard. Here, as elsewhere the Bible will discharge its proper function of being the one book of all classes-the one history and literature in which rich and poor, can meet together and understand each other."

GUISEPPE MAZZINI.

BY

MR. S. G. C. MIDDLEMORE,

April 26th, 1882.

There are few characters in recent history of whom such various and contradictory estimates have been formed as of Guiseppe Mazzini. Professor Heinrich von Treitschke, the ablest writer on the struggle for Italian independence, in which Mazzini played so notable a part, dismisses him, when he has occasion to refer to him at all, with a few words of contemptuous invective. The best known French writer on the same period-M. de Mazade-assigns to him quite a subordinate place among those to whom the deliverance of Italy is due. To his disciples, on the other hand, he is a sort of modern Messiah, the prophet who for the first time has revealed to mankind the political faith of the future, the teacher of an infallible doctrine, and a being of such moral perfection that only a good man, as one of these enthusiasts says, may venture even to praise him. Nothing struck me more, when I first became interested in Italian affairs, than these contradictory judgments about Mazzini's character, work, and influence. To his disciples, he is the true author of Italian independence and freedom; without him there would have been no united Italy at all; he sowed the seeds of which others fraudulently reaped the harvest. To the German and the French critic he is the agitator and conspirator who was perpetually disturbing the plans for the deliverance of Italy laid by wiser heads than his own. Since Mazzini's death the number of his disciples, which had long

been diminishing during his lifetime, has become still smaller; a newspaper which was started in Rome to promulgate his doctrines has been given up for lack of readers; and no new generation has risen up to carry on his political tradition. What was there in his personality which attracted some so strongly, and repelled others no less strongly? What was there in his teaching and influence which so captivated many with whom he had to do, and which has left so small a result behind ?

I had hoped to offer you something like a complete answer, as far as I am able to find it, to this question; but the subject so grew as I thought upon it, as to exceed altogether the limits which the practice of this Society discreetly imposes on the length of the papers read before you. What I have to offer to you this evening is not, therefore, a complete view of Mazzini's life and work, but only some few remarks on what appears most distinctive in his opinions, his character and his political action.

He was

The briefest sketch of Mazzini's life must here suffice. born in June, 1805, at Genoa, where his father practised as a physician and lectured at the University. From his earliest years the young Mazzini gave signs of great intelligence and warmth of feeling. At the age of thirteen he began his studies at the University, and five years later qualified as an advocate. He early joined the secret association of the Carbonari, which he afterwards abandoned on the ground of its merely negative and destructive principles. His conduct had for some time aroused the suspicion of the Government, and on the treacherous information of a brother Carbonaro he was, in 1830, arrested and imprisoned in the fortress of Savona. After some months' incarceration the choice was given him between residence at a country town in the interior of Piedmont, and exile. He chose the latter, and went into a banishment which lasted, with few intervals, the remaining forty years of his life. He at first lived chiefly in France and Switzerland; later on he made his home in England. Scarcely had his exile begun when he set to work at the foundation of the republican association-Young Italy, which is now only remembered

[ocr errors]

through his connection with it. In 1831, during a brief sojourn at Lyons, he formed, with other exiles, the project of an invasion of Savoy; but the French Government, getting wind of it, threatened to visit with the severest penalties those who should attack, from French soil, the territory of a friendly state-a plain fulfilment of international duty which Mazzini calls "a brutal menace." The attempt frustrated in 1831, was renewed in 1834, but ended in a miserable collapse. It is a noteworthy fact that Mazzini, who denounced so strongly the cession of Savoy to France in 1860, was then desirous, if the enterprise succeeded, that the inhabitants of Savoy should decide by vote whether to remain Italian or to join either France or Switzerland, he himself preferring the last alternative; and this preference he repeated in 1861. The principles of 'Young Italy' were shortly afterwards expanded in a kindred association, Young Europe,' and in the affiliated schemes of Young Poland,' 'Young Germany,' and 'Young Switzerland.' In Switzerland, where Mazzini went after the failure of the Savoy expedition, he proved himself as compromising a guest as he had been in France; he received orders from the Government to quit the country, and, early in 1837, after lying in concealment for some time, he moved to London, which thenceforward was as much a home to him as he could find anywhere outside his native country. Mazzini showed from the first a singular ability in evading the pursuit of the police, sometimes by disguise and concealment, but quite as often by the audacity with which he openly appeared in the very places which it might be naturally supposed that he would avoid. From his first arrest at Genoa, in 1830, to his arrest at Palermo, in 1870-a period of forty years the police never once succeeded in laying hands upon him. He remained in England till the year 1848, busy in forwarding, by his writings, by correspondence and by conspiracies, the cause of republican unity in Italy. The revolutionary movement of that year brought him back again to his native country, and early in 1849 he was appointed one of the Triumvirate which defended the short lived Republic of Rome

against the French. The defence failed, and Mazzini once more became an exile. From this time onwards the political circumstances and temper of the Italian people became less favourable than it had been to Mazzini's propagandism. The attempted revolutions had ended in failures, and the most conspicuous failures had been those of the republican party. It was evident that the strength of the republican feeling in Italy had been greatly overrated by Mazzini. The Piedmontese monarchy too, stood in a wholly different position after 1849 from that which it had held before. Though beaten in the field, it had nevertheless at one time succeeded in expelling the Austrians from Lombardy; and whatever may have been its defects, it was the one native government which had made itself the champion of Italy against the Austrian oppressor. It was also the one native government which had established and maintained constitutional freedom. The growing influence and prestige of Piedmont opposed a stronger and stronger barrier to the republican agitators. From this time forwards Mazzini's writings lose much of their buoyancy. He no longer talks with the old assurance of victory; he seems to feel that the future is not with him, or at least takes refuge in that distant and indefinite future which is so rich in consolation to the disappointed enthusiast. Often, too, his disenchantment finds vent in fierce attacks on the successful party, in charges of treachery, cowardice and incompetence against all who saw in the Piedmontese monarchy the best hope for Italy, in invectives and recriminations upon former associates of his own, who now, in obedience to this conviction, allied themselves one by one to the monarchial party. The alliance of Piedmont with the Western Powers in the Crimean War-that masterstroke of Cavour's diplomacy-made the cup of his indignation boil over; and he went so far as to incite the Piedmontese troops to break the military oath of obedience which they had taken. The year after the conclusion of the peace of Paris, his hand was visible in the Genoese tumults of 1857. The events of 1859 and 1860 brought him again to Italy; but they did not answer to his hopes; it was plain that the monarchial

« ForrigeFortsett »