Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 13.djvu/509

 1815-1846.] ITALY 487 to organize the forces of the revolution, and to establish the one and indivisible republic in Europa Though he strove in the cause of Italy, his scheme for the regeneration of society far exceeded the limits of that country. He declared war upon established order in its ancient forms all over the world, and was willing to use conspiracy, if nob assassination, in order to achieve his ends. Thus, though the spirit infused into the Italians by Mazzini s splendid eloquence aroused the people to a sense of their high destinies and duties, though he was the first to believe firmly that Italy could and would be one free nation, yet the means he sanctioned for securing this result, and the policy which was inseparable from his opinions, proved obstacles to statesmen of more practical and sober views. It was the misfortune of Italy at this epoch that she had not only to fight for independence, but also to decide upon the form of government which the nation should elect when it was constituted. All right-thinking and patriotic men agreed in their desire to free the country frnm foreign rule, and to establish national self-government. But should they aim at a republic or a constitutional monarchy 1 ? Should they be satisfied with the hegemony of Piedmont 1 Should they attempt a confederation, and if so, how should the papacy take rank, and should the petty sovereigns be regarded as sufficiently Italian to hold their thrones ? These and many other hypothetical problems distracted the Italian patriots. It was impossible for them, in the circumstances, first to form the nation and then to decide upon its government ; for the methods to be employed in fighting for independence already implied some political principle. Mazzini s manipulation of conspiracy, for instance, was revolutionary and republican ; while those who adhered to constitutional order, and relied upon the arms of Piedmont, had virtually voted for Sardinian hege mony. The unanimous desire for independence existed in a vague and nebulous condition. It needed to be condensed into workable hypotheses; but this process could not be carried on without the growth of sects perilous to common action. The party of Young Italy, championed by Mazzini, was the first to detach itself, and to control the blindly working forces of the Carbonari movement by a settled plan of action. It was the programme of Young Italy to establish a republic by the aid of volunteers recruited from all parts of the peninsula. When Carlo Alberto came to the throne, Mazzini addressed him a letter, as equal unto equal, calling upon the king to defy Austria and rely upon God and the people. Because Carlo Alberto (who, in spite of his fervent patriotism and genuine liberality of soul, was a man of mixed opinions, scrupulous in his sense of constitutional obligation, melancholy by temperament, and superstitiously religious), found himself unwilling or unable to take this step, the Mazzinisti denounced him as a traitor to 1821 and a retrogressive autocrat. In his exile at Geneva, Mazzini now organized an armed attempt on Savoy. He collected a few hundred refugees of all nations, and crossed the frontier in 1S33. But this feeble attack produced no result beyond convincing Carlo Alberto that he could not trust the republicans. Subsequent attempts on the king s life roused a new sense of loyalty in Piedmont, and defined a counter-body of opinion to Mazzini s. The patriots of a more practical type, who may be called moderate liberals, began, in one form or another, to aim at achieving the independence of Italy constitutionally by the help of the Sardinian kingdom. What rank Sardinia would take in the new Italy remained an open question. The publication of Vincenzo Gioberti s treatise, // Primato morale e civile degli Italiani, in 1843, considerably aided the growth of definite opinion. His Utopia was a con federation of Italian powers, under the spiritual presidency of the papacy, and with the army of Piedmont for sword and shield. This book had an immense success. It made timid thinkers feel that they could join the liberals without sacrificing their religious or constitutional opinions. At the same date Cesare Balbo s Speranze &amp;lt;T Italia exercised a somewhat similar influence, through its sound and unsub- versive principles. In its pages Balbo made one shrewd guess, that the Eastern Question would decide Italian independence. Massimo d Azeglio, who also was a Pied- montese ; the poet Giusti, the Baron Ilicasoli, and the Marchese Gino Capponi in Tuscany ; together with Alessandro Manzoni at Milan, and many other writers scattered through the provinces of Italy, gave their weight to the formation of this moderate liberal party. These men united in condemning the extreme democracy of the Mazzinisti, and did not believe that Italy could be regene rated by merely manipulating the insurrectionary force of the revolution. On political and religious questions they were much divided in detail, suffering in this respect from the weakness inherent in liberalism. Yet we are already justified in regarding this party as a sufficient counterpoise to the republicans ; and the man who was destined to give it coherence, and to win the great prize of Italian indepen dence by consolidating and working out its principles in practice, was already there. The count Camillo Benso di Cavour had been born in 1810, two years later than Mazzini. He had not yet entered upon his ministerial career, but was writing articles for the Risorgimento, which at Turin opposed the Mazzinistic journal Concord ia, and was devoting himself to political and economical studies. It is impossible to speak of Mazzini and Cavour without remembering the third great regenerator of Italy, Giuseppe Garibaldi. At this date he was in exile ; but a few years later he returned, and began his career of popular deliverance in Lombardy. Mazzini, the prophet, Garibaldi, the knight- errant, and Cavour, the statesman, of Italian independence, were all natives of the kingdom of Sardinia. But their several positions in it were so different as to account in no small measure for the very divergent parts they played in the coming drama. Mazzini was a native of Genoa, which ill tolerated the enforced rule of Turin. Garibaldi came from Xice, and was a child of the people. Cavour was born in the midst of that stiff aristocratical society of old Piedmont which has been described so vividly by D Azeglio in his Ricordi. The Piedmontese nobles had the virtues and the defects of English country squires in the last century. Loyal, truthful, brave, hard-headed, tough in resistance, obstinately prejudiced, they made excellent soldiers, and were devoted servants of the crown. More over, they hid beneath their stolid exterior greater political capacity than the more genial and brilliant inhabitants of Southern and Central Italy. Cavour came of this race, and understood it. But he was a man of exceptional quality. He. had the genius of statesmanship, a practical sense of what could be done, combined with rare dexterity in doing it, fine diplomatic and parliamentary tact, and noble courage in the hour of need. Without the enthusiasm, amounting to the passion of a new religion, which Mazzini inspired, without Garibaldi s brilliant achievements, and the idolatry excited by this pure-hearted hero in the breasts of all who fought with him and felt his sacred fire, there is little doubt that Cavour would not have found the creation of United Italy possible. But if Cavour had not been there to win the confidence, support, and sympathy of Europe, if he had not been recognized by the body of the nation as a man whose work was solid and whose sense was just in all emergencies, Mazzini s efforts would have run to waste in questionable insurrections, and Garibaldi s feats of arms must have added but one chapter more to the history of unproductive patriotism. While, therefore, we