Page:Letters on American slavery from Victor Hugo, de Tocqueville, Emile de Girardin, Carnot, Passy, Mazzini, Humboldt, O. Lafayette.djvu/14

14 , March 21st, 1859.
 * I beg to apologize for being so late in acknowledging the receipt of $112 09, subscribed by you and others at the end of the lecture delivered at your institution by my friend, Mm. Jessie M. White Mario, toward our Italian school, &c.

I am very much pleased at my honored friend's first success and response to her efforts in the United States, coming from Young America, to whom Young Italy looks for sympathy and support in her approaching struggle, and my thanks are the thanks of all the members, both teachers and pupils, of our Italian school.

We are fighting the same sacred battle for freedom and the emancipation of the oppressed—you, Sir, against negro, we against white slavery. The cause is truly identical; for, depend upon it, the day in which we shall succeed in binding to one freely accepted pact twenty-six millions of Italians, we shall give what we cannot now, an active support to the cause you pursue. We are both the servants of the God who says, "Before Me there is no Master, no Slave, no Man, no Woman, but only Human Nature, which must be everywhere responsible, therefore free." May God bless your efforts and ours! May the day soon arrive in which the word bondage will disappear from our living languages, and only point out a historical record! And, meanwhile, let the knowledge that we, all combatants under the same flag, do, through time and space, commune in love and faith, and strengthen one another against the unavoidable suffering which we must meet on the way. Believe me, my dear Sir,

JOSEPH MAZZINI.