Page:Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy, 1738-1914 - ed. Jones - 1914.djvu/271

 so strongly a few evenings ago. But my noble friend, perhaps, is not aware that this person—a clever man, undoubtedly, of great military talents—was, like Mazzini, a professional conspirator; that the object of his first plot was, like that of a great conspirator in our own country (Guy Fawkes), who was not, however, quite so popular, to blow up the Royal Family of Sardinia in the theatre of Genoa; and that the discovery of that gunpowder plot drove him out in exile, first to Brazil, and afterwards to the Rio Plata, where he began to act as a partisan, and afterwards acquired considerable influence. On the breaking out of the last revolution in France he returned to Europe, and shortly afterwards agitated the provinces of Italy, repeating in their northern districts, and in Rome itself, those valorous feats of arms which gained him reputation in the New World. Mazzini is a man of less courage, though of great ability, for few men are so bold as Garibaldi; but Mazzini, in conjunction with Garibaldi, got possession of Rome, the one eminent for his civil, the other from his military qualifications. There they established a dictatorship under the name of a Triumvirate, and disciplined several thousand soldiers, of whom scarcely one was a native Roman. Among them were Frenchmen, Monte Videans, Poles, Italians of the north, but Romans few or none. Therefore it was, I said, that General Oudinot was cautious how he bombarded Rome, as he could not direct his hostility against one class of men, and yet entirely spare all. Lastly, my Lords, I cannot shut my eyes to the merits of the French army, of which all ages must testify their sense as long as any regard remains among men