Giuseppe Mazzini

“ The surrender of the city on the 30th of June was followed by Mazzini’s not too precipitate flight by way of Marseilles into Switzerland, whence he once more found his way to London. Here in 1850 he became president of the National Italian Committee, and at the same time entered into close relations with Ledru-Rollin and Kossuth. He had a firm belief in the value of revolutionary attempts, however hopeless they might seem ”

“ In 1865, by way of protest against the still uncancelled sentence of death under which he lay, Mazzini was elected by Messina as delegate to the Italian parliament, but, feeling himself unable to take the oath of allegiance to the monarchy, he never took his seat. In the following year, when a general amnesty was granted after the cession of Venice to Italy, the sentence of death was at last removed, but he declined to accept such an “offer of oblivion and pardon for having loved Italy above all earthly things.” ”

“ In this connexion Thomas Carlyle wrote to The Times: “I have had the honour to know Mr Mazzini for a series of years, and, whatever I may think of his practical insight and skill in worldly affairs, I can with great freedom testify that he, if I have ever seen one such, is a man of genius and virtue, one of those rare men, numerable unfortunately but as units in this world, who are worthy to be called martyr souls; who in silence, piously in their daily life, practise what is meant by that.” ”

“ MAZZINI, GIUSEPPE (1805–1872) , Italian patriot, was born on the 22nd of June 1805 at Genoa, where his father, Giacomo Mazzini, was a physician in good practice, and a professor in the university. His mother is described as having been a woman of great personal beauty, as well as of active intellect and strong affections. During infancy and childhood his health was extremely delicate, and it appears that he was nearly six years of age before he was quite able to walk ”

“ In 1839 he entered into relations with the revolutionary committees sitting in Malta and Paris, and in 1840 he originated a working men’s association, and the weekly journal entitled Apostolato Popolare, in which the admirable popular treatise “On the Duties of Man” was commenced. Among the patriotic and philanthropic labours undertaken by Mazzini during this period of retirement in London may be mentioned a free evening school conducted by himself and a few others for some years, at which several hundreds of Italian children received at least the rudiments of secular and religious education. ”

“ After the irresistible pressure of the popular movement had led to the establishment not of an Italian republic but of an Italian kingdom, Mazzini could honestly enough write, “I too have striven to realize unity under a monarchical flag,” but candour compelled him to add, “The Italian people are led astray by a delusion at the present day, a delusion which has induced them to substitute material for moral unity and their own reorganization. ”

“ The Italian parliament by a unanimous vote expressed the national sorrow with which the tidings of his death had been received, the president pronouncing an eloquent eulogy on the departed patriot as a model of disinterestedness and self-denial, and one who had dedicated his whole life ungrudgingly to the cause of his country’s freedom. A public funeral took place at Pisa on the 14th of March, and the remains were afterwards conveyed to Genoa. (J. S. Bl.)
The published writings of Mazzini, mostly occasional, are very voluminous. ”

“ Towards the end of the same year appeared the important Young Italy “Manifesto,” the substance of which is given in the first volume of the Life and Writings of Mazzini; and this was followed soon afterwards by the society’s Journal, which, smuggled across the Italian frontier, had great success in the objects for which it was written, numerous “congregations” being formed at Genoa, Leghorn, and elsewhere. Representations were consequently made by the Sardinian to the French government, which issued in an order for Mazzini’s withdrawal from Marseilles (Aug. 1832) ”

“ Shortly after, however, the ambassador of the French Republic, Ferdinand de Lesseps, entered Rome with Michael Accrusi, the envoy of the Roman Republic in Paris, and by means of the good offices of the French Ambassador, the armistice, against which General Garibaldi had given a strong opinion, was concluded. The Roman Government resolved to take advantage of this truce to get rid of the Neapolitan army. At the same time Mazzini first created Colonel Roselli a general, and then named him general-in-chief of the forces. ”

“ He saw, when hardly another of his contemporaries saw it, that Italian Unity was a practicable ideal; his teaching informed the national resolve, that changed the seemingly impossible into a fact. To few men has it been given to create a great political idea; to fewer still to be not only the creator, but the chief instrument in realising it. Mazzini was both, and it gives him title to rank among the makers of modern Europe.
But there could be no unity, no republic, no political advance of any kind, till the inevitable war with Austria had been fought and won. ”

“ 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 Gioviners 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. ”

“ As it is, he has missed the greatness of either position, and has added one more to the long list of political agitators who have begun brilliantly, and ended in failure, with the loss even of the honest sympathy which the lovers of freedom are slow to withdraw from any confessor in the cause. As long as regard for Mazzini was compatible with sympathy with Italy, he met with every allowance. Now that he has himself put an end to that compatibility, there is no question about which interest must give way. ”

“ They had little of his religious faith, none of his passionate democracy, his demand 102 for sacrifice and martyrdom. It was a creed for the doubting and half-hearted, for the royalist and Catholic, for the courtier and the rich man and the priest; and also for the level-headed man of the world, who turned from Mazzini's fancies and idealism, who laughed at Italy's mission to humanity but cherished a more modest hope for her own regeneration. But at all events the teaching had two notes in common with his own. It strove to lift the nation to healthy ambition and strenuous effort ”

“ At a time not rich in intellectual or in moral power, the most striking figure among those who are justly honoured as the founders of Italian independence is perhaps that of Mazzini. Exiled during nearly the whole of his mature life, a conspirator in the eyes of all governments, a dreamer in the eyes of the world, Mazzini was a prophet or an evangelist among those whom his influence led to devote themselves to the one cause of their country’s regeneration. ”

“ The conception of humanity was not indeed lost from view: but such moral restraints as were placed on the free individual were all based on the feeling that each man must instinctively seek his own well-being and defend it. This was the very conception which Mazzini had fought in socialism, though he rightly saw that it was not peculiar to socialism alone, but belonged to any political theory, whether liberal, democratic, or anti-socialistic, which urges men toward the exaction of rights rather than to the fulfillment of duties. ”

“ The Carbonaro chiefs kept at arm's-length younger men, whose energy might have made up for their own unforwardness. If the next revolution was to fare better, it must have these younger men to captain it, men of confidence and enthusiasm and fresh ideas, men with a message that would nerve "those artisans of insurrection, the people and the young." Mazzini had at this time a supreme faith in his generation; he had already written in the Antologia of "this young Italy of ours," so vigorous and cultured and warm-hearted, that no new movement, however bold and difficult, was beyond its powers. ”

“ The sense of national dishonour maddened; civil war was often on men's lips; the King's prestige was foundering under the load of private vice and military failure. There was a mass of sullen, unformulated discontent, ready to find its way into socialist or republican channels. And though men were slow to follow Mazzini into his conspiracies, his long years of self-sacrificing labour, the mystery that wrapped the exile and conspirator, had given him a vast, almost mythical fascination for his countrymen. ”

“ He is too apt to attribute to society the precise convictions and spirit he feels within himself, and so to expect impossibilities, by impossible means. But there is a power of reasoning in Mazzini, an unsullied moral purity, a chivalrous veracity and frankness, an utter abnegation of self, and a courage that has stood the severest trials, which command not only respect but veneration. He belongs to the martyr age of Italian liberalism, and possesses himself the highest qualities of the martyr. ”

“ The republic became impossible on the day, when Victor Emmanuel swore loyalty to the constitution, and thereby proclaimed himself champion of Italian aspirations. The one thing needful was to rally every section of patriots to 155 the one possible flag. To attack the monarchy now only hurt the bigger issue, lost sight of the great goal in mists of schism, brought bitterness and dissension where discipline was all important for the day of trial. No one was more insistent than Mazzini on the need of discipline, but in practice he conditioned it in these years by being himself leader. ”

“ No one, however, can read even the briefest and most occasional writing of Mazzini without gaining some impression of the simple grandeur of the man, the lofty elevation of his moral tone, his unwavering faith in the living God, who is ever revealing Himself in the progressive development of humanity. ”

“ The revolution had just broken out in Central Italy; the French government had encouraged the Carbonari to expect direct or indirect assistance, and Mazzini thought that he would serve the cause best at Paris, whence, he confidently hoped, he would soon return to a liberated Italy. In February 1831 he said his good-byes to his family, who had hastened to Savona, and crossed the Apennines and, for the first time, the Alps, afterwards so familiar and beloved. ”

“ The effort to make Italy meant the loss of thousands of lives, meant exile and imprisonment and poverty, the blighting of homes and the misery of dear ones; and men would only face it at the call of duty. The Carbonari had no call; they came of a school that appealed to interested motives, and the appeal inevitably broke down in the day of disappointment and defeat. Mazzini offered his countrymen "a national religion"; Young Italy was no mere political party, but "a creed and an apostolate" ”

“ When young, Mazzini was remarkably handsome, and will be deemed so now in his mature years, by all who, in the expression of his countenance, his dark intelligent eye, and expansive intellectual forehead, can overlook the deep, we may say premature furrows, traced in that forehead by the never resting labors of a mind of indomitable activity, the constantly renewing anxieties of a generous heart for the welfare of the human race ”

“ He could not distinguish non-essentials from essentials, and it was nearly as hard for him to give way on the one as on the other. Compromise in small or great seemed cowardice, and there was no doubt a strain of egotism in his obstinacy. It humiliated him to surrender any detail of the theories, which he preached with such undiscriminating confidence.
But one would fain close not with the thinker or the moral teacher or the politician, but the man. Mazzini's personal life was one of a very rare purity and beauty, that stands out in his generation noblest and faithfullest and most inspired. ”

“ It is perhaps never easy for one man to be both idealist and statesman,—for Mazzini, with his passion and inflexibility, least of all. He could not leave it to other men to achieve his ideals in their own way. He had a dangerous belief that he had "the instinct of the situation," and would never own in politics that others might have their fragment of the truth. This obstinate rebellion—covert or open—against the verdict of his countrymen,—was it the heroism of the one righteous man, or was it, as one of his old friends called it, "a huge egotistical presumption?" ”

“ Both are "equally necessary to the end, which is progress," both "essential to the orderly development of society." On any sound theory, the two principles postulate one another. There can be no association except among free men, since true association implies a conscious recognition and acceptance of the object. Liberty is meaningless without association, because the individual, for all his freedom, is powerless unless he combine with others. Mazzini carefully dissociated himself alike from the laissez-faire school and a despotic state socialism. ”

“ They do not want the interference of republican agitators, who do not honour their king, and will not leave it to the responsible parties to deal with the holders of Rome and Venice at the time and in the mode which they judge fit. The whole Italian nation, and every other, would have regarded Mazzini as crowned with immortal honour if he had accepted his destiny when the moment came, and either thrown himself heartily and entirely into the cause of constitutional monarchy, or withdrawn into silence and invisibility, resolved not to disturb where he could not co-operate. ”