PARTIES AND AFFAIRS IN ITALY.
IIL—THE NATIONAL PARTY.
Btk February 1849.
That which we call in Italy the National Party is composed in the great ma- jority, let us frankly confess it, of Republicans: of men who have preserved in- tact the traditions and the aspirations of Young Italy. And this jnew denomina- tion is not, as might be supposed, the result of any species of political esuitism, endeavouring to attain its object without being suspected; there can be nothing less jesuitical than the party to which I belong: this name is the expression of the position assumed by the Republicans since the time when the Moderates came to hinder and perplex the natural and logical progress of the Italian Revolution. This position deserves to be rightly understood by the honest and sincere portion of your public. We are indeed anxious that it should be so understood ; for al- though not easily affected by the voice of calumny, we can appreciate, as it deserves, the esteem of all good men; and I am conscious that, whatever opinions may be entertained of our views, we are at least deserving of this esteem. We have always been frank and loyal. We have never had two languages, one for ourselves and another for the public. We have concealed our operations when the executioner's axe was seen suspended over the route which those who trusted in us were following ; but never our idea, our object, our faith. In the true sense of the word we have never been conspirators. It matters little that the Times accuses us of having sharpened the poniard by which Rossi fell: these old tactics of parties, of having recourse to calumny when reasons fail, can only excite among us a smile of contempt. At the time of that unworthy and unprincipled intrigue which resulted in the fusion, it was printed at the corners of the streets at Milan, that 1, a man devoid of all natural affection, had refused to see my mo- ther; and my mother, who still lives, was by my side blessing my principles and my efforts. God be thanked, ice have never fallen so low, in respect of our adver- saries, as to profane by falsehood the sanctuary of family affection. And the short sketch which I am about to give, in relating facts which no one can deny, will prove that the march of the Republican party with us, if not founded upon a true principle, which time alone can show, has at least been calm, honest, truly moderate, and impressed with the spirit of patriotic devotion. When up to 1843 all was silence and oppression in Italy,—when our Princes refused the slightest expression to thought, and answered the least effort of progress by the prison or death,—the Republican spirit struggled alone. Young Italy boldly promulgated its doctrines, and offered to those who came to organize themselves in its ranks, a positive declaration concerning its object and the means by which it proposed to attain them. The Nation did not then exist; or rather, it existed only amongst its. We were the initiators; and it was not only our right, it was our duty, not to allow our countrymen to engage in a mortal struggle without first setting our programme clearly before them. It was universally accepted by all who were then moving in the cause. But as soon as the movement, commenced by us, had forced from our Govern- ments some degree of liberty of speech and of the press,—as soon as the country, the great association, began to stir itself, to question itself, to express itself,—we abated somewhat of our boldness of expression, which might appear to partake of too exclusive a spirit. Young Italy gradually resolved itself into the Italian National Association. And in its programme of the 5th May 1848, the word "republic " did not once appear. It was henceforth for the country, for Italy her- self to speak. The Republicans felt that the country must be their judge in the last resort ; that the opportunity of verifying the justness of their belief had arrived, and that instead of avoiding it, it was their duty to meet it. "Na- tionality, one, free, independent—war to Austria—fraternization with those na- tions already free or who are struggling to become so—such (said they) is the object of the National Association. . . . All its acts will henceforward be public. . . . It does not propose to itself the triumph of any predetermined form of go- vernment; it proposes to aid the free development of the national sentiment, and to hasten the moment when the Italian people shall be able to give a solemn de- cision upon the political, social, and economical conditions best suited to its wants." Here was the germ of the Costituente, which is now about to be realized.
The Republicans have never abandoned this programme. And when it was re- ported both in Italy and elsewhere that the unhappy result of the war in Lom- bardy was partly owing to the dissensions caused by the Republicans, it was a simple lie; a lie in the face of facts, attested by documentary evidence, which im- partial history will verify and collect.
I have said that the Lombard insurrection was essentially Republican in its tendencies. At the very first, when it was announced that Charles Albert was coming to direct the war, a public association, a club, or as we call it a circle, was formed of the young men who had fought at the barricades, and who pro- fessed the Republican faith. A programme was written, and presented to the Provisional Government; who replied, that all opinions were free to express them- selves. The only course proposed was peaceable discussion and the establishment of a journal. Nevertheless, the influential men of the party, dreading that this propagandism might furnish an element of discord, abstained from it. This pro- gramme was the only act of this Association. Guided by their chiefs, the Re-
publicans, some isolated individuals alone excepted, adhered—and they alone in good faith—to the programme given by the Provisional Government and accepted by King Charles Albert; a programme which declared that the political question should only be debated after victory had crowned the war, in an assembly to be convoked for that purpose. This guarantee sufficed us; and once more, in Lom- bardy, as we had done elsewhere, we concealed our faith in our breasts, to occupy ourselves only with war. As we had done elsewhere, I have said, for in no part of Italy during .the governmental concessions did the Republicans show them- selves. The accusations and provocations of the Moderate party remained sys- tematically unanswered. They adjourned the question. There was here, in fact, a great and final experiment to be tried. The
supreme vow of the Republicans was for the unity of Italy. That the future not only of Italy but of all Europe would be Republican, appeared to us so infallibly decreed by the providential march of the education of humanity, that we were con- tented to abide its coming. That for which we trembled, was the nationality, the unity of the country. To that we were ready to sacrifice, not our faith, but its immediate realization. This we openly proclaimed. For the unification of Italy it was of paramount necessity that we should have either a man or a principle. The Moderates pointed to Charles Albert, saying, "Behold the man." We well knew this to be a delusion. Without dwelling on the memories of 1821 and 1833, we knew his vacillating uncertain nature, without a single spark of genius or of faith. We felt also in our souls, that it was not from King or Pope that this great thing which shall be Italy, the Italy of the People, could arise. No- thing great can henceforward be accomplished through a King: the strong Demo- cratic tide which rises, through the will of God, between thrones and the future, prevents the union, the community of thoughts and affections, the mutual good faith of princes and their peoples, by which alone great enterprises can be accom- plished. But our faith was not generally shared: the popular infatuation lent it- self to the plans and the hopes of the Moderate party: there was here, I repeat it, a Simi experiment for us to make.
We made it in good faith. We suspended all propagandism of our ideas, all work of association. We replied to the propositions secretly made to us by official personages—" Let Charles Albert give a guarantee that he is working for the na- tional unification, and not merely for the aggrandizement of the house of Savoy; let bun sign a proclamation, an appeal to the Italian populations to rally round him ; and we will gladly work with him." To the Moderates we said—" If you really desire the unity of Italy, you must change your plan: do not speak to us of
five Italies, or of three 'talks, but of Italy; do not throw the apple of discord amongst us; do not anticipate or usurp the national will ; endeavour to conquer it by victory and by disinterestedness; make of your King the first citizen of Italy, and leave it to the gratitude of the people to constitute him what else they will" But more was demanded from us by both: they required that Charles Albert should remain entirely free and independent, without engagements, without pledge; and that the Republican party should surrender at discretion, and exert all their energies in the service, not of the war—that was done—but of the King and of the scheme of the kingdom of Upper Italy. They were irritated by our silence: they counted upon increasing the chances of success by our accession, or, in case of defeat, at least to deprive our creed of all its moral influence. This we could not do. We could, in deference to the tendency of the time, be silent ; but we could not lie.
It was not till the 12th May, when the programme of political neutrality accepted and acted upon by us was brutally violated by the very Government which had giwen it—when in the middle of a campaign the success of which had already become doubtful, they said to us, " The Lombard kingdom of Charles Albert must be immediately declared "—when the finishing-stroke was put to this outrage by instituting the silent voting of the registers, thus suppressing all legal discussion—that the Republicans considered it their duty to break the silence; and they felt so the more that there was personal danger in so doing. Their pro-. test appeared signed by well-known names: it was conceived in terms so calm and moderate that it found an echo even in the ranks of the opposition. A few days afterwards, the manifesto of a paper called The Italy of the People appeared. At the same time, they solemnly declared, that, recognizing the supreme necessity of union for the purposes of the war, they pledged themselves to abstain from all active opposition to the vote. But in the manifesto of The Italy of the People they made a last appeal to the man, Pope or King, who would put himself at the head of the enterprise: they declared that, for the sake of national unity, they would sacrifice the realization of their most cherished ideas; taking their ground upon the sovereignty of the country, they said, that "as to forms of government, the nation, legally and universally represented, would, when the time arrived and the question of independence was solved, choose them after its own fashion." It has been said that the men of Republican faith did nothing for the war: and this calumny, absurd in a country where the elite of our youth was almost en- tirely Republican, promulgated by the forms of the Moderate party, has found an i echo in }ranee and in your country. I have already shown, in my second letter, that there existed on the part of the Provisional Government, irritated and sus- picions at our silence like all power not in itself loyal, a systematic opposition to everything proposed or offered by the Republicans for the service of the war. I will not repeat it here. 1 will only add, that summoned by the Government at the time of the first reverses upon the Venetian territory, 1 myself offered, with- out any political condition whatever, to lead to the camp a legion of a thousand chosen volunteers; thus giving on our side the signal of forgetfulness to all the Lombard cities, and showing them by example that they ought to sink all diffe- rences in common action. My offer was at first enthusiastically accepted; and five days after, I received a refusal, grounded in reality on the fear of seeing Republicans with arms in their bands. And nevertheless, suspected, kept at a distance, calumniated amongst the people, and repulsed in all our offers, it was to us, to our perseverance, that the little energetic action which took place in Lom- bardy.was owing: it was from our ranks, and at our appeal, that the best officers now in the Lombard troops, in Piedmont, or in the other Italian provinces, Generals D'Apice, Garibaldi, Pepe, Ferrari, Fanti, and others, came to take part in the war: from amongst us were chosen the three men who formed the Committee of Defence at Milan and who made every possible exertion to save Lombardy; and almost all the Lombard officers who are at the present time fight- ing by the side of the Venetians are members of the Republican Association. And in this campaign, which might have been decisive, but which was, from the causes I have already pointed out, so disastrous, it was the Republicans, the vo- lunteer corps, who commenced the struggle; it was the Republicans who were the last to abandon it: it will be yet, I trust, men of the Republican faith who will recommence it; and even should King Charles Albert be the first to reenter the lists, we shall owe it to the Democratic movement headed by our brothers in Rome and Tuscany. The campaign finished, the war and the Royalist Utopia having miserably failed, the Republicans did not attempt to avail themselves of the in- fluence which the realization of all their predictions .gave them: they only re- commenced with untiring energy insisting upon their programme of national sovereignty. And whilst the Moderates fell everywhere into discouragement— whilst at Turin the demoralization was such that the Government fell for some time entirely into the hands of the retrograde party—the men of the popular faith were calmly endeavouring to bring back to its right course the Italian thought, and to transfer the initiative of the movement to its natural centre, to its future capital, Rome.
At the present time, the position of affairs is that which I have described in my first letter: on the one side, the men of the Federative Diet, still clinging to their Utopia of the kingdom of an Italy of the North, but in reality calling upon all the Italian States to form an alliance and make sacrifices for the aggrandizement of the house of Savoy; on the other, the National Party, who desire to organize the war from the national point of view, to make all the Italian forces assist thereto without arriere pensee and upon a footing of perfect equality and sym- pathy, and to leave the Italian populations free to express their idea upon the form of government which shall suit them best in developing their future. This is the party of the Costituente freely elected by universal suffrage. It has just triumphed in Tuscany and the Roman states. The men of the kingdom of Northern Italy have but one chance left them to enable them to resist this move- ment: it is to be the first to attack Austria and to conquer. The hatred against the Austrian is so intense with us, that, without troubling themselves too much about principles, the majority will go wherever they see the initiative of war and of triumph. But, whatever may be the immediate future of Italy, it is henceforward Moon- testible for all who have studied with attention its agitations for the last three years"
That the Italian movement is not a revolt, but a revolution: That this revolution is beyond all a national revolution:
That the various Italian populations are now seeking the formula of their com- mon life, of their national unity: That this formula cannot be durable until it spring from the Italian people it- self; and that every solution that can be given to the problem, without the whole of the Italian people having been consulted, can only be provisional and temporary: That the movement will not again be stilled, until the whole territory from Sicily to the Alps inclusive shall be united and free from foreign domination: That all the efforts that can possibly be made by diplomacy and foreign inter- vention to settle the questions now pending in Italy, short of this complete eman- cipation and unification, will have no other result than that of perpetuating revo- lutionary agitation, and of impressing it with a reactionary and violent character; in the same manner that the -Monarchical attempts which are now being made in France can only end in impressing the Republican, movement with the fatal cha- racter of a social war: That the best and most moral course for Europe, such as she is at the present time, devoid of all generous faith and of all belief in the "solidarity " of the peo- ples, is to hinder any foreign power from interfering in our affairs, and to leave ns tree to arrange them ourselves in that mode which the consciousness of our mission imposes upon us.
JOSEPH MAZZINL
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