A SOUTHERN POLITICIAN. F RANCESCO CRISP', the Sicilian, the last of
the group who in 1860-62 made Italy, after living into-wha.t in Italy is extreme old age, has at last passel away. What a group they were, and how the hearts of Europe went Out to them in sympathy or hate ! Them was "the King," Victor Emanuel, the bull Savoyard with horns always levelled, yet with the ruse mind of his house visible in him too, a man of perfect courage, true political conscience, and almost insane pride. He refused despotic power because he had pledged himself to the " Sta,tuto," and refused also the throne of Italy if he, head of a, house of a thousand years, was only to be called King of the Italians. He was partly concealed by. those around him, but to his clear insight, to his political daring, and to his fiery ambition Italy owed much, and it must not be forgotten that if greater men than he advised him, his acceptance of the advice which again and again risked. his throne was always necessary and always given. There was Cavour, the only diplomatist of the latter half of the century with whom thought meant action; who talked like an English Minister, and dared like the leader of a for- lorn hope ; who could sway a Parliament, or manage a King, or baffle the astuteness of Napoleon III.; who did for Italy without means all that Bismarck did for Germany with the strongest army in the world. There was Ricasoli, the great Baron who never forgot his rank, yet was willing to risk all for the people, a- man with a heart of steel, yet as supple in governing as Italian ever was. There was Garibaldi, the "inspired idiot "as Mazzini called him, with a nature so royal that men of all nationalities flocked to him, eager to be his private soldiers ; who. with a kingdom at his feet, gave it away to make Italy ; and with limitless wealth and rank at his disposal, elected to be simply Garibaldi, the man whom all Europe felt to be in some way alone among the sons of men. There was Mazzini, the grave philosopher full of dreams, whom no man met without reverencing, who never achieved a success, and never devised a plan that was accepted, but who had a magical influence on all minds with whom he came in contact, and wit)i every policeman on the Continent thirsting for his capture, flitted through Europe at his will, as safe and as invisible as a disembodied spirit. And there was Crispi, the fiery Sicilian who enfranchised his island, whose adhesion to the Monarchy did perhaps as much for the unity of Italy as Garibaldi's, but who, after some splendid successes as an orator and an election manager, proved himself unable to manage the most difficult of instruments, Parliamentary government, and quitted power to die in poverty and neglect. - It is nearly impossible as yet to form an estimate of Crispi which shall be absolutely accurate, for till more secret memoirs have appeared, including his 'own, which are said to have been carefully prepared, the facts of his personality will remain in a ltind, of mist. His friends attributa to lain all virtues, while there has been no Minister in Euiope of whom his enemies have thought worse. There have been men, the late Mr. Stillman was one of them, 'to whom, with much opportunity of. knowing, Francesco Crispi has appeared a man to be ranked with Washington Lincoln ; while to most Italian Republicans, to many Englishmen, and to all Frenchmen he seemed an incarna- tion of evil." They even accused him of corruption, of which he certainly was not guilty, though we fear he once shielded the corrupt from the habitual Italian feoxof the pulverising effect of pecuniary scandal. There w's little truth eithei in the accusations of treachery to his party. --If le- purchased by the Monarchy, so was. maxiin, the heroic Dictator of Venice, who in 1848 held an Austrian army at bay for four months, and then exiling himself refused all offers from the King, whom, neverthe less, he declared ought to be preferred to the Republic. Indeed, so was Garibaldi, who was the sword Of the Re- publicans, but who handed over Naples and Sicily to the ging, "whose subject I was born." The truth is that the great Italian of this period, with the exception of Mazzuu, who dreamed that a Republican Parliament Would be inspired from above—we are repeating his own words uttered to the writer—were net Republicans from strong belief in that system or from any dislike of inequalities, but from horror of the foreign Princes who divided Italy, and longings for the freedom of the Peninsula. When they saw clearly that their great end could be attained only through "the Savoyard," they decided for Monarchy, and became for all practical purposes Royalists. They betrayed no one, for their faith was pledged neither to an idea nor a party, but to Italy, and Italy therefore is a nation under its Kings.
As to the talk of Crispi's desertion of" Italia Irredenta," that is nonsense. Crispi understood Europe if he under- stood nothing else, and from the moment he was clearly assured that Germany as well as Austria held the posses- sion of Trieste to be Vital to both the Germanic Powers, he abandoned the pursuit of " revindication," just as English statesmen abandoned the reviiadication of Calais, first, because they had. no hope of getting it, and secondly, because if they did get it, it would bring on them secular and intolerable enmities. Nevertheless, we admire Criepi less than most of his great comrades. T6 us, judging him always by his acts, he has always appeared a typical Southerner, capable of magnificent but intermittent dis- plays of energy, and liable when resisted to bursts of fury in which nothing, human life included, seemed. valuable when compared with victory, full of gifts, eloquence, in- sight, rapid power of combination, but lacking the mental nexus, the serene judgment which would have made of these gifts instruments to secure success. In him, as in all the greatest Southerners, including Pope after Pope, there was a trace- of megalomania The force which he applied to Garibaldi to persuade him into the grand exploit of the "One Thousand" showed his energy at its highest, the terrible repression which he authorised in Sicily demonstrated the lettgths to which when resisted fury could carry him, and his foreign policy all through was evidence of his megalomania. He was right in defending the Triple Alliance; but his passion was not for defence but for a policy which should make Italy great, and to this he sacrificed, in Europe as well as in Africa, too much of the happiness of her children. It is probable that he never understood finance at all, but that seeing Italy fertile and in some provinces industrious, he believed that heavy taxation Would stimulate rather than depress her energies. He never fully comprehended that there are two Italys, one quite worthy of the European family, one almost Asiatic, and he rushed forward to compete with the great old States with a hot fervour of imazination which at last landed Italy in the catastrophe of Adowa. It is impossible to tirg,e that he was not responsible for the war with Abyssinia. If he yielded to the King, as seems to have been the case, against his better judgment, he was all the more responsible, while it is proof of the defects of his character that he had stirred up so many hates that the first great reverse of fortune ruined him. His insight was complete, but he did not act on it. His eloquence was almost irresistible, but he never carried a division Without making deadly enemies. He could govern men splendidly, but the moment he was resisted those who resisted seemed to him enemies to be crushed, and they were crushed without sufficient reflection on the consequences of crushing those With whom he must in future live. Crispi, in short, was a Southerner, and the true Southerner, even when a statesman, remains im- petuous, impatient of results, and liable when moved to cravings and impulses that overbear his judgment. There is Masaniello in him as well as the thinking marl That at least would be our conclusion from the history of Spain, of Italy since the Roman period, of the Balkans, and even of Southern France, of whose greatest -man, Gaanbetta, cool observers said, that he ought never to have office, but te.he laid aside as a. reserve force for France, to be used when all else had failed. One would like a volcano as a weapon, but hardly as a motive power.
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