SASSONE ON MAZZINI AND “YOUNG ITALY”
Giuseppe Mazzini
(1808-1872)
To reconstruct a nation torn and bowed down under the most enervating of clerical and monarchal despotisms requires first of all the creation of citizens and the organisation of a large and strong association based on national right. An association depending on the entire people and opening up to them at the same time a larger horizon than the miserable position they had occupied in the peninsula—such was the generous idea which fermented in the head of Mazzini, that great exile of Italian independence, when he took up at Marseilles his idea already elaborated during his captivity at Savona and founded the society and paper of “Young Italy.” It was under the influence of the same principles, and driven by his unshakable faith in the future of Italy, that he, with several friends devoted like himself to the popular cause, undertook to develop the intelligence of poor Italian workmen in London.
The statutes of the new society destined to replace the Carbonari, and created by Mazzini and a group of exiles, was based on national law and accessible to all Italians. By its strong popular organisation it was destined to keep the Austrian forces in perpetual check over the whole peninsula until the day of help. And thus by the simplicity of its resources it would defy the surveillance of a most vigilant police. Religious ideas and patriotic thoughts were blended and confounded in the thoughts of this apostle of Italian liberty. They might be summed up in two words—Dio e popolo.
The object of Young Italy was inscribed on its national banner of red, green, and white: on one side it bore the words, “Liberty, Equality, Humanity;” on the other, “Unity, Independence.”
All initiates into Young Italy were obliged to pay into the society’s funds a monthly contribution of fivepence, or more, if they were able.
When initiated each new associate had to pronounce the following promise in the presence of the initiator:
“In the name of God and Italy; in the name of all the martyrs of the holy Italian cause who have fallen under the blows of foreign or native tyranny: by the duties which bind me to my country, to the God who created me, and to the brothers God has given me; by the innate love in all men for the spot where his mother was born and her children have lived; by the shame I feel before citizens of other nations in having neither the name nor the rights of a citizen, neither national flag nor fatherland; by the memory of ancient power; by the consciousness of present abjection; by the tears of Italian mothers over sons dead on the scaffold, in dungeons, or in exile; by the misery of Italian millions: believing in a God-sent mission to Italy and the duty of every Italian born man to contribute to its accomplishment; convinced that wherever God has wished a nation to be there the necessary forces exist to create it—that the people are the depositary of this force, and in the guiding of this force by the people and with the people rests the secret of victory—I adhere to Young Italy, an association of men holding the same faith, and I swear:
“To devote myself entirely and forever to constituting a national Italy, one, independent, free, and republican; to help in every way my associated brothers; now and forever (Ora e sempre); I also swear, calling on my head the anger of God, the horror of men, and the infamy of perjury, if ever I venture to betray all or part of my oath.”
The arrangement of degrees was as simple as possible. Rejecting the interminable hierarchy of Carbonarism, the society had only two degrees: initiator and initiated. A central committee resided abroad to league themselves together as much as possible with democratic foreign elements, and generally to direct the enterprise. Signs of recognition between the affiliated were suppressed as being pre-eminently dangerous. The order word, a cut card, a special handshake, sufficed to accredit those travelling for the central committee to provincial committees and reciprocally. These signs of recognition were renewable every three months. A cypress branch (in memory of martyrs) was the symbol of the society. The general word of order, Ora e sempre, alluded to the constancy necessary to the vindication of Italian rights.[j]