Out of these principles,—social reform as the immediate end of revolution and duty as its inspiration,—Mazzini built up an elaborate political programme. He loved system-making and hardly apologised for it. You cannot have unity or harmony without it, he urged, and to a certain extent he had practical justification. It were better, as he said and as subsequent events proved, that the nationalists should argue out their differences before the time for action came, and not paralyse themselves by quarrels in front of the enemy. It was this want of a positive programme, that was, he thought, largely responsible for the failure of the Carbonari. Their policy had hardly gone beyond the overthrow of the existing governments; and they had mustered under their flag royalists and republicans, conservatives and liberals, with the inevitable result that after their first successes they split their ranks and fell an easy prey. It were wiser, so Mazzini pleaded, to be few but united. "The strength of an association depends not on its numbers but on its homogeneity." But the principle was necessarily an intolerant one. It barred many a true patriot, who could not swear to the whole Mazzinian doctrine. For such he had no pity. In his view it was only fear, "the Almighty God of most politicians," that prevented the Moderates from accepting his position. "There can be no moderation," he said at a later date, "between good and evil, truth and error, progress and reaction." Unluckily truth to him too often meant adhesion to his own theories; and he could never forgive men, who, starting from his premisses, could not follow his logic to the end, though, like most men who pride themselves on being logical, he was often singularly incapable of accurate reasoning. It was this intolerance that wrecked so much of his after life, that made him waste his splendid powers in fighting men, by whose side he ought to have been working.

However, for better or worse, Mazzini required from his fellow-workers implicit acceptance of his theories,—theories which embraced every sphere of national life, religion and politics, literature and art. His chief political doctrines were republicanism and Italian Unity. How he pieced republicanism on his general theory of things, is the subject of another chapter. It is sufficient here to note that he was a republican, chiefly because he thought that democratic legislation was impossible under any form of monarchy. The belief was natural enough at the time. Few had been the popular reforms under any European crown, while the one genuine series of democratic laws had been passed by the French Republic or while the French monarchy was tottering to its fall. Mazzini may be pardoned, if at that time he sharply sundered monarchies and republics, and failed to see how imperfect was the classification. In Italy, Mazzini saw special circumstances that made for a republic. Her great memories were republican, though even he must have recognised how little the republics of medieval Italy had in common with his ideal polity. At Venice and his own Genoa the republican tradition was still dear. Italian republicanism was free from any recent memory of outrage and proscription, such as tarnished the name in France. And above all, he urged, there was no possible king for a united Italy. Each prince was pledged to Austria, each had proved his sympathy with reaction. Monarchy in Italy had "no splendid annals, no venerable traditions," no powerful nobility to buttress it. Two princes only had an army, which could help in the war of liberation; and neither the King of Piedmont nor the King of Naples would submit to the other without a bitter civil struggle. And the antipathies of North and South, though they might bow to the principle of a common republic, would never allow the Neapolitan to take a king from Piedmont. History has proved how wrong was his diagnosis, and temporarily and reluctantly he had glimpses of his error. More than once in after life, as we shall see, he alternated his republicanism with fits of half-belief in the Piedmontese monarchy.

His advocacy of Italian Unity rests on a surer bottom. That the country was fated to stagnate till the foreigner had gone, was common ground with every school of patriots. But when the Austrians had been driven out, was Italy to be a federation of states or one united country? Mazzini pleaded that the point at issue between him and the federalists was mainly one of practicability. This hardly took sufficient account of the school, which looked to Switzerland and America for its types, and preferred a federation on its own merits. But on the whole his contention was right. Every argument that told for federation, told yet more forcibly for unity. The strength of the federalist movement lay in the belief that unity was impossible. As yet, though Napoleon had foretold that unity must come, only a handful of Italians had dared to speak of it as a possible ideal. The great majority doubted whether Italy even wished to be united, whether, if she did, the facts of the European polity made it possible, whether unity could permanently stand the strain of the old provincial animosities. It was easy for them to adduce a host of facts,—the differences of race and temperament and tradition, the various habits formed by dissimilar systems of law and land tenure and education, the jealousies, still far from dead, that sundered province from province and city from city. Mazzini himself had felt the force of their arguments, and there was a moment, when even he had been shaken in his faith. He had little tangible reasoning to back his confidence. But he had the prophetic assurance of a great possibility, and his contagious faith made it a reality. 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. She would not surrender her Italian provinces, unless by force of arms. She could not tolerate free institutions side by side with her own despotic rule. She had crushed the Neapolitan and Piedmontese risings ten years before; she had done the same in Modena and Romagna yesterday. "She robs us," said Mazzini, "of life and country, name, glory, culture, material well-being." As Giusti said more pointedly a few years later, the Italians "ate Austria in their bread." Mazzini and many another patriot knew that any peaceful solution was utopian. "The destinies of Italy," he preached, "have to be decided on the plains of Lombardy, and peace must be signed beyond the Alps." Mazzini rather welcomed war in a just cause. It would redeem the torpid, disillusioned Italian, who was brave enough, as Napoleon's campaigns had proved, but required much to nerve him to effort. It would give Italy again her national self-respect, her claim to the esteem of other peoples. "War," he said, "is the eternal law, that stands between the master and the slave who breaks his chains." But Mazzini in his saner moods saw the futility of any local or ill-prepared rising. In words, that condemn only too eloquently much of his after action, he declared that only victory could justify a rising against Austria. It was only when the great mass of the people had been won to the nationalist cause, that the patriots "might stretch their hand to Lombardy and say, 'There are the men who perpetuate your servitude,' towards the Alps and say, 'There stand your confines.'" Mazzini's plan of campaign was guerilla fighting. It was, as he said, the natural resource of an insurgent people, that had to win its freedom against disciplined armies,—the method chosen by the Dutch against Philip II., by the American colonists against England, by the Spaniards and Greeks in more recent times. Had he lived now, he might have added another illustrious example. Italy, with her long chain of mountains that no enemy could hold in force, had special fitness for the strategy. "Italians," he cried, "look to your mountains, there stand strength and infallible victory."

In the meantime the work of Young Italy was to organise and educate; and the only possible organisation was that of the secret society. Mazzini did not see its inherent weaknesses. Young Italy soon became as much the quarry of the spy and police agent as the Carbonari had been; and to the end of life Mazzini was the victim of informers, who won his easy confidence. The society developed an uncontrolled and irresponsible leadership, and its chief, eager as he was and sincerely eager to disclaim any desire to dictate, was too impatient, too self-confident to allow fair play to other men's convictions. As a means of preparing for war, it failed disastrously; and it proved an ill school for the parliamentary politics of later days. But in a country, where any open expression of liberal sentiment meant prison or exile, if not the scaffold, there was no alternative; and as an educating influence it came to be the greatest of the forces that made Italy. Its writings, smuggled into every corner of the land, moved many a young thinker to a passionate resolve, that bore its fruit in after times. At this stage, however, Mazzini was hardly looking to the slow results of political education. The hour of insurrection, he confidently believed, was near; the European revolution was threatening, and Italy must not be behind the sister nations. He was certain of success. Whatever difficulties might come to a nationalist movement without a backing from the native governments, however much Italians might distrust their own unaided strength, there was "no real obstacle for twenty-six millions of men, who wished to rise and fight for their country." Austria, he calculated, could at the best put two hundred thousand men into the field; he fondly counted on four million Italian volunteers. A people, that even under the leading of the Carbonari had made three revolutions in ten years, would rise again more readily and more victoriously at the inspiration of a nobler faith.

Chapter III
Marseilles
1831-1834. Aetat 25-28

At Marseilles—Spread of Young Italy—Letter to Charles Albert—The Army Plot in Piedmont—At Geneva—The Savoy Raid.

When Mazzini arrived at Lyons, he found an unhopeful plan in preparation for raiding Savoy. Some 2000 Italian refugees, many of them Piedmontese who had fled through Genoa ten years before and stirred his boyish enthusiasm, were ready to march under the hardly concealed protection of the French government. It was still in the early days of the July monarchy, when it had yet not quite forgotten its revolutionary origin. But before the expedition could start, Louis Philippe's swift lapse into conservatism, which had already made him break his promises to the Romagnuols, abruptly ended the patronage of the authorities. The would-be raiders were scattered, and Mazzini joined a small party of republicans, who were starting for Corsica, on their way to join the insurgents in Romagna. The Corsicans were still Italian in sentiment as well as race, and the Carbonaro influence was strong in the island. Two thousand men offered themselves for service with the insurgents, but no funds were forthcoming to pay their passage, and before arrangements could be made the news arrived that the rising had collapsed.

Mazzini returned to Marseilles, and found himself among the refugees who had escaped from Central Italy. He recruited a few young patriots among them, and with their help he began to give body to his schemes. In a small room at Marseilles the young Titans started, with nothing but their own sincerity and daring, to revolutionise Italy. "We had no office, no helpers," he wrote of them in after years. "All day, and a great part of the night, we were buried in our work, writing articles and letters, getting information from travellers, enlisting seamen, folding papers, fastening envelopes, dividing our time between literary and manual work. La Cecilia was compositor; Lamberti corrected the proofs; another of us made himself literally porter, to save the expense of distributing the papers. We lived as equals and brothers; we had but one thought, one hope, one ideal to reverence. The foreign republicans loved and admired us for our tenacity and unflagging industry; we were often in real want, but we were light-hearted in a way, and smiling because we believed in the future."