The next month Mazzini's magazine appeared just the same, printed by night at the office of a friend, and then its author was safely placed behind prison-bars. The authorities dare not kill him—besides, what is the use?—but they proposed to teach him a wholesome lesson and break his fiery spirit if possible, this being the policy that had continued from the time of Socrates. To hold truth secure by putting down the man of initiation—the man of insight who could see a better condition—all who were filled with a discontent that challenged the perfection of the present order—this to the many meant safety; the men in power simply taking their cue from the rabble—"Away with him!"
And Garibaldi hearing of the trouble that had come to Mazzini, whom he admired but had not yet met, hastened home and threw himself into the cause. He got together a little band of foolish youths, and planned a revolution.
He enlisted as a sailor on board the "Eurydice," a government craft, intending to revolt, steal the ship and go to the rescue of Mazzini. But about this time Mazzini was released with a warning, it being thought that a dreamy, penniless lawyer's clerk could not make much trouble anyway.
Mazzini and Garibaldi were totally different in their methods and habits of thought. Garibaldi reverenced Mazzini and called him master, and Mazzini admired the daring of Garibaldi, and no doubt was influenced and encouraged by him to continue sending out his little leaflets of liberty, which were secretly printed and circulated, read and reread, and passed along. Examined by us now, they seem innocent indeed, as harmless as pages lifted from Emerson's essay on "Nature," but actually they were the dynamite that was to rend the rocks of Italy's Gibraltar of orthodoxy.
Matters were now culminating fast. Mazzini and Garibaldi were organizing secret bands of "Young Italy." The arrangement was to secure and hold a certain point on the Swiss frontier as headquarters, and from there make open war upon Austria and the Pope. Like John Brown, these zealous revolutionaries felt sure that, at the call to arms, the subjugated provinces would cast off their shackles and join hands with the liberators. They did not realize that slavery is a condition of mind, and that as a class slaves are quite happy in their serfdom, being as unaware of their true condition as are those caught in the coils of superstition. No one sees the coils but the free man on the outside. The beauty of freedom's fight is that it frees the fighter.
The secret societies known as "Young Italy" failed in their secrecy. No secrets can be kept except for a day. Spies were duly initiated, and the report of the daily doings was handed in to the Pope and his council. To capture Garibaldi and Mazzini and hang them would have been easy; but to do this might bring about the very storm so much feared. So the word was passed that the conspirators were to be arrested; a price was placed upon their heads, and an opportunity was given them to escape.
Mazzini traveled leisurely through France, which offered him safe passage to London. Garibaldi remained on the border, and with a little band engaged in joyous guerrilla warfare, hoping for a general revolt. The time was not yet ripe, and nothing he could then do would gather up the scattered forces of freedom and crystallize them.
Fighting was then going on in South America—when are they not fighting in South America?—and Garibaldi thought he saw an opportunity to strike a blow for freedom, and so he sailed away for the equator, filled with a passion for freedom, desiring only to give himself for the benefit of humanity. Yet his heart was with "Young Italy," and that the time would come when he would return and break the fetters that the Pope had forged for the minds of men, he always knew and prophesied. Such was the firm purpose and unwavering faith of Joseph Garibaldi.
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Arriving in South America, Garibaldi took time to investigate conditions. Then he offered his services to Don Gonzales, who had set up a republic on a side street, and was fighting the power of the Emperor of Brazil.