“To Captain Mayne Reid.
“London, February 18, 1853.
“My Dear Sir,
“I feel myself under high obligations for the generous and chivalric manner in which you stepped forth to do me justice, when you knew me to be wronged in that ‘proclamation’ matter; as also I feel bound to lasting gratitude towards you for the noble readiness with which you gave me at once your helping hand, at my request, to aid me to reach the field of that action which I did not approve, but which, of course, I must have been anxious to join.
“Your generous assistance, which you so readily granted me, I can the more appreciate, as I am sorry to say with us there are many difficulties, even in reaching any field of honourable danger at all. We are not free to move. Evidence of it: That when not long ago my departed dear mother was on her death-bed in exile, a certain ‘constitutional’ government would allow me to go to imprint the parting kiss of filial devotion on her brow upon the condition only that I should submit to the disgraceful profanation of being accompanied by a ‘gendarme’ to my dying mother’s bed.
“I thank you, sir, most affectionately, for that your assistance, as well as your chivalric defence. I was just about myself to publish a formal disavowal of that ‘Proclamation to the Hungarian Soldiers.’ I hope you, as well as every Englishman, will appreciate my motive for not having done it earlier.
“My motive, sir, was this: that my disavowal would, of course, have been telegraphed to Austrian quarters; and, supposing the fight in Italy still pending, might have possibly done some harm to my beloved brethren in oppression, the Italians. So I took it to be my simple duty rather silently to submit to any virulent indignity than to harm the chances of the struggling patriots at Milan, who, though inconsiderately and at an ill-chosen moment, risked their life and blood and their sacred honour to free their country from insupportable oppression, and that a foreign one, too; just as England once rose and risked blood and life and sacred honour—nay, more, sent one king to the scaffold and one other into eternal exile—to free herself from oppression, though it was not a foreign one.
“The history of past revolutions is but too readily forgotten by those who now reap their fruits in peace and happiness. But I would like to recall it to memory now, when men will be but too ready to add bitter blame to the misfortune of the vanquished.
“I certainly, sir, did highly disapprove of any idea of rising in Italy now; but the failure of the unfortunate victims I will consider but as a new claim upon my compassion and sympathy. Men, in the peaceful enjoyment of freedom and prosperity, can scarcely imagine what aspirations and what thoughts can and must cross the hearts of a people suffering what Italy does. That should be borne in mind before we cast the stone of blame upon those who fell.
“I, sir, am so much penetrated by this sentiment, that, were it not for higher motives—which are entirely of no personal susceptibility that I am not permitted to take upon myself the imputation of an imprudent act which I did not commit—I, perhaps, would have preferred to be injured by letting pass in silence the whole proclamation matter, and all the venomous slander connected with it.