It is true that the pamphlet was brought to me by Mr. Adams, entitled, "Tyrannicide: A Justification." What really took place on my part, as I distinctly remember, was this. I said: "I was unwilling to publish a pamphlet of that nature which did not bear the name of the writer," which the MS. did not. The author answered that "a name added no force to an argument; besides, his name was unimportant, if put on the tide-page," which was reasonably and modestly said. My reply was, "That in an affair of murder, 'Justification' was a recommendation, and that any one acting on his perilous suggestion ought to know who was his authority." Nothing more was said by me. The writer made no offer to add his name to his MS., nor to meet my objection by a less assertive title. As any prosecution for publishing it would be against me, and not against him, I thought I had a right to an opinion as to the title and authorship of the work I might have to defend. It was afterwards issued by Mr. Truelove, a bookseller of courage and public spirit, but who suggested the very changes I had indicated to the author; and by Mr. Truelove's desire the author not only gave his name, but changed the title into "Tyrannicide: Is it Justifiable?" which was quite another matter. It asked the question; it no longer decided it.
As to Mazzini, it is impossible I could have said what is imputed to me. I was not "in negotiation with Mazzini" "to write anything upon the Orsini affair. I knew he would not do so. Orsini, as I have said, concealed his plot from Mazzini, who never incited it, never approved it, never justified it—he deplored it. Only enemies of Mazzini sought to connect him with it. If I left this story uncontradicted, it might creep into history that, in spite of the disclaimers of Mazzini's friends, he actually "entered into negotiation" to write in defence of Orsini's attempt, which must imply concurrence with the deplorable method Orsini unhappily took; and, moreover, that a publisher, regarded as being in Mazzini's confidence, had, in an open, unqualified way, told a writer on assassination of it. The publisher was speedily arrested on the issue of the pamphlet, as I should have been, but that would not have deterred me from publishing it in a reasonable and responsible form.
Soon after I printed and published a worse pamphlet by Felix Pyat, which was signed by "A Revolutionary Committee." The Pyat pamphlet was under prosecution at the time I voluntarily published it. As what I did I did openly—I wrote to the Government apprising them of what I was doing.
Besides, I commenced to issue serial "Tyrannicide Literature," commencing with pamphlets written by Royalist advocates of assassination. Because I did not publish the Adams Tyrannicide pamphlet right off without inquiry or suggestion, I was freely charged with refusing to do it from fear. No one seems to have been informed of the reasons I gave for declining. No one inquired into the facts. Adversaries of those days did not take the trouble. But, as I had to take the consequences of what I did, I thought I had a right to take my own mode of incurring them.
On the last night of Orsini's life, Mazzini and a small group of the friends both of Orsini and himself, of which I was one, kept vigil until the morning, at which hour the axe in La Roquette would fall.
The favourite charge of the press against the great conspirator was that he advised others to incur danger, and kept out of it himself. This was entirely untrue—but it did not prevent it being said. The principle these critics go upon is, that whoever is capable of advising and directing others, should do all he can to get himself shot—a doctrine which would rid the army of all its generals, and the offices of all newspapers of their editors. Upon Mazzini's life the success of twenty small cohorts of patriots depended, ready to give their lives for Italy. Mazzini was not only the commander of the army of Liberation, but, as has been indicated, the provider of its reserves, its commissariat and recruits. His life was also of priceless value to other struggling peoples. He was the one statesman in Europe who had a European mind—who knew the peoples of the Continent, whose knowledge was intimate, and whose word could be trusted. So far from avoiding danger, he was never out of it. With a price set upon his head in three countries, hunted by seven Governments, with spies always following him and by assassins lying in ambush, his life for forty years passed in more peril than any other public man of his time. Yet it was fashionable to charge him with want of courage whose whole "life," to use his own phrase, "was a battle and a march."
Could there be a doubt of the intrepidity of a man who, with the slender forces of insurgent patriots, confronted Austria with its 600,000 bayonets.
No sooner was Garibaldi in Rome than Mazzini was there in the streets inspiring its defenders. What dangers he passed through to reach Rome, knowing well that his arrest meant death!
Rome was not a safe place for Mazzini, neither was London. His life was never safe. I have been asked by his host to walk home with him at night from a London suburban villa where he dined, because a Royalist assassin was known to be in London waiting to kill him.
Mazzini died at Pisa, March 10, 1872, from chill by walking over the Alps in inclement weather, intending to visit his English friends once more. A few of his English colleagues protested against his embalmment. I was not one. Gorini, the greatest of his profession, undertook to transform the body into marble, and for him Mazzini had friendship. Dr. Bertani, Mazzini's favourite physician, approved embalming. It could not be done by more reverent hands. How could England—who disembowelled Nelson and sent his body home in a cask of rum; who embalmed Jeremy Bentham, and took out O'Connell's heart, sent it to one city, and his mutilated remains to another—reproach Italy for observing the national rites of their illustrious dead?