Rule of the Monk; Or, Rome in the Nineteenth Century

by Giuseppe Garibaldi

NOTE 5.

An attempt has recently been made to give to the so-called Moderate party the merit of planning a United Italy. Mr. Stansfield, one of the Lords of the Admiralty, whose recent efforts to reform his department have already earned for him the gratitude of the English people, says: "Italy has already accomplished of her unity so much that no policy save that of an absolute completion of the task is any longer to be dreamed of or suggested, and considering, too, how predominantly the credit and the practical fruits of that success have, in the opinion of the world and in the possession of power, inured to the benefit of the Moderate party, it would seem natural to imagine that they too must have had the unity of their country long in view, and that they can have differed only from the National party as to the policy best adapted to the attainment of a common object; and yet I believe the acceptance of the idea of Italian unity, as an object of practical statesmanship, by the leaders of the Moderate party, must be admitted to be of a very recent date. I will go back to Gioberti, who was the founder of that party. In the Sardinian Chambers on the 10th of February, 1849, on the eve of the short campaign which ended in the defeat of Novara, Gioberti said: 'I consider the unity of Italy a chimera; we must be content with its union. And if you look to the writings, the speeches, the acts of all the leading men of the Moderate party until a very recent period, you will find them all, without exception, not only not propounding or advocating unity, or directed to its accomplishment, but explicitly directed to a different solution. You will find the proof of what I say in Balbo's 'Hopes of Italy;' in Durando's 'Essay on Italian Nationality,' advocating three Italies, north, centre, and south; in Bianchi Gioviners work entitled 'Mazzini and his Utopias;' and in Gualterio's 'Revolutions of Italy.' Minghetti, Ricasoli, Farini each and all have been the advocates of a confederation of princes rather than of a united Italy. Let me come to Cavour. An attempt has recently been made to claim for him the credit of having since the days of his earliest manhood conceived the idea of making himself the minister of a future united Italy. In an article in the July Quarterly, by a well-known pen, a letter of Cavour, written about 1829 or 1830, is cited in implied justification of this claim. He had been placed under arrest a short time in the Fort de Bard, on account of political opinions expressed with too much freedom. In a letter to a lady who had written condoling with him on his disgrace, he says:—'I thank you, Madame la Marquise, for the interest which you take in my disgrace; but believe me, for all that, I shall work out my career. I have much ambition—an enormous ambition; and when I become minister I hope to justify it, since already in my dreams I see myself Minister of the Kingdom of Italy.' Now this is, I need not say, a most remarkable letter, and of the greatest interest, as showing the confidence in his own future, at so early an age, of one of the greatest statesmen of our times. But no one acquainted with the modern history of Italy, and familiar with its recognized phraseology, could read in this letter the prophecy of that unity which is now coming to pass. The 'Kingdom of Italy,' is a well-known phrase borrowed from the time of Napoleon, and has always meant, until facts have enlarged its significance, that the kingdom of Northern Italy, whose precedent existed under Napoleon, which was the object of Piedmontese policy in '48 and '49, and one of the explicit terms of the contract of Pombier's in '59. It is rather a curious inconsistency in the article in question, that in itself furnishes ample evidence that the unity of Italy was not part of the practical programme of the Moderate party. 'Cavour,' we are told, founded in 1847 with his friends, Cesare Balbo, Santa Rosa, Buoncampagni, Castelli, and other men of moderate constitutional views, the Risorgimento, of which he became the editor; and the principles of the new periodical were announced to be 'independence of Italy, union between the princes,' and the people's progress in the path of reform, and a league between the Italian States." Again, after saying that it was Ricasoli and the leaders of the constitutional party who recalled (in '49) the Grand Ducal family to Tuscany, and that Geoberti proposed the return of the Pope to Rome, the writer goes on to say, "It was an immense advantage to the restored princes to have been thus brought back by the most intelligent and moderate of their subjects. All that the wisest and most influential men in Italy asked, was a federal union of the different states in the Peninsula, upon a liberal and constitutional basis, from which even the House of Austria was not to be excluded."

I must trouble you with one more quotation. At the Conference of Paris in 1855, after the Crimean war, Piedmont was represented by Cavour, who brought before the assembled statesmen the condition of Italy, but unable to enter fully into the Italian question, he addressed two state papers on it to Lord Clarendon. His plan—at any rate, for the temporary settlement of the question—was a confederation of Italian States with constitutional institutions, and a guaranty of complete independence from the direct interference and influence of Austria; and the secularization of the legations with a lay vicar under the suzerainty of the Pope. At that time he would have been even willing to acquiesce in the occupation of Lombardy by Austria, had she bound herself to keep within the limits of the treaty of 1815.

Now you can not, I think, have failed to note the glaring inconsistency of these praises of what is called the moderation of Cavour, with the assumption to him and to his party of the whole credit of Italian unity, and the theory, now too prevalent, that no other party has contributed any thing but follies and excesses, impediments, not aids, to the accomplishment of the great task. I believe such ideas to be as profoundly ungenerous and unjust as they are evidently self-contradictory, and I believe that they will be adjudged by history to be, so far as they are in any degree in good faith, superficial, partial, and utterly incapable of serving as any explanation of the method of the evolution of the great problem of Italian nationality.

Now let another witness be called into court, the late Prime Minister of Italy, Farina, on the authority of the Turin Times correspondent, who wrote September 12,1861: "You have not forgotten that in the Jemilia, Farina used, with great bitterness, to complain of the worthlessness of the Moderate party in time of trial and strife."*—From "Garibaldi and Italian Unity" by Lieut.-Col. Chambers, 1864.

* Count Cavour wrote from Paris In 1866 to M. Rattazzi the
following "I have seen Mr. Manin. He is a very good man, but
he always talks about the unity of Italy, and such other
tomfooleries." Also La Larina, Cavour's agent in Italy in
1860, published in that year the following explanation of
his differences with General Garibaldi:—He stated, "I
believed, and still believe, that the only salvation for
Sicily is the constitutional government of Victor Emanuel."
This explanation was published before Garibaldi crossed to
the main land; and had Cavour gained his point, and obtained
annexation, the kingdom of Naples would now have been under
Bourbon rule.

END.