Carlo Alberto, melancholy as Hamlet, for the burden put upon him was greater than his strength, continued inactive, distrusted, and distrusting. His only answer was to give sharper orders against conspirators. The writer of the letter was a young Genoese of grave countenance, with a sweet mouth and sad, handsome eyes, Giuseppe Mazzini, aged twenty-six, who had already abandoned law for literature, and literature for his country. Suspected of being a Carbonaro, he had been arrested and put in prison. His father, having asked the reason, was told that "his son was a young man of talents, very fond of solitary walks at night, and habitually silent as to the subject of his meditations, and that the Sardinian government was not fond of young men of talents the subject of whose meditations it did not know." In prison Mazzini became convinced that the true aim of patriots was the unity of all Italy, and that the means should be the people, not the princes. After a few months of imprisonment he was banished. It was then that he wrote the letter.
In exile he began the task of rousing the Italian people throughout the peninsula to the need of common effort for a common end. He organized a secret society, and named it Young Italy. Its purpose was to make Italy free, united, and republican. The first article of its constitution read: "This society is instituted for the destruction, now become indispensable, of all the governments of the peninsula, and for the union of all Italy in a single state under republican government." The new society spread rapidly, and was, perhaps, the greatest individual cause of final success.
Mazzini was a master conspirator, a very St. Paul of the Risorgimento. His whole life was a passionate renunciation of all the pleasures and comforts for which most men live, and a passionate dedication of himself to his ideals. He is a striking illustration of the saying, The man whose heart is lifted up within him shall not find the path smooth before him, but the just shall live by his faith. His ideals soared higher and higher; not content with hope for Italy, he made plans for helping all Europe. He became an object of suspicion all over the Continent, and was driven from country to country, till he finally went to England, but he never ceased to preach and teach, to urge and encourage, to plot and counterplot. He believed in sacrifice, both of himself and of others, and instigated desperate uprisings. One of these, a wild invasion of Piedmont which came to nothing, is memorable because among the list of those who were subsequently proscribed for participation in it was a young seaman, a native of Nice, then a part of Savoy, Giuseppe Garibaldi. Mazzini himself stayed in England, where the cruelest accusations were made against him. He endured slander, malice, poverty, outward failure, still steadfast at his task. He says, "I have not for an instant thought that unhappiness may influence our actions." He knew Carlyle, who bore witness in his favour: "I have had the honour to know Mr. Mazzini for a series of years, and whatever I may think of his practical insight and skill in worldly affairs, I can with great freedom testify that he, if I have ever seen one such, is a man of genius and virtue, one of those rare men, numerable unfortunately but as units in this world, who are worthy to be called martyr souls; who, in silence, piously in their daily life understand and practise what is meant by that."
While Young Italy and the Carbonari worked in secret, literature continued to carry on the task of arousing enthusiasm for national achievements and national ideals. The patient piety of Silvio Pellico's "Le Mie Prigioni" was a most effective denunciation of Austrian tyranny; the plays of Giovan Battista Niccolini, of Florence, on subjects famous for Italian patriotism, were stirring appeals against despotism, civil and ecclesiastical; the romantic novels of Massimo d'Azeglio, of Piedmont, the patriot painter and statesman, reminded youth of the great days of old; other novels, passionate and patriotic, by Tommaso Grossi, of Belluno, and by Francesco Domenico Guerrazzi, of Leghorn, did likewise. These romances so pitifully uninteresting to-day did much; but a book of a different character had in its way a still more brilliant career. Vincenzo Gioberti, of Turin, began life by taking orders; he became patriotic, was suspected, imprisoned, exiled; in exile he studied, taught, and thought. In 1843 he published in Brussels "Il primato morale e civile degli Italiani" (The Moral and Civil Primacy of the Italians), a book that rehearsed the old glory of Italy and pointed out new ways by which that ancient glory might be renewed. Gioberti advocated a confederation of the Italian States (excluding the Austrian provinces) with the Pope at its head. The book had tremendous success; its ideas were accepted and became a party creed; and Gioberti is entitled to rank as one of the factors in the Risorgimento. Oddly enough, as it seems to us now, his plan was on the verge of execution.
At this time Gregory XVI was Pope, a reactionary man, devoted to ecclesiastical history, and, according to his detractors, to Orvietan wine. He showed the extreme of papal incapacity for civil administration; in the papal cities was squalor, in the country brigandage, in both dense ignorance. But on Gregory's death Cardinal Mastai-Ferretti, an amiable, smiling, charming, handsome, liberal-minded cardinal, who had applauded Gioberti, became Pius IX (July, 1846). Within a month or two Pius granted amnesty to political prisoners, appointed a commission to study the necessary reforms in his states; permitted, tacitly at least, liberty of the press; announced a Council of State to consist of lay members; and authorized the organization of a civic guard. He was hailed with enthusiasm throughout the peninsula. Here was Gioberti's ideal Pope. Here was the man to lead the Italian Guelfs and drive the Barbarians from Italy.
That the ecclesiastical head of organized conservatism, the great bulwark of authority, the maintainer of ancient things, should be hailed as a saviour by men desiring independence, freedom, and war, needs a word of further explanation. In this period of decadence and servitude, while Austrian officers played the peacock on every piazza from Milan to Naples, Italians could remember that an Italian Pope was head of the greatest corporate body in the world, that tribute was paid into his treasury from every country in Europe, that kings treated him with deference, and that from East and West hundreds of servant bishops came to the foot of his throne. These thoughts, coupled with inapplicable memories and desperate hopes, led men to regard Pius IX as the predestined leader of the liberal movement; and shouts of "Hurrah for Italy, the Pope, and the Constitution!" were heard throughout the peninsula.
Hope, too, arose in Piedmont. King Carlo Alberto received Massimo d'Azeglio in audience (1845), and bade his astonished subject tell his friends that when the occasion should present itself, his own life, his sons' lives, his treasure, and his army would all be spent for the Italian cause. A year later the king withstood Austria in a dispute over customs; and a little later still, at an agrarian congress a member rose and read a letter from the king which ended, "If ever God shall give us grace to be able to undertake a war of independence, no one but me shall command the army. Oh, what a glorious day will that be when we shall be able to utter the cry of national independence!"
Thus encouraged by king and Pope, patriots, from Piedmont to Sicily, waited in tremulous expectation for the coming of great events.