Chapter VII. Garibaldi—Denmark. (1864)
There are in Europe two great questions: the question called social and the question of nationalities.... The map of Europe has to be re-made.... I affirm with profound conviction that this movement of nationalities has attained in Italy, in Hungary, in Vienna, in a great part of Germany, and in some of the Slavonian populations, a degree of importance that must at no distant period produce decisive results.... The first war-cry that arises will carry with it a whole zone of Europe.—Mazzini (1852).
I
“My confidence in the Italian parliament and people,” Mr. Gladstone wrote to Lacaita at the end of 1862, “increases from day to day. Their self-command, moderation, patience, firmness, and forethought reaching far into the future, are really beyond all praise.” And a few days later, again to Lacaita—“Your letter proves that the king has not merely got the constitutional lesson by rote—though even this for an Italian king would be much; but that the doctrine has sunk into the marrow and the bone.” The cause was won, and the work of construction went forward, but not on such lines as Cavour's master-hand was likely to have traced. Very early Mr. Gladstone began to be uneasy about Italian finance. “I am sure,” he wrote to Lacaita in April 1863, “that Italian freedom has no greater enemy in the Triple Crown or elsewhere, than large continuing deficits.”
As events marched forward, the French occupation of Rome became an ever greater scandal in Mr. Gladstone's eyes. He writes to Panizzi (October 28, 1862):—
My course about the Emperor has been a very simple one. It is not for me to pass gratuitous opinions upon his character or [pg 108] that of French institutions, or on his dealings with them. I believe him to be firmly attached to the English alliance, and I think his course towards us has been, on almost every occasion, marked by a friendliness perhaps greater and more conspicuous than we have always deserved at his hands. It is most painful to me to witness his conduct with regard to Italy.... He conferred upon her in 1859 an immense, an inestimable boon. He marred this boon in a way which to me seemed little worthy of France by the paltry but unkind appropriation of Nice in particular. But in the matter of Rome he inflicts upon Italy a fearful injury. And I do not know by what law of ethics any one is entitled to plead the having conferred an unexpected boon, as giving a right to inflict a gross and enduring wrong.[78]
It was in 1862 that Mr. Gladstone made his greatest speech on Italian affairs.[79] “I am ashamed to say,” he told the House, “that for a long time, I, like many, withheld my assent and approval from Italian yearnings.” He amply atoned for his tardiness, and his exposure of Naples, where perjury was the tradition of its kings; of the government of the pope in the Romagna, where the common administration of law and justice was handed over to Austrian soldiery; of the stupid and execrable lawlessness of the Duke of Modena; of the attitude of Austria as a dominant and conquering nation over a subject and conquered race;—all this stamped a decisive impression on the minds of his hearers. Along with his speech on Reform in 1864, and that on the Irish church in the spring of 1865, it secured Mr. Gladstone's hold upon all of the rising generation of liberals who cared for the influence and the good name of Great Britain in Europe, and who were capable of sympathising with, popular feeling and the claims of national justice.
II
Reception Of Garibaldi