The Italian patriots crossed the channel and found in Protestant England the asylum which the country that had introduced the republic into modern Europe denied them.
It was then that our great friend, George Jacob Holyoake, opened his heart and his home to the patriots of Italy. For many years and at frequent intervals both Mazzini and Garibaldi were his guests, and he helped to win for them the friendship of generous men who raised the funds to continue the rebellion, which was ultimately crowned with success.
Pioneers! O, Pioneers!
I can not think of these brave men and their work without recalling Whitman's bugle call:
Pioneers! O, Pioneers!
Till with sound of trumpet,
Far, far off the daybreak call—hark, how loud and clear I hear it wind,
Swift! to the head of the army!—swift! spring to your places,
Pioneers! O, Pioneers!
But let us proceed:
One day, somewhere about 1852, the people of France, when they rose in the morning, found that their republic had disappeared. Not only was the Italian republic no more, but the French republic had gone too. The same power that had driven the republicans out of Rome had driven them out of France. As if by a sponge, the free institutions of the country and the constitution, were wiped out by one sweep of the hand. The first places which, after this coup d'etat, Napoleon III visited, were the churches. He walked up to the altar in each church which he visited on his triumphal journey through France, and knelt down for prayer and worship. How did the clergy receive him? What did they say to this betrayer of the nation, this traitor, who had violated his solemn oath? Let me reproduce the words of the oath which Napoleon took on the day of his inauguration as president of the republic:
"In the presence of God and before the people of France, I solemnly swear to remain faithful to the democratic republic, one and indivisible, and to fulfill all the duties which the Constitution imposes upon me."
What did the church say to this man who had trampled the Constitution of the country under his feet, and had commanded French soldiers to fire upon Italian republicans in the streets of Rome, and upon French republicans in the streets of Paris? History has preserved the exact words of bishops and cardinals addressed to Napoleon, the usurper: "You, sire, have re-established the principle of authority, as indispensable to the church as it is to the state." Again, "How can we worthily express our gratitude to a sovereign who has done so much for religion!" and the bishop of Grenoble proceeds to enumerate the services of Napoleon to the church: The restoration of the Pantheon to the church, which an impious government had converted to secular uses by dedicating it to the atheist poets and philosophers of France; the creation of a national fund for the saying of mass for the indigent poor; the appointment of chaplains on all vessels flying the imperial flag; the suggestion of a pension for aged priests; the granting of perfect liberty of action to the ministers of the church, which liberty of action the church will use to confirm the principle of authority and to teach the nation submission to the government and its laws. "Behold," cries the bishop, after enumerating these benefits, "our reason for the gratitude we feel." The Cardinal of Bourges, the bishops of Marseilles, of Frejus, of Aix, of Bordeaux, of Poitiers, and, in fact, of every important diocese in the country, in the same way praised Napoleon, the emperor, and declared he was the special messenger of heaven, and the saviour of Christianity, "whom God will never forsake, because in the hour when God's vicar on earth was in trouble, he saved him from his enemies."
They called Napoleon a Constantine, a Charlemagne. And the same clergy who, a few years ago, had pronounced the words, "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity," as the holiest in all the world were now busy erasing them from the public buildings and monuments of the country. If the republic was after "God's own heart," if the rights of man were first proclaimed from Calvary, as the clergy declared during the republic, why did they make almost a saint of the man who restored oppression and absolutism in France? Were they not sincere when they published in the papers that there were not in all France more loyal republicans than the Catholics? The interest of the church required the overthrow of the French republic, as it did of the Italian, and the interest of the church is first. Already in France people were displaying banners on which were inscribed the words, "God save Rome and France." Rome first. Americans beware!