[1831 A.D.]
In 1831, a young Genoese, Giuseppe Mazzini [born in 1808], obtained celebrity by the publication of a letter in which he exhorted Charles Albert, who had just succeeded to the throne, to undertake the liberation of Italy. The boldness and self-confidence displayed in this production was admired by the cervelli bollenti of the day; and the exiles and refugees, whose disappointment was recent and who were smarting under persecution, were predisposed towards one whose counsels were uttered with oracular authority, and who cheered them with new and undefined hopes.
Mazzini soon became the acknowledged centre of the new sect, of which the establishment was contemporary with that of “Young France” and “Young Germany,” and which was intended to transform and assimilate those already in existence, and to give them unity of purpose and command.[30][f]
SASSONE ON MAZZINI AND “YOUNG ITALY”
Giuseppe Mazzini
(1808-1872)
To reconstruct a nation torn and bowed down under the most enervating of clerical and monarchal despotisms requires first of all the creation of citizens and the organisation of a large and strong association based on national right. An association depending on the entire people and opening up to them at the same time a larger horizon than the miserable position they had occupied in the peninsula—such was the generous idea which fermented in the head of Mazzini, that great exile of Italian independence, when he took up at Marseilles his idea already elaborated during his captivity at Savona and founded the society and paper of “Young Italy.” It was under the influence of the same principles, and driven by his unshakable faith in the future of Italy, that he, with several friends devoted like himself to the popular cause, undertook to develop the intelligence of poor Italian workmen in London.
The statutes of the new society destined to replace the Carbonari, and created by Mazzini and a group of exiles, was based on national law and accessible to all Italians. By its strong popular organisation it was destined to keep the Austrian forces in perpetual check over the whole peninsula until the day of help. And thus by the simplicity of its resources it would defy the surveillance of a most vigilant police. Religious ideas and patriotic thoughts were blended and confounded in the thoughts of this apostle of Italian liberty. They might be summed up in two words—Dio e popolo.
The object of Young Italy was inscribed on its national banner of red, green, and white: on one side it bore the words, “Liberty, Equality, Humanity;” on the other, “Unity, Independence.”