All initiates into Young Italy were obliged to pay into the society’s funds a monthly contribution of fivepence, or more, if they were able.
When initiated each new associate had to pronounce the following promise in the presence of the initiator:
“In the name of God and Italy; in the name of all the martyrs of the holy Italian cause who have fallen under the blows of foreign or native tyranny: by the duties which bind me to my country, to the God who created me, and to the brothers God has given me; by the innate love in all men for the spot where his mother was born and her children have lived; by the shame I feel before citizens of other nations in having neither the name nor the rights of a citizen, neither national flag nor fatherland; by the memory of ancient power; by the consciousness of present abjection; by the tears of Italian mothers over sons dead on the scaffold, in dungeons, or in exile; by the misery of Italian millions: believing in a God-sent mission to Italy and the duty of every Italian born man to contribute to its accomplishment; convinced that wherever God has wished a nation to be there the necessary forces exist to create it—that the people are the depositary of this force, and in the guiding of this force by the people and with the people rests the secret of victory—I adhere to Young Italy, an association of men holding the same faith, and I swear:
“To devote myself entirely and forever to constituting a national Italy, one, independent, free, and republican; to help in every way my associated brothers; now and forever (Ora e sempre); I also swear, calling on my head the anger of God, the horror of men, and the infamy of perjury, if ever I venture to betray all or part of my oath.”
The arrangement of degrees was as simple as possible. Rejecting the interminable hierarchy of Carbonarism, the society had only two degrees: initiator and initiated. A central committee resided abroad to league themselves together as much as possible with democratic foreign elements, and generally to direct the enterprise. Signs of recognition between the affiliated were suppressed as being pre-eminently dangerous. The order word, a cut card, a special handshake, sufficed to accredit those travelling for the central committee to provincial committees and reciprocally. These signs of recognition were renewable every three months. A cypress branch (in memory of martyrs) was the symbol of the society. The general word of order, Ora e sempre, alluded to the constancy necessary to the vindication of Italian rights.[j]
FYFFE’S ESTIMATE OF MAZZINI
At a time not rich in intellectual or in moral power, the most striking figure among those who are justly honoured as the founders of Italian independence is perhaps that of Mazzini. Exiled during nearly the whole of his mature life, a conspirator in the eyes of all governments, a dreamer in the eyes of the world, Mazzini was a prophet or an evangelist among those whom his influence led to devote themselves to the one cause of their country’s regeneration. No firmer faith, no nobler disinterestedness, ever animated the saint or the patriot; and if in Mazzini there was also something of the visionary and the fanatic, the force with which he grasped the two vital conditions of Italian revival—the expulsion of the foreigner and the establishment of a single national government—proves him to have been a thinker of genuine political insight. Laying the foundation of his creed deep in the moral nature of man, and constructing upon this basis a fabric not of rights but of duties, he invested the political union with the immediateness, the sanctity, and the beauty of family life. With him, to live, to think, to hope, was to live, to think, to hope for Italy; and the Italy of his ideal was a republic embracing every member of the race, purged of the priestcraft and the superstition which had degraded the man to the slave, indebted to itself alone for its independence, and consolidated by the reign of equal law. The rigidity with which Mazzini adhered to his own great project in its completeness, and his impatience with any bargaining away of national rights, excluded him from the work of those practical politicians and men of expedients who in 1859 effected with foreign aid the first step towards Italian union; but the influence of his teaching and his organisation in preparing his countrymen for independence was immense; and the dynasty which has rendered to united Italy services which Mazzini thought impossible, owes to this great republican scarcely less than to its ablest friends.[k]
SYMONDS ON THE PROBLEMS AND THE LEADERS
Though the spirit infused into the Italians by Mazzini’s splendid eloquence aroused the people into a sense of their high destinies and duties, though he was the first to believe firmly that Italy could and would be one free nation, yet the means he sanctioned for securing this result, and the policy which was inseparable from his opinions, proved obstacles to statesmen of more practical and sober views. It was the misfortune of Italy at this epoch that she had not only to fight for independence, but also to decide upon the form of government which the nation should elect when it was constituted. All right-thinking and patriotic men agreed in their desire to free the country from foreign rule, and to establish national self-government. But should they aim at a republic or a constitutional monarchy? Should they be satisfied with the hegemony of Piedmont? Should they attempt a confederation, and if so, how should the papacy take rank, and should the petty sovereigns be regarded as sufficiently Italian to hold their thrones?
These and many other hypothetical problems distracted the Italian patriots. It was impossible for them, in the circumstances, first to form the nation and then to decide upon its government; for the methods to be employed in fighting for independence already implied some political principle. Mazzini’s manipulation of conspiracy, for instance, was revolutionary and republican; while those who adhered to constitutional order, and relied upon the arms of Piedmont, had virtually voted for Sardinian hegemony. The unanimous desire for independence existed in a vague and nebulous condition. It needed to be condensed into workable hypothesis; but this process could not be carried on with the growth of sects perilous to common action.