Before the Italians can, as a nation, be fit for what we call a free government, they must be better educated, and better fitted by their moral and social organisation to understand its nature and advantages. But in order to this, we must first of all see the education of the people taken up as a national object by the national clergy; and we must further see the morals of the people made a point of all-paramount importance by the same body of men, and brought forward into a place of greater prominence than the mere practices of devotion. Can it be any boon to confer the political rights of election and self-government on men who are still plunged in the depths of complete ignorance? Can it be of any use to call upon a nation for the exercise of public virtues, when social and domestic virtues do not exist among them? Before the Italians can be constituted as a nation of freemen, they must be formed into families of virtuous citizens, in which decency and the natural exercise of the affections may be firmly established. For if there be one political axiom more fully demonstrated by the voice of history than another, it is this, that public freedom can never exist where private vice preponderates over private virtue; and where the sacred ties of domestic virtue do not prevail, it is in vain to look for the bonds of public good. It was the domestic vices of the ancient Romans that first weakened the empire; and until their degenerate descendants shall have awakened from their moral lethargy, that empire, that national power, shall not rise again. It is, therefore, a favourable indication for Italy, that the movement should have commenced with the head of the national religion; for it may be hoped that a proper course will be adopted by the ecclesiastical authorities, and that the amelioration of all ranks and orders of men, clerical as well as lay, will precede and accompany the dawn of Italian independence. As long as the Italians remain in the state of moral weakness which, for so many centuries, they have exhibited, they need never expect to escape from the sway of the more virtuous nations of the north: they will never be able to face the Germans, whether in the cabinet or the field, until they learn to emulate them in the purity of their national character.
It may very well be doubted whether any of the Italians, and, indeed, any of their Transmontane admirers, know what is really fitted for them in political institutions—what will really do them good—what is really suited to the genius of the people and the requirements of the country. Political institutions are like plants that cannot always bear transferring from one region to another: they require the process of becoming acclimatised, and, on their first introduction into a new country, demand the fostering shelter of the hot-house and the gardener's constant care. Because a representative constitution is supposed to be the acme of human wisdom in the latitude of Great Britain, it does not therefore follow that it will flourish so far south as Naples; and because a national guard is reckoned the ne plus ultra of national institutions at Paris, we are by no means sure that, it would produce any good results at Rome. It seems, in fact, to us to be one of the monomanias of the present age, that the same Procrustean bed of representative government is laid out for all people that think they require more political liberty than they are at present in possession of; and should the inhabitants of Timbuctoo, of Canton, of Tobolsk, of Alexandria, and of Morocco, take it into their heads, some fine day, to send deputations to the united quidnuncs of London and Paris, requesting the transmission of constitutions for their several states, we have no doubt that a couple of legislative houses, and a corps of national guards, à pied et à cheval, would be immediately recommended, as equally applicable to their several wants. It seems to be the privilege of civilised Europeans to think that the right of governing themselves is the essence of civil freedom: far more true, in the vast majority of cases, would it be to say, that it constituted the essence of political thraldom. It is a social truth, most unpalatable to ninety-nine-hundredths of mankind, but not therefore the less true, that ninety-nine men out of a hundred are not fit to govern themselves, even in the relations of social life, and far less in those of political. And so it is with nations: for one nation that has really prospered under the plan of self-government, there are ninety-nine that have brought on themselves evils which, under a less popular system, they would have avoided. If the physical and social condition of a people be taken as a test; if the durability of their institutions, if the dignity and influence of their government, be quoted, as proofs of the advantages of their several forms of political institutions, we really know not any constitutional form to which, ceteris paribus, we could appeal as deciding the question against those of a monarchical tendency. If the privilege of taxing themselves to an amount that defies all power of redemption, and cripples the resources of the nation to a point that menaces its existence as an independent power, in the struggle of nations; if the freedom of conducting commercial affairs in such a manner that every seventh year shall bring the whole trading interests of a country to the very verge of bankruptcy; if the balancing of the influence of the several classes so badly, that at length the lower threaten to swallow up the upper in a wild flood of irreligion and anarchical spoliation; if the system of "propter vitam vivendi perdere causas" be adopted as the acme of perfection—if all this be considered fit and proper, then let a constitutional monarchy be preached up as the model for every nation under the sun. But we cannot wish so ill to any of our fellow-men as to advise them to relinquish present good, however small, for the prospect of such evil, however seductive. We do not approve of plying the poor Red man with fiery liquors till his tribe becomes exterminated; and in the same way we would withhold the intoxicating draught of self-government from the lips of those people who hitherto have sucked in their milk, as babes, at the hands of others.
To us it is a bad sign that the Italians should be calling out for representative assemblies, and for national guards. They are not fit for the former, nor can they be so for the next hundred years—we should not congratulate them even if they obtained these dangerous tools, wherewith to play at the hazardous game of legislation: and as for national guards, they do not want them, inasmuch as nobody is going to invade them; and if an invasion were made by a northern nation, we know, by long experience, that the national guard would be perfectly useless. The Italians "don't fight;" they bluster and talk big, like the Spaniards, and run away ere the first shot is fired. Ten thousand Germans or Frenchmen, may march from one end of Italy to the other without meeting any man that dares fire at them, except from behind a rock or a stone wall. The Italians must be made of sterner stuff, before they take upon themselves the responsibility of bearing arms.
The position of the several sovereigns in Italy is such, that their opposition to the wishes of Austria, if that opposition be real, creates in us some surprise. The King of Sardinia ought to know, by the long and sad experience of those who have preceded him on his slippery throne, that there is no chance of safety for him in a European struggle, unless he depends on the House of Austria. France always has been, and always will be, a treacherous neighbour to Piedmont; and she will never cease coveting Savoy until she has made it her own, or has been deprived even of the power of envy. The Grand Duke of Tuscany is so closely related to the Emperor that family interests alone ought to make their policy identical; and the King of Naples, like the King of Sardinia, has no firmer support for his foreign power than the friendship and countenance of the Court of Schönbrunn. The Pope is certainly an independent prince, and at his wish to keep the Holy See free from all foreign influence we cannot feel surprised: it is the healthiest, because the least unnatural, symptom of the whole crisis.
For Austria, we can well conceive that the prudent and cautious policy of that ably conducted monarchy must dictate excessive jealousy and suspicion of these popular movements. Austria, more than any other power in Europe, has the truest cause to pride itself on the good results of its peculiar system of government, as demonstrated by the solid and practical wellbeing of the States under its paternal sway. As much as any state of the Continent has it cause to abhor those systems of anarchy which, under the guise of patriotism, lead only to revolution and misery: and as one of the great conservators of the monarchical principle in politics, it is called upon, by its very station and dignity, to check rather than to encourage what may very possibly prove to be only a spurious attempt to gain licentiousness, rather than freedom. Lombardy, no doubt, is allied to its illustrious rulers most unwillingly; but it does not therefore follow that it would be in the least degree more prosperous and happy if left to itself. On the contrary, we have no doubt that, could Lombardy receive at once the full license to establish its own form of government, it would split into as many petty states as there are large cities in it, and would be plunged into all the horrors of civil contest. It is a most fortunate thing for the north of Italy that it is under the strong hand of the most steady and respectable power in Europe—one whose rulers will never set it a bad example, who are able to protect it from all aggression, and who watch over its social and internal progress with unceasing care. The Lombards, like the Irish agitators, may cry out for "Repeal of the Union;" but the granting of that repeal would be the signing of the death-warrant of national prosperity. Austria is no enemy to rational, well-balanced liberty: there is no country in the world where real liberty and happiness are more widely diffused, or more intensely felt. Its people are free from the clamours of noisy and frothy patriotism, which, when stripped of its false clothing, proves nothing more than vulgar and self-interested ambition. They enjoy all the blessings of good government, and are able each man to sit under his own fig tree, and to see all around him in a state of unmixed prosperity. Such a power as this will not readily give way to the declamations and "pronunciations" of the rabble; it will rather wait for the amelioration of the national character; and, when it finds its subjects fit for some of the introductory processes of self-government, it will concede them.
We could wish to see the other powers of Italy taking advice from Austria, and not hastening onwards too rapidly along that path, wherein a return is so unpleasant and so difficult. Far better would it be for them to be too slow than too hasty with political innovation: the safety of such a retardatory course is certain, whereas the success of a more rapid advance is exceedingly problematical.
As for England, whatever tends to the real benefit of Italy must tend also to her advantage. She has so many commercial, if not political relations with that country, that the well-being of a considerable class of her customers cannot but promote the interests of her own traders. But Italy revolutionised will not be the Italy that now imports large quantities of our goods, and that pays for them in valuable products of first-rate necessity to the English consumer. Italy, well governed and prosperous, will always offer a good mart for British goods; and therefore, upon this ground alone, Great Britain is especially concerned to see that the Peninsula remains quiet and healthy. But, to take a higher view of the state of things, it is the true interest of England—whatever Radical orators and Whig statesmen may think—to ally herself with the friends of order in Europe, and to avoid all connexion with the promoters of wars and tumults. France would be delighted at seeing Italy convulsed from one end to the other, were not the crafty occupant of her throne afraid of thereby injuring the solidity of his own dynasty. But for England, there can be no second course to pursue; and having gained her own freedom through the long experience and the severe trials of centuries, she can never honestly encourage other nations to hope for similar results by the proceedings of a few months and weeks. If she does, or rather if her ministers tamper with the revolutionary party in Italy, or elsewhere, instead of supporting the cause of steady government, she abdicates the high position she holds in the European family, and deserves to lose those multifarious advantages,—those numerous possessions, which she holds only on the tenure of being the great supporter of reasonable freedom, and international justice.