THE RELIGIOUS SIDE OF THE ITALIAN QUESTION.
I.
I have of late frequently been asked by my English friends why it is that I decline to return to my country, and to associate my own efforts for the moral and political advancement of Italy with those of her governing classes. "The amnesty has opened up a path for the legal dissemination of your ideas," they tell me. "By taking the place already repeatedly offered you among the representatives of the people, you would secure to those who hold the helm of the state the support of the whole Republican party. Do you not, by throwing the weight of your name and influence on the side of the malcontents, increase the difficulties of the government, and prolong the fatal want of moral and political unity, without which the mere material fact of union is barren, and unproductive of benefit to the people?"
The question is asked by serious men, who wish my country well, and is therefore deserving of a serious answer.
Before treating the personal matter, however, let me say that, since 1859, the Republican party has done precisely what my English friends required it to do. The Italian Republicans have actually assisted and upheld the government with an abnegation worthy of all praise,—sacrificing even their right of Apostolate to the great idea of Italian unity. Perceiving that the nation was determined to give monarchy the benefit of a trial, they have—in that reverence for the national will which is the first duty of Republicans—patiently awaited its results, and endured every form of misgovernment rather than afford a pretext to those in power for the non-fulfilment of their declared intention of initiating a war to regain our own territory and true frontier,—a war without which, as they well knew, the permanent security and dignity of Italy were impossible, and which, had it been conducted from a truly national point of view, would have wrought the moral redemption of our people.
The monarchy, however, which, as I pointed out in my article on "The Republican Alliance," had had five years to prepare, and was in a position to take the field with thirty-five thousand regular troops, one hundred thousand mobilized National Guards, thirty thousand volunteers under Garibaldi, and the whole of Italy ready to act as reserve, and make any sacrifices in blood or money, abruptly broke off the war after the unqualifiable disasters of Custozza and Lissa, at a signal from France,—basely abandoning our true frontier, the heroic Trentino,—and accepted Venice as an alms scornfully flung to us by the man of the 2d of December.
I may be told that a people of twenty-four millions who tamely submit to dishonor deserve it.
I admit it; but it must not be forgotten that our masses are uneducated, and that it is the natural tendency of the uneducated to accept their rulers as their guides, and to govern their own conduct by the example of their soi-disant superiors; and I assert that, if our people have no consciousness of their great destiny, nor sense of their true power and mission,—if, while twenty-four millions of Italians are at the present day grouped around, I will not say the conception of unity, but the mere unstable fact of union, the great soul of Italy still lies prostrate in the tomb dug for her three centuries ago by the Papacy and the Empire,—the cause is to be found in the immorality and corruption of our rulers.
The true life of a people must be sought in the ruling idea or conception by which it is governed and directed.