Great was the scandal produced among the liberals by this declaration of Gabelli, and greater still when he subsequently made a careful diagnosis of the evil, and prescribed a remedy—nothing less, by the bye, than a confederation similar to that proposed by Pope Pius IX. thirty-one years ago.
When the first Italian legislature assembled in Turin it was observed that nearly all the deputies formed themselves into groups, separate and divided, not politically in parties, but geographically in regions. There was the Tuscan group, the Sicilian group, the Neapolitan group, and later on the Lombard and the Venetian groups, which were the occasion of constant lamentations on the part of the Piedmontese. Then began the general struggle for power, to the almost incurable laceration of poor, real Italy. All the martyrs and confessors of the country clamored for offices in compensation for their heroic sufferings. As their number bordered on the infinite for such a puny state as Italy, so infinite was the number of positions created, and, consequently, infinite was (and continues to be) the number of peculations. But with masterly tact the Piedmontese element maintained the preponderance in power, and so great was the fury of the other patriots that they finally, with one accord, devoted all their energies to the extermination of Piedmonteseism. The molestations and bitternesses which fell to the lot of Count Cavour in the struggle that ensued were, in the opinion of many Piedmontese, among the causes which hastened his death. Whenever a new ministry was to be formed, to the personal rivalries which are inseparable from such an occasion were superadded the jealousies, the intrigues, and the pretensions of the different regions. Every region clamored for the exaltation to the ministerial bench of its own representative, not as the exponent of a political principle, but as the defender of some provincial interest. The Unità Cattolica, apropos of this, observes (September 21, 1877): “When it is a question of forming a cabinet in England, in France, in Spain, do they take care to have representatives of the various English, French, and Spanish regions? Certainly not. Personages are chosen according to their opinions, not according to the regions from which they come. But here in Italy a ministry cannot spring into existence but there enters at least one Piedmontese, one Neapolitan, one Lombard, one Sicilian, one Tuscan. Examine all our ministries, from 1861 down, and you will find that they were formed more on a regional than a political basis.” This is quite true as regards the past few years. Formerly, however, as we have already intimated, the Piedmontese held the majority in the cabinets, to the unquenchable ire of the other provincials.
Another cause of jealousy to the provinces, and the occasion, at least, of the pre-eminence of the Piedmontese, was the existence of the capital at Turin. The Peruzzi-Minghetti ministry, however, according to the convention with Napoleon III. of September 14, 1864, succeeded in having the capital transferred to Florence. This roused the hatred of the Piedmontese against the Tuscans, and was the cause of some bloody scenes in Turin. But Lanza and Sella, both Piedmontese, vindicated their countrymen by bearing the national lares away from the banks of the Arno, and enshrining them for ever, as they thought, on the banks of the Tiber. Nor did the evil disappear with the annexation of the Venetian province and the Pontifical territory. The Venetians constituted another group in Parliament, and, if the Romans did not do likewise, it was simply in default of the necessary elements, considering the aversion of the Eternal City and the neighboring provinces for the invaders. Rome became what the Baron d’Ondes Reggio predicted—a very Tower of Babel. The war of interests broke out afresh and was carried on with redoubled fury. The combatants ranged themselves into two grand divisions of northerners and southerners. The Tuscan group alone enacted the part of moderator. The Piedmontese element asserted its pre-eminence anew in Rome, and invaded not only every department of state, but extended its ruling influence even over municipal matters. The patriots of meridional Italy prepared themselves, during the intervals when a common attack against the church did not withdraw their attention from provincial feuds, to give battle to the Piedmontese, whose ascendency was stoutly maintained by Ponza di San Martino, Lanza, Sella, and General Cadorna. The language of the southern papers was in something like the following tenor: “Here we are at last in Rome! It is high time now that the patronage of the Piedmontese should be suspended, and a check put upon that political monopoly which they arrogate to themselves as a right of conquest. They gave us a dynasty—good. They also gave us a constitution, but we mean to perfect it and adapt it to the demands of progressing civilization. But in Rome Italy belongs to the Italians, not to the Piedmontese. Piedmonteseism oppresses us. Everything in the kingdom has a subalpine odor—the organic laws, bureaucratic systems, fiscal arrangements. The administrative machine is run entirely by Piedmontese. The ministers, their secretaries (with rare exceptions), the supernumeraries who lackey these—all Piedmontese. The secret offices are given to Piedmontese, and the Piedmontese enjoy the sinecures of the secret funds. The national bank itself is but a transformation of the old subalpine bank. The army is in the hands of the Piedmontese, with a Piedmontese as the Minister of War. In short, the nerve and fibre of government is Piedmontese. There must be an end of this!”
It took seven years of laborious intrigues, amalgamations, and combinations of parties to effect the downfall of the Piedmontese. Their obituary notice is dated March 18, 1876. On the same day began the reign of the Neapolitans, and within the short space of nineteen months they have so thoroughly disposed of Piedmonteseism in every branch of civil and military administration that even the word Buzzurri (chestnut-roasters), applied seven years ago by the Romans to their new masters, has become obsolete. The Venetian Gabelli has given us a description of the condition of affairs at present. In the discourse alluded to he proposes a league of the septentrionals. He says: “There is nothing, gentlemen, that drives people to an abuse of power more than the certainty of having so much of it that there is no danger of being made responsible for the abuse. The meridionals are in this position to-day, because they are supported therein by the division of the septentrionals. A part, and a great part, of our votes and forces is subordinate to the votes and forces of the meridionals. But is it true that in Parliament they vote for regional interests?” He answers in the affirmative, and adduces a series of amusing yet startling facts to prove his assertion. He then continues: “I might go on indefinitely with the enumeration of facts proving the existence of the struggle of interests between the northerners and the southerners. This struggle is real and active. Many preach that, even admitting the unfortunate existence of these divisions in the country, they should be kept secret, should not be proclaimed or discussed; above all, they should not be considered as a test in government. What would you say, gentlemen, of the logic of a physician who would reason in this wise: ‘I have a patient prostrate with typhoid fever. But, as this disease is very serious, I will hide it from myself, deny its existence; and because this disease can terminate fatally for my patient I will treat it as a simple inflammation of the bowels.’ That physician would be a fool. But would those rulers be more logical who, recognizing the existence of a condition so serious for the country, would persist in governing without taking it into account? The struggle of interests is an evil. Let us cure it. But to cure it let us begin with an exact diagnosis, and with a recognition that the evil exists. Without an exact diagnosis an efficacious cure would be a miracle. I am for unity. But the unity, and even the existence, of Italy might be threatened by mistrust in our systems of government, by the ever-increasing discontent. The country will always be governed badly, unless consideration be had for its actual condition. I am for unity. But I hold it to be fatal for Italy to pass through a crisis determined by the war of northern and southern interests. What the vicissitudes of this war will be, or who will prevail, no one can foresee. If we northerners remain united and form a compact party, our more advanced civilization, and, let us speak frankly, our honesty, more extensive and serious, will ensure for us a just predominance. If we continue to be divided, while the southerners form one phalanx, we will have to submit to the law of their interests, to the influence of a social condition entirely different from our own.”
We have said nothing in reference to Regionalism—of that faction in the liberal camp which is always conspiring against the monarchical unity of Italy, with a view of substituting a regional confederation of independent republics; nothing of the multitude of liberals who are clamoring for administrative decentralization, as a restoration, in part, of the independence in administration which was taken from the individual regions by political unity; nothing of the absolute impossibility of having a territorial army in Italy, for the reason that Regionalism might assert itself in a more material style, to the imminent peril of the government. We have simply narrated facts furnished by the liberals themselves—by legal Italy, which assumes to be the nation. Narration has the force of demonstration in this instance, and clearly establishes the fact that Regionalism exists in the very core of Italy, nay, rules supreme, regulating politics, constituting parties, biassing every discussion, and threatening, in the long run, not only the unity of the nation but the monarchy personified in the unity.
This much established, a very reasonable doubt may be put forth as to whether the unity of Italy be accomplished, even among the liberals, who arrogated to themselves the right and the faculty to unite it, spite of the nature, the history, the traditions, the genius, and the diverse and contrary interests of the Peninsula. That there is a species of unity we do not question. But it is neither moral nor organic unity, such as forms one whole, ordained to a living purpose, founded on the same principle, agreeing in its operations, harmonious in its members. It is a mechanical and artificial unity, without bonds of life, without order in purpose, without concord in action, without harmony in its parts; in short, it is merely fiscal, not national, unity. This is a logical conclusion, derived entirely from a consideration of legal Italy.
Our conclusion does not assume a more favorable aspect for the unity of Italy if we consider its passive subject—that is to say, the immense number of Italians who were united against their own wish; who never entered into the calculations of the demagogues; who, in deference to the Unity described above, have been outraged in the tenderest affections of the heart and in the most sacred rights of nature; who have gathered no other fruits from unity than regional, municipal, and domestic impoverishment; who perceive that, in the name of this unity, their nation is perverted and their religion vilified, and who consequently recognize in the government naught but an enemy of their purse, their conscience, their family, and their liberty.
From what has been said already the absurdity and, we will add, the malice of the accusation that the Papacy is the only obstacle to the perfection and enjoyment of political unity in Italy become quite apparent. The most powerful obstacle to such unity is not in the Papacy, but in the very nature of things; it is in the history of ages, in the varied character of the people, in the contrariety of the material and moral interests of the different portions of the country. Let liberalism eradicate from its bosom the gnawing worm of Regionalism; let it reconcile opposing interests, quiet regional passions, which are the seeds of civil war; and, having done this much, let it effect a unity with the real country. Until this much be accomplished, to charge the Papacy with the ill success of the national unity is absurd. It is malicious, also, inasmuch as it manifestly tends to separate the people from the Catholic Church, making them regard the spiritual head of the church and their father in the faith as an enemy of their country. Nay, were the liberals successful in effecting their daring purpose, which is the separation of the people from the see of Peter, then indeed would the political unity of Italy receive its death-blow; then indeed would the bond which unites the Italian people be severed, the bond of one faith, the bond of the only unity they really can boast of—religious unity. It were well if the demagogues of Italy bestowed the necessary consideration upon the incomparable uniting force of religion to a people, instead of promoting and hailing with delight every measure devised to destroy it. Since they deem it advisable to affect Prussian and Russian ways and means, why do they not perceive the manifest wisdom of Bismarck’s measures against the Catholic Church?—measures the fundamental purpose of which is not the extinction of the church, as much as the establishment of a firm and lasting basis to the unity of the empire in a uniformity of worship—Protestant, of course. And with this intent were the Falk laws promulgated. Russia, too, fully alive to the importance of a religious uniformity as the indestructible basis of political unity, has peopled Siberia and the squalid prisons of the empire with non-conformists to the so-called Orthodox creed of the land. Never yet was there a dynasty which did not find its main support and perpetuation in the religious unity of its subjects. True or false though the religion may have been, the principle of support was there. And Italy’s patriots, with the connivance, not to say the active concurrence, of a petty provincial dynasty, would perpetuate unity by sowing religious discord among the people; by making of a people, one in faith, in baptism, and actual religious profession, a discordant, divided multitude of Evangelicals, Calvinists, Waldensians, Quakers, Presbyterians, and Methodists. The discord produced in Italy to-day by Regionalism is a great and, in all probability, a fatal evil to the unity of the country. Add the religious disunion of the people to that caused by Regionalism, and the result will be simply chaotic.
The reader may add to these conclusions: If the Pope came to terms with Italy, as she now exists, would not the political unity of the country improve, not to say receive its formal perfection, in consequence? We answer, the hypothesis is inadmissible. Waiving the fact that, as governments are conceived nowadays, the Pope cannot be the subject of any one of them, and that he cannot in conscience accept terms from the Italian government without compromising rights which he is bound to maintain—though in fact they be trampled under foot and no human probability predict their restoration—it is sufficient for us that he declares a Non possumus. But admitting the supposition of a reconciliation, of a cession of imprescriptible rights, would the confusion which now predominates in Italy give place to order? Would the only beatitude to which Italy now aspires be realized? Would the political unity of the nation be established for ever? Would the war of interests cease? Would the interests themselves change their nature? Would the “more civilized” northerners of Italy leave off increasing their prosperity at the expense of the southerners, and these be content with contributing as taxpayers of the land, not as rulers? Would Sicilians and Calabrians live en famille with Venetians and Ligurians? Would Turin, and Venice, and Modena, and Parma, and Florence, and Naples forget that they were once the flourishing capitals of separate, independent states, and be beatified in their present condition, simply the residence of a prefect, and he a favorite of an ill-favored ministry? The glory of being made the capital of Italy presumably satisfies Rome. Think you, however, that the old city is never retrospective? If the puny provincial cities and regions, in struggling for their own regional interests and asserting their importance, cause people to yield to dark forebodings, and to re-peruse and reflect upon the history of the Italian states, what confusion could not the mistress of the world produce, were she to fall back upon her eighteen centuries of glory as the centre of Christendom?
The great obstacle to the enjoyment of political unity in Italy is not in the Vatican, but in the character, genius, history, traditions, and conflicting interests of the Italians themselves, and it is called Regionalism.