It is the change in government—the fatal change in the political destiny of the Italian, which has wrought this melancholy change in his whole nature. When this beautiful land was covered with leagues of independent states, inspired with the genius of liberty and political independence,—the stimulating influence of the government was felt every where—it animated and aroused all—it communicated the spirit of activity and enterprise, the love of home and the ardent love of country to all the citizens alike—from the proud lord of Venice, whose stately palace was lashed by the wave of the Adriatic, to the poor peasant whose thatched and humble cottage lay in some secluded solitary hollow of the Alps or the Appenines. Under this system of government there was no favored spot upon which the treasures of the nation were expended; there was no Thebes, no Babylon, no imperial Rome built up, adorned and beautified by the degradation and utter prostration of all the rest. We might almost say of Italy what has been affirmed of Omnipotence itself—its centre was every where, its circumference no where. Every little independent state, no matter how limited its area or small its population, had its great men, its thriving cities, its noble monuments. The little Florentine democracy with but eighty thousand souls, had more great men within its limits than any of the great kingdoms of Europe; and all were animated with the spirit of patriotism, of industry,13 of learning.
13 "The habit of industry," says Sismondi, "was the distinctive characteristic of the Italians even to the middle of the 15th century. The first rank at Florence, Venice, and Genoa, was occupied by merchants; and the families who possessed the offices of the state, of the church or the army, did not for that reason give up their business. Philip Strozzi, brother-in-law of Leo X, the father of Mareschal Strozzi, and the grandfather of Capua, the friend of several sovereigns, and the first citizen of Italy, remained even to the end of his life chief of a banking house. He had seven sons, but in spite of his immense fortune, he suffered none of them to be brought up in idleness."
No wonder then that the citizens of Italy should have prospered amid their domestic broils, their factions, their revolutions—even amid the sanguinary conflicts of the Guelph and the Ghibeline. If the energy and elasticity of the mind be not destroyed by the pressure of despotism, it is curious to contemplate the wonderfully recuperative powers of man, and to behold the appalling difficulties which he can surmount, undismayed and unscathed. You may prostrate him to day, but the energy and vitality that is within him will raise him up on the morrow.14 Of all sorts of destruction, of every kind of death, that is the worst, because the most productive of melancholy consequences, which reaches the mind itself. That system of government which slays the mind, is the system which, at the same time reaches the sanctuary of the heart, overthrows the purity of morals, and forges the fetters for the slave. And such a government as this have the Spaniard the Frenchman and the German rivetted but too fatally upon Italy. The day that saw those modern Goths and Vandals pouring their mercenary hordes over the Alps to rob and plunder, was a black day for Italy, and well might the friend of that lovely land have then exclaimed in the language of the poet,
| "Oh! Rome, the spoiler or the spoil of France, From Brennus to the Bourbon, never, never Shall foreign standard to thy walls advance, But Tiber shall become a mournful river." |
14 Whilst Italy was free, there was no country which could repair its losses with so much despatch; the town that was sacked and burnt to-day, would be built up and stored with wealth on the morrow, and the losses of one excited the sympathies and support of all those engaged in the same cause. When the Emperor Frederic carried fire and sword through the Milanese territory, and left the treasury of that state completely exhausted, we are told that the rich citizens soon replenished it from their private purses, contenting themselves in the mean time with coarse bread, and cloaks of black stuff. And at the command of their consuls they left Milan to join their fellow citizens in rebuilding with their own hands the walls and houses of Tortona, Rosata, Tricate, Galiate, and other towns, which had suffered in the contest for the common cause.
The independence of the little states of Italy is now gone, and with it all the real greatness of that country. The power that now sways the Italian, emanates from a nation situated afar off on the banks of the Danube. And can we wonder while the Austrian soldier stands sentinel in the Italian cities, that their citizens should
"Creep,
Crouching and crab-like, through their sapping streets."
But enough of a spectacle so sad as this!15
15 Small states, if truly independent, are very favorable to the production of great characters, and even great virtues. "The regeneration of liberty in Italy," says Sismondi, "was signalized still more, if it were possible, by the development of the moral, than by that of the intellectual character of the Italians. The sympathy existing among fellow-citizens, from the habit of living for each other, and by each other—of connecting every thing with the good of all, produced in those republics virtues which despotic states cannot even imagine." But the moment the independence of the small states is destroyed by the overshadowing and overawing influence of larger ones, then does the system work the most disastrous consequences upon the political, moral, and literary character of the citizens. A little state overawed by a large one, instantly has recourse to cunning, intrigue, and duplicity, to accomplish its ends. Cæsar Borgia in Italy, says Mr. Hume, had recourse to more villainy, hypocrisy, and meanness, to get possession of a few miles of territory, than was practised by Julius Cæsar, Zenghis, or Tamerlane for the conquest of a large portion of the world. Hence we are not to wonder that Italy should become the most infamous of all schools, in the production of subtile, intriguing, hypocritical politicians, and that the literature should soon become as corrupt as the political morals of the country. The Marini, the Achillini in poetry, and the Bernini in the arts, had a reputation similar to that of Concini, Mazarini, Catherine, and Mary di Medici in politics.
Did the limits which I have prescribed to myself in this address allow it, I could easily adduce the history of the Swiss Cantons, the Netherlands and Holland, the Hanseatic League, the little states formerly around the Baltic, and even the Germanic Confederation, as confirmation strong of the truth of the positions which I have taken in favor of the federative system. Indeed I might go farther than this, and show that the feudal aristocracy of the middle ages, horrible as was its oppression, calamitous as were its petty wars, and feuds, and dissensions, intolerable as was that anarchical confusion which it generated in Europe towards the close of the tenth century, was nevertheless the instrument which kept alive the mind of man in the great nations of Christendom, by splitting up the powers of government among the Baronial Lords, and thereby preventing that fatal tendency to centralism and consolidation, which would inevitably have shrouded the mind of Europe in inextricable darkness. Far be from me that vain presumption which would dare to scan the mysterious plans of Providence; but I have always thought that the regeneration of the mind of Europe required that the barbarian should come from the North and the East—that an Alaric, a Genseric and an Attila, should pour out the vials of their wrath upon the Roman's head—that the monstrous, corrupt and gigantic fabric of his power might be broken to pieces by barbarian hordes, who had not the genius and political skill requisite to establish another great military despotism on its ruins.