As for Dalmatia, where also the Italian-speaking population was not
fundamentally Italian by race or sentiments, we may turn to the
renowned Nicolo Tommaseo, whose authority the Italians do not dispute.
"We must not abolish the Italian language," he said--and this was in
the year 1861--"for it would be a dream of fools to wish or hope to be
able to abolish it immediately in public life without causing offence
and confusion and injury even for those who speak Illyrian; this would
be a tyranny the more abominable as it would be powerless ... because
the Illyrian tongue, as is the case more or less with all the Slav
languages, spoken by nations which up to the present have not entirely
participated in the abstractions of science and in the refinements of
European art, is not as yet equipped with all that reserve of terms
and locutions which is demanded in a highly developed social life,
_although that language possess in itself all the elements_." This
capacity which he recognized in the Slav languages and which came
subsequently to the surface in Russian and Czech literature, would, he
said, in two generations cause the Slav to be employed as the official
language of Dalmatia. He stipulated for two generations "because, in
the first place, it is necessary that this language should be learned
regularly in the schools from the lowest to the highest class, without
for that reason ever banishing Italian; and secondly, it is requisite
that men should become skilful in the use of this language and should
render it adequate for the needs of social life."