Their future is secured, their two names will stand high and radiant
throughout all Italy, from Fiume to Messina, and will be more and more
exalted throughout all gloomy Europe as her people grow pettier and the
general level sinks.
But I doubt whether Italy will follow the programme of the great
_carbonaro_ and the great warrior. Their religion has worked miracles; it
has awakened thought, it has lifted the sword, it has been the trumpet
awakening the sleepers, the standard under which Italy has conquered
herself.... Half of Mazzini’s ideal has been accomplished, precisely
because the other half lay far beyond the possible. That Mazzini now
has grown weaker shows his success and greatness; he is the poorer for
that part of his ideal which has passed into reality, it is the weakness
after giving birth. In sight of the shore Columbus had but to float, and
had no need to use all the might of his invincible spirit. We have had
experiences something like it in our circle.... Where now is the force
given to our words in the past by our struggle against serfdom, against
the lack of all justice, of all freedom of speech?
Rome is Mazzini’s America ... there are no more elements strong enough to
survive in his programme, it has been based on the struggle for unity and
for Rome.
‘And the democratic republic?’
That is the great reward beyond the grave, with the hope of which men
have advanced into action and achievement, and in which the prophets and
martyrs have fervently and earnestly believed.
Even now it is the goal of a handful of resolute old men, the veteran
followers of Mazzini, the undaunted, unyielding, incorruptible, untiring
masons who have laid the foundations of the new Italy and when they had
not cement enough gave their blood for it. But are there many of them?
And who will follow them?
While the threefold yoke of the German, the Bourbon and the Pope weighed
on the neck of Italy, these vigorous soldier-monks of the Order of Saint
Mazzini found sympathy everywhere. _Principessi_ and students, jewellers
and doctors, actors and priests, artists and lawyers, the more educated
of the petty bourgeois, the more awakened of the workmen, officers
and soldiers—all, secretly or openly, were with them and working for
them. A republic was the aim of few, independence and unity the aim of
all; independence they have gained, unity after the French fashion is
detestable to them, they do not want a republic. The present _régime_ is
in many ways just what fits the Italians; they have a longing to present
‘a strong and majestic figure’ in the councils of European states, and
finding this _bella e grande figura_ in Victor Emmanuel they cling to
him.[63]
The representative system in its continental development really answers
best of all when there is nothing clear in the mind and nothing possible
in action. It is a great stop-gap, which rubs corners and extremes off
both sides and gains time. Part of Europe has passed through this mill,
the other parts will pass through it, and we sinners among them. What
about Egypt? Why, that too has ridden on camels into the representative
mill, urged on by the whip.
I do not blame the majority, ill-prepared, weary and cowardly, still less
the masses, so long left to the teaching of priests; I do not blame the
Government even—and indeed, how can it be blamed for its stupidity, its
ignorance, its lack of impulse, of poetry, of tact? It was born in the
Carignano Palace[64] among rusty Gothic swords, old-fashioned powdered
wigs, and the starched etiquette of little courts with vast pretensions.
It has not inspired love—quite the contrary; but it is none the weaker
for that. I was surprised in 1863 to see the general dislike of the
Government in Naples. In 1867, in Venice, I saw without the slightest
surprise that three months after their deliverance the people could not
endure the Government, but at the same time I saw even more clearly that
it had nothing to be afraid of unless it committed a series of colossal
blunders, though it gets over these, too, with extraordinary ease. There
is an example before my eyes. I will describe it in a few lines.
To the various jests with which Governments sometimes deign to throw
dust in their people’s eyes, such as the ‘_Prisonniers de la paix_’
of Louis-Philippe, and ‘Empire is Peace’ of Louis Napoleon, Ricasoli
added one of his own, calling the law which secured the greater part of
the property of the clergy the law of ‘the freedom of the Church in a
Free State.’ All the immature followers of liberalism, all the people
who read no further than a title, rejoiced. The Ministry, concealing a
smile, triumphed in their victory; the trick was obviously profitable to
the clergy. The Belgian publican and sinner[65] behind whom the Jesuit
fathers hid themselves turned up. He brought with him piles of gold, the
colour of which had not been seen for a long time in Italy, and offered
the Government a large sum to secure for the clergy the lawful possession
of the estates wrung out in the confessional, gained from dying sinners
and from the poor in spirit generally.
The Government saw only one thing—the money; the fools saw something
else—_American_ freedom of the Church in a Free state. It is the fashion
nowadays to measure European institutions by the American standard. The
Duc de Persigny finds a striking similarity between the Second Empire and
the First Republic of our day.
However artful Ricasoli and Cialdini were, the Chamber of Deputies,
though very mixed and mediocre in its composition, began to grasp that
the dice were loaded, and loaded without their assistance. The banker
played the _impresario_ and tried to buy Italian voices, but it was
February and the Chamber was hoarse. In Naples there were murmurs, in
Venice a meeting was called in the Malibran Theatre to protest. Ricasoli
ordered the theatre to be closed and put sentries to guard it. There
is no doubt that of all possible blunders nothing more foolish could
have been thought of. Venice, which had only just been set free, wanted
to enjoy its right of opposition and was handicapped by the police.
To assemble in order to fête the King and offer bouquets _al gran
comandatore La Marmora_ means nothing. If the Venetians had wanted to
assemble in honour of the Austrian archdukes, they would, of course,
have been permitted. There was absolutely no danger in a meeting in the
Malibran Theatre.
The Chamber woke up and asked for an explanation. Ricasoli gave a haughty
and arrogant answer, as was befitting to the last representative of Raoul
Barbe-Bleue, a mediaeval Count and feudal Lord. The Chamber, convinced
that the Ministry did not desire to limit the ‘right of public meeting,’
would have passed on to the order of the day. Barbe-Bleue, already
enraged that his law of the freedom of the Church, of which he had been
certain, was beginning to be curtailed in committees, announced that he
could not accept the _ordre du jour motivé_. The offended Chamber voted
against him. For such insolence he suspended the Chamber on the next
day, on the third dissolved it, and on the fourth was thinking of still
harsher measures, but, I was told, Cialdini informed the King that he
could not rely upon the troops.
There have been instances of blundering Governments seeking a sensible
pretext for doing something nasty or for covering it, but these worthies
sought the most absurd pretext to prove their own defeat. If the
Government goes further and more conspicuously along this road, it may
break its neck. One can foresee and reckon upon only what is to some
extent subject to reason. There is no limit to what senselessness may do,
though there is almost always some Cialdini at hand to pour cold water on
the heated head.
And if Italy puts up with this _régime_ and grows inured to it, she will
not endure it with impunity. It is hard for a people _less experienced_
than the French to digest such a fantastic world of lies and empty words,
of phrases without meaning. In France nothing exists in reality, but
everything is for appearance and show; like an old man sunk into second
childhood, she is taken up with playthings; at times she guesses that her
horses are only wooden ones, but she wants to deceive herself.
Italy will not be able to deal with these shadows of a Chinese lantern:
with this moonlight independence that is illuminated on three of its
four sides by the sun of the Tuileries; with a despised and hated
Church, waited upon like an aged grandmother in expectation of her
speedy demise. The potato-yeast of parliamentarianism and the rhetoric
of the Chambers will not provide wholesome food for an Italian. He will
be stunned and driven out of his mind by this pretence of nourishment
and unreal struggle. And there is nothing else being prepared for him.
What is to be done? Where is the solution? I do not know. Perhaps, after
proclaiming the unity of Italy in Rome, her dissolution into independent
self-governing parts, loosely connected together, may be proclaimed, and
that may be the solution. More development might be possible (if there is
anything to develop) in a dozen living units, and the solution would be
quite in the spirit of Italy.
In the midst of these reflections I happened to come across Quinet’s
pamphlet, _France and Germany_. I was immensely pleased with it—not that
I specially rely upon the judgments of the celebrated historical thinker,
though I have a great respect for him personally, but I rejoiced not on
my own account.
In old days in Petersburg a friend noted for his humour, finding on my
table a book of the Berlin Michelet, _On the Immortality of the Soul_,
left me a note as follows: ‘Dear friend, when you have read the book, do
be so good as to tell me briefly whether the soul is immortal or not.
It does not matter for me, but I should like to know for the comfort of
relations.’
Well, it is for the sake of relations that I am glad I have come upon
Quinet. In spite of the conceited attitude many of them have taken up in
regard to European authorities, our friends still pay more attention to
them than to any of their own kin. That is why I try when I can to put my
own thought in the charge of a European nurse. Clinging to Proudhon, I
said that not Catiline but death was at the doors of France; hanging on
to the skirts of Stuart Mill, I repeated what he said about the Chinese
character of the English; and I am very glad that I can take Quinet by
the hand and say: ‘Here my honoured friend Quinet says in 1867 about
Latin Europe what I said about it in 1847 and all the following years.’
Quinet sees with horror and sadness the degradation of France, the
softening of her brain, her growing pettiness. He does not understand the
cause; he seeks it in her estrangement from the principles of 1789 and in
the loss of political liberty, and so through his grief there is a gleam
in his words of the hidden hope of recovery by a return to a genuine
parliamentary _régime_, to the great principles of the Revolution.
Quinet does not observe that the great principles of which he speaks,
and the political ideas of the Latin world generally, have lost their
virtue, their spring has been overstrained and has almost snapped. _Les
principes du 1789_ were not mere words, but now they have become mere
words, like the liturgy and the prayers. Their service has been immense:
by them, through them, France has accomplished her revolution, she has
drawn up the curtain of the future and has sprung back in horror.
A dilemma has arisen.
Either free institutions will again touch the sacred curtain, or there
will be government control, external order and internal slavery.
If in the life of the peoples of Europe there had been a single aim, a
single tendency, one solution or the other would have gained the upper
hand long ago. But as the history of Western Europe is constituted, it
leads to everlasting struggle. The underlying fundamental fact that its
culture is of twofold nature forms the organic obstacle to consistent
development. To live in two civilisations, on two levels, in two worlds,
at two stages of development, to live not with a whole organism but with
one part of it, while employing the other for the hewing of wood and the
drawing of water, and to keep talking about liberty and equality, is
becoming more and more difficult.
Attempts to reach a more harmonious, better-balanced system have not
been successful. But if they have failed in any given place, that
rather proves the unsuitability of the place than the faultiness of the
principle.
The whole gist of the matter lies in that.
The States of North America with their unity of civilisation will easily
outstrip Europe; their position is simpler. The standard of their
civilisation is lower than that of Western Europe, but they have _one_
standard and all reach it: that is their tremendous strength.
Twenty years ago France burst like a Titan into another life, struggling
in the dark without plan or understanding and with no knowledge except of
her insufferable agony. She has been beaten ‘by order and civilisation,’
but it was the victor who retreated. The bourgeoisie have had to pay for
their melancholy victory with all they had gained by ages of effort, of
sacrifice, of wars and revolutions, with the best fruits of their culture.
The centres of force, the paths of development—all have changed; the
hidden activity and suppressed work of social reconstruction have passed
to other lands beyond the borders of France.
As soon as the Germans were convinced that the French tide had ebbed,
that its terrible revolutionary ideas were old and feeble, that there was
no need to fear her, the Prussian helmet appeared behind the walls of the
fortresses on the Rhine.
France still drew back, the helmets became more and more conspicuous.
Bismarck has never thought much of his own people, he has kept his ears
cocked towards France, he has sniffed the air coming that way, and,
convinced of the permanent degradation of that country, he saw that
Prussia’s day was at hand. He ordered Moltke to make a plan, he ordered
the munition factories to make needles for the guns, and systematically,
with German unceremonious coarseness, gathered the ripe German pears and
threw them into the apron of the ridiculous Friedrich Wilhelm, assuring
him that he was a hero by the especial grace of the Lutheran god.
I do not believe that the destinies of the world will remain for long
in the hands of the Germans and the Hohenzollerns. It is impossible, it
is contrary to the good sense of humanity, contrary to the aesthetics
of history. I say, as Kent to Lear, only the other way about: ‘In you,
oh Prussia, there is nothing of that I could call a king.’ But all the
same, Prussia has thrust France into the background and herself taken
the front seat. But all the same, painting the parti-coloured rags of the
German fatherland all one colour, she will lay down the law to Europe
so long as her laws are laid down by the bayonet and carried out by
grapeshot, for the very simple reason that she has more bayonets and more
grapeshot.
Behind the Prussian wave there will arise another that will not trouble
itself much whether the old men with their classical principles like it
or not. England craftily preserves the appearance of strength, standing
on one side, as though proud of her apparent aloofness.... She has felt
deep within her the same social sore that she healed so easily in 1848
with policemen’s staves, but the pains of birth are growing stronger ...
and she is drawing in her far-reaching tentacles to meet the conflict at
home.
France, amazed, embarrassed by the change of her position, threatens
to fight not Prussia but Italy, if the latter touches the temporal
possessions of the eternal father, and she collects money for a monument
to Voltaire.
Will the ear-splitting Prussian trumpet of the _last_ judgment by battle
rouse Latin Europe? Will the approach of the learned barbarians awaken
her?
_Chi lo sa._
I reached Genoa with some Americans who had only just crossed the
ocean. They were impressed by Genoa. Everything they had read about
the Old World in books they saw now face to face, and they were never
tired of gazing at the precipitous, narrow, black, mediaeval streets,
the extraordinary height of the houses, the half-broken arches, the
fortresses, and so on.
We went into the hall of a palace. A cry of delight broke from one of
the Americans: ‘How these people did live! How they did live! What
proportions, what elegance! No, you will find nothing like it among
us.’ And he was ready to blush for his America. We glanced inside an
immense drawing-room. The portraits of former owners, the pictures, the
faded walls, the old furniture, the old heraldic crests, the stagnant
atmosphere, the emptiness, and the old custodian in a black knitted
cap and a threadbare black coat carrying a bunch of keys ... all said
as plainly as words that this was not a house but a curiosity, a
sarcophagus, a sumptuous relic of past life.
‘Yes,’ I said to the Americans as we went out, ‘you are perfectly right,
these people _did_ live well.’
_March 1867._