indictment of Mr. Gladstone's letters to Lord Aberdeen, still less to mild diplomatic remonstrance. He knew that he was master now, and master he remained through those terrible ten years till the day of his death. Yet he had no statesmanship or capacity to establish the despotism for his successor on a firm military basis. When he was gone, not sixteen months elapsed before his kingdom was overrun by a handful of bold adventurers. Ferdinand alone of the Bourbons was a man to be reckoned with.

It was not only the military power of Austria that was underestimated by the Radicals of '48. With the tendency that lurks in every party to exaggerate its own numbers, the enthusiasts thought they were all Italy, and Mazzini talked of twenty millions of men, quite failing to appreciate at their true strength the Catholic and Conservative forces opposed to them. Their purblindness has in some degree descended to our Liberal historians, who have not studied the Conservatives with the same sympathising diligence that they have devoted to the Liberals. There is some justification for them in that they are writing the history, not of Italy, but of the Union of Italy; and the Liberals of '48 were potentially the united Italy of the future. But we would have them measure all the phenomena with the same measure. The concentration of their interest on the one party prevents their setting before us the other with equal clearness and fairness. Consequently they do not really enable us to understand its strength. We quote Mr. King's description of Catholic feeling, although the first part of it seems to us to paint the position and difficulties of those Moderates who were Catholics yet Liberals, fervid Italians yet loyal sons of the Church, rather than the attitude of the pure Conservatives. It runs as follows:

'Between the Liberals and Catholics ran at bottom the fundamental cleavage. To the devotees Liberalism meant the loosening of religion, and though often scandalised by the corruption of the Roman Court, they feared that any blow to the Papacy might be a blow to the Church and all that the Church safeguarded. Between the two schools lay deep difference of creed as to the sanction of morality. Catholics, who believed that authority and tradition were its only bulwarks, thought that if once men ceased to walk in the strait path of the Church they might be tempted to the abyss where walked unclean things. They dreaded free inquiry, the contempt of forms, the questioning of institutions indissolubly, so they believed, bound up with more precious things. . . . . Behind the men and women who thought thus lay the enthusiasm of Catholic devotees throughout the world, to whom the Papacy was Catholic rather than Italian, who cared

nothing for Italian aspirations, but much for the glory of the tiara, and felt a chivalrous desire to defend a venerable and splendid name, whose own resources of defence had proved so feeble.'

Doubtless much of the Catholic opposition to national aspirations was the work of priests, playing the game of their own order. The influence of that order is, and must be, all-pervading among a Catholic people, which, without being seriously religious, is little affected by free thought. The law still allowed full scope for the exercise of that influence at the three critical moments of individual lifebirth, marriage, and death-moments which even now, in spite of modern legislation, provide the priesthood with opportunities of which they take advantage to the full. Yet many of the hierarchy of the better sort had a genuine faith in the supernatural character of their own sacred office. Pius IX. really believed himself to be the Vicar of God upon earth. And we must assert our conviction that thousands of deeply religious laymen throughout Italy, as well as a far larger number of religious women, seriously and earnestly believed that all Liberals-Freemasons especially-were enemies of God and our holy religion; believed that to accept Liberal views might, nay must, endanger their own hopes for the world to come. is not on their power of moral elevation, or on any sweet reasonableness, that persuasions of this kind depend for their force, but on their sincerity. Must we jeer at them? Must we insinuate that they are nothing but the care for loaves and fishes, masked under a show of religion, because they are not our views, nor the views of the men who rescued Italy? After all, are they really so much more ridiculous than those that are characterised in the following phrases ?-

It

'His political beliefs were to him articles of faith that admitted no questioning; wrong politics to him implied wrong morals; he was dogmatic, intolerant, too forward to obtrude the belief that he and no other was the true prophet; and though in after life he sometimes compromised, it was always against the grain, and with a half-sense of wrong-doing. None the less he stands first among the makers of Italy. . . . As moralist, as inspirer, he stands on a pinnacle where he has no rival, a prophet to Italy and the world.'

With this rather hysterical sentence Mr. King concludes a very sympathetic estimate of Mazzini, of which we shall quote the most striking portion :

The

'Mazzini was the soul of the movement of 1848. The belief in a national mission was the corner-stone of his politics. current depreciation of his country drove him into hyperbole, and

he painted Italy initiating a new life among the nations, Rome a third time the world's teacher, reconciling Roman justice and Christian altruism in the new social gospel. This new Italy must be Republican and indivisible. . . . The circumstances of Italy, all her traditions, all her great memories, he claimed for Republicanism. A Royalist war of liberty, even if it brought a constitution in its wake, would leave the social fabric still unmended, and in the Republic Mazzini saw the ideal commonwealth, where privilege was banished, where the poor were made the State's first care, where association and education opened an infinite view of progress. With such a vision before their eyes the people, he had persuaded himself, would rise in mass to expel the Austrians. Yet even dearer to Mazzini than the Republic was Italian unity. Only through unity could Italy be strong and democratic; only when Rome became her capital could she hold her place among the nations of Europe and teach a nobler ideal of government.

'Mazzini's hopes have been realised only in part. His work, from its clear high dawn to its dark and misty close, broke ineffectually against the obstacles that must meet the pure revolutionist. . . . As a man of action he failed. He always underrated the obstacles in front of him. He was, even apart from the irritability which may be pardoned to his misfortunes, a difficult man to work with. In old age he became, as many a conspirator tends to be, a mere mischief-maker.' At the last 'he intended to use against his own countrymen the arms which Bismarck had promised him. This marks the last stage of his decline from patriot to conspirator, and it was well for him that the Government arrested him and imprisoned him at Gaeta in August 1870.'

Mr. King relegates to an appendix all discussion of the often-repeated charge that his hero encouraged political assassination. He establishes, by quotations from Mazzini's writings, that in theory he held assassination to be wrong, unless in very exceptional cases. That he refused to con

'demn the honest assassinator as morally guilty, and would 'throw no stone at the man who killed a traitor, yet that 'he held assassination to be often a crime, and almost 'always a blunder.'

Turning from theory to practice, we find that on one 'occasion,' in his early days, Mazzini encouraged assassination. 'A Corsican named Gallenga came to Mazzini in 1853, to tell him that he intended to assassinate Charles 'Albert, in revenge for a brother who had perished in the 'Revolution of 1821. Mazzini tried to dissuade him, but 'not succeeding, and convinced that Gallenga was one of 'those "whom Providence sends from time to time to teach 'despots that their life may depend upon the will of a single man," gave him a dagger and money.' Gallenga did not carry out his intention.

6

The only other case that throws any real light on the matter is that of Pasquale Greco, which Mr. King does not relate with his usual transparent frankness. We follow Diamilla-Müller's account. In the spring of 1863 some of the more fanatical Republicans in Turin hatched a plot to assassinate Napoleon III., and got hold of this Greco, a Calabrian, to do the deed. In the latter part of April they arranged that Libertini should introduce the intended assassin to Mazzini, who was then at Lugano, and inform him of the plot, of which so far Mazzini knew nothing. When Mazzini was told of the design, and that the assassin was to be brought to see him, he would not receive Greco, but he did not speak a word in condemnation of the ugly proposal. Here is the letter which he wrote to DiamillaMüller, his confidential agent:

'Dear M.,

'Tell Libertini that I don't see why this Pasquale Greco should come to see me. All the world knows of my residence here, and it is unfair of my friends (è male da parte de' miei amici).

'Your GIUSEPPE.'

So the nature of purest temper' does not quite act up to his own precepts. This was no 'very exceptional case.' There was no question of 'condemning the accom'plished act' of an honest fanatic. Nor can youthful indiscretion' be pleaded as for the Gallenga incident. We have no desire to exaggerate the criminality of political murder, but we fail to see why an accessory before the fact to political assassination is in any less degree a political assassin than an accessory before the fact to common murder is a murderer.

Can we fairly gather from that letter that Mazzini would have preferred that the attempt should not be made? It is a cowardly letter. Not a word to dissuade the bravo from risking his own life. Not a word to dissuade the rash disciples from putting themselves in the power of this Greco who might himself turn traitor! Yet, as moralist, as inspirer, Mazzini stands on a pinnacle where he has no rival, a prophet to Italy and the world.' If this be the true doctrinaire faith, we prefer to sit with the heretics.

On the other hand, it must be recorded in Mazzini's honour that he was no persecutor. During the short time he was actually engaged in the practical business of government, as Triumvir of the Roman Republic, he moderated to the best of his power the excesses of his more frenzied allies; he entrusted finance to capable hands, and succeeded in

maintaining quiet in the city itself, to a degree which is really extraordinary, considering the tumultuous traditions of French and Italian democracy, and the unbridled license which previous slackness had allowed to the mob leaders. In the provinces there were many instances of Jacobin tyranny. At Sinigaglia the Mastai family were tormented and temporarily detained as hostages, on account of their relationship to the Pope, while sundry atrocities were committed in the Marches and in Romagna. But there was no connivance on Mazzini's part. After a first bad choice of commissioners Felice Orsini, better known to Englishmen as the author of an attempt on the life of Napoleon III. some ten years later, was sent with full powers to re-establish order, which he did most loyally and efficiently.

In fact, Mazzini did his best to govern well, but the task was herculean in districts where disorder and brutal outrages by both factions had long been endemic. During the whole Carbonaro period Romagna, and those other parts of the Papal States which were distant from Rome, had been in a continual ferment, while Rome itself remained in a state of tranquil lethargy. In like manner, and from like causes, the quiescence of the city of Naples contrasts strangely with the restlessness of Basilicata, Calabria, and Sicily during the same period. In fact, the relations of Rome to Romagna were not altogether unlike those of Naples to Sicily. The capitals enjoyed the lion's share of patronage, preferment, and profit, to their own satisfaction, but to the disgust of the remoter provinces.

The effervescence culminated in the revolt of Bologna in 1831; suppressed, as usual, by the Austrians.

The movement of that year,' says Mr. Stillman, endorsing Mazzini's criticism quoted above, 'only showed the strength of 'popular discontent, but developed no distinct aim or 'national tendencies that might entitle it to consideration as a step in the national developement.' Indeed that developement, so far from gaining, lost ground by the movement, which indirectly raised obstacles that could not then have been foreseen. The Austrian occupation of Papal terrritory roused the jealousy of the French, who in February 1832 seized Ancona by surprise, and only evacuated it in 1837, when the Austrians simultaneously withdrew. Thus was laid down the evil precedent for the Civita Vecchia expeditions of 1849 and 1867.

The sore in Romagna went on festering all through the pontificate of Gregory XVI. One of the later eruptions at