justice and humanity, not only the moderate liberals, but the very supporters of legitimacy and right-divine.

Thus much as to the local grievances of the island. But local wrongs were not the only motive which impelled the Sicilians to rise. The restoration of their provincial privileges, in the old form at least, was not their object. The principle which inspired the movement from the beginning, and brought the people to rally with enthusiasm around Garibaldi, arises from the tendency now common to all Italians towards national unity. We must bear in mind, with reference to the Italian question, a fundamental truth, which, though manifested by all the facts of contemporary history in the peninsula, is often contradicted by a certain class of politicians, who affect scepticism about everything that does not suit their taste. The fact is this: that the real cause of all the revolutions which have taken place in our days, in the different states of Italy, is the necessity of national organization as a security against domestic tyranny and foreign interference.

The division of the peninsula under separate governments, which, with the exception of one, had nothing in common with the aspirations of the country, and were ever ready to secure their local sway by foreign occupation, rendered utterly impossible any internal amelioration, and necessarily placed the country in a state of dependence and helplessness with respect to its external relations. It was through this that the Italians, after a long series of conciliatory but fruitless attempts to obtain gradual reforms and a national policy at the hands of their rulers,-were at last convinced that nothing would avail them until the twenty-six millions of men inhabiting the country should be brought to join in one common life and action.

Thus every protest that has arisen, especially in the last ten years, has revealed the powerful growth of the national idea.

The experiment of 1848 has left deep traces on the Italian mind. The nation was then beguiled into the dream of a confederation of States, with the Pope and the other princes at the head of it,

and of a war of independence under their united guidance. The confederation never took place-the war was lost. Each separate province was left to fight single-handed; and the consequence was that, one after the other, they fell back into slavery. After a proof of heroism which served at least to show what the Italian race, if once united, could be capable of, and was an undying protest in the name of the country against foreign invasion, Bologna, Brescia, Palermo, Messina, Rome, and Venice fell under the arms of foreign and domestic oppressors. But, amidst their repeated drawbacks, the lessons of the past and the hopes of the future never ceased to inspire confidence in the hearts of the Italians. Ever renewed protests, by words, by writings, by acts of desperate daring, by endless appeals to action, were set to work, chiefly by men who have been often accused of anarchical views, because they never consented to make the cause of their country subordinate to selfish calculations, or to diplomatic conveniences. As before '48 the Brothers Bandiera had offered their life, to call forth by a sublime example the dormant energies of the Italian youth,-so, within the last ten years, Bentivegna, Nicotera,2 Pisacane, and

1

1 Bentivegna, a rich Sicilian proprietor, was the leader of an attempt at insurrection in the island a few years ago; and he is even now one of the chiefs of the insurgents.

2 Nicotera, a Neapolitan of noble birth, accompanied Pisacane and the three hundred, who landed at Sapri in 1857. The bold attempt, as it is well known, was unsuccessful. Colonel Pisacane, formerly of the Neapolitan army, and, in '49, one of the leading officers of the Roman Republic, fell, with many others, fighting against the royalists. Nicotera and the rest were made prisoners. His conduct having assumed the whole responsibility, as a in presence of the Neapolitan tribunals, his chief, in order to exonerate his companions, his noble silence when his judges sought by threats and compulsions to elicit from him the cry of " Viva il re," his constancy and serenity during three years of confinement in the horrible dungeon of Favignana, rank him among the most elevated characters of our days. His deliverance from the fort of Favignana, which happy omen for Italy. He is now actively at took place on the 3d of June, is an event of work for his country's cause in Palermo.

others, have kept alive, by individual acts of the noblest self-devotion, the sacred fire of freedom and nationality in the heart of the people. And it was owing to them, and to the party to which they belonged,-a party which has never ceased to hold up at home and abroad the banner of Italian unity, -that the country was raised to the consciousness of her destinies.

A national revolution in Italy was recognised as unavoidable and impending by diplomacy itself, through Count Cavour's representations at the Congress of Paris; and it is my conviction, that, sooner or later, even independently of any military help from without, Italy must by her own means have achieved the work of her emancipation. The French complication was a result of the want of faith in the ministers of the crown with respect to the efficiency of the national forces to withstand the power of Austria; of their unwillingness to meet the responsibility of the whole bearing of the Italian question; and of a necessity, beyond their control, arising from the political plans of the formidable neighbour who offered his help in the Italian war. The spirit of the people of Italy, however, warded off the dangers of the ministerial policy. They steadfastly insisted on the principle of nationality and unity; and since then the Sardinian monarchy has been unavoidably brought to the alternative either of losing all hold of the movement, or of furthering it as the nature of things and public opinion command.

The Sicilian revolution has forced the work back to its true direction, and the insurgents and their Italian brethren have met to consecrate the bond of the common country on the field of their patriotic battles.

Let us consider the circumstances and dispositions under which it took place, the better to understand its national character. I must start, in my exposition, from the turning point of the peace of Villa Franca. Whilst the war was going on in Lombardy, French influence was paramount in Italy. War, policy, and

public opinion depended on the man who had crossed the Alps with 200,000 soldiers, to create a new Napoleonic episode on a field well known to Napoleonic tradition. And yet, even at that time, the relations between the Italian people and the power of France were greatly altered from what they had been sixty years before. Italy, at the beginning of this century, was the handmaiden of France. Napoleon fashioned her motions according to his dictatorial will. But in 1859 she had a life of her own. Though still dismembered and ill-organized, she was aspiring, adventurous, and capable of self-reliance. The active patriots joined Garibaldi, and raised the national banner for the purpose of giving it a distinct Italian character amidst foreign friends and foreign foes. The victories of Como and Varese crowned it with imperishable laurels. On the other hand, the Piedmontese army, faithful to its ancient traditions of gallantry, and inspired, besides, by the new life of the country, accomplished its work in the campaign. with signal success. The nation felt that something had grown within her that must be kept sacred and uncontaminated; and that she might owe gratitude, but not passive submission, to France. When the peace of Villa Franca blasted her hopes, leaving her in the most perplexing difficulties, she recoiled in awe, but did not lose confidence in her moral strength. The central Italian provinces resisted all diplomatic intrigues, and persevered cautiously but unflinchingly in the work of their fusion. Up to that time Naples and Sicily had been silently awaiting the result of the struggle in Northern Italy. The tendency that had prevailed, of limiting the question for the present to the provinces emancipated during the war, naturally excluded Rome, Sicily, and Naples from any cooperation in the movement. Besides this, there was an apprehension, common to all Italian patriots, lest a rising in Southern Italy, while the Napoleonic prestige was everywhere so great, should offer an opportunity to Muratist preten

sions. Therefore that part of the country appeared calm whilst the rest was stormy; outwardly calm it was, but in fact active preparations for the future, particularly in the island, were going on. Sicily, ever since the triumph of Neapolitan reaction in 1849, had been secretly organizing her patriotic elements for a new rising. The peculiar relations of the island with the Bourbonic dynasty render-for it, even more than for the main land-utterly impossible any scheme of constitutional reconciliation; and in their locally helpless condition the Sicilians were brought by the very instinct of safety earnestly to look to the merging of their political life into that of the Italian nation as the only chance of salvation. They consequently embraced the idea of Italian unity both from patriotism and from practical reasons. The "Società Nazionale," directed in Turin, by the Sicilian La Farina, and representing the moderate party, sought to exercise its influence in the island on that very ground; but-dependent as it was for action on ministerial inspiration and the oracles of diplomacy, and systematically opposed to popular initiative and insurrection against regular armies— would never have brought about the Sicilian revolution, if other more resolute influences had not been there at work beforehand.

Active preparations for the rising of the Sicilians, in the name of Italian unity, had been carried on, at their own personal risk, by men who belonged to the party which, in antagonism to the wily calculations of the "Società Nazionale," styled itself the "Party of Action." In constant communication with the Sicilian patriots, from Genoa, from Malta, from England, from Paris, these men collected money, bought arms, sent instructions and plans of combined action. When the peace of Villa Franca made everywhere more intense the feeling that the Italians had no hope of emancipation except in their own right arm, the same instinct that attracted the Sicilians towards the common country prompted the patriots of Central Italy to work for the expansion of the

movement towards the south. They were looking to the Marche, Umbria, and Abbruzzi as the way through which the electric wire of national affinity between the north and the south of the Peninsula was to be carried through by means of national insurrection. The horrors committed at Perugia by the mercenaries of the Pope had already stimulated this disposition by feelings of sympathy towards the victims, and by just indignation towards their assassins; and it was not without difficulty that the provisional governments of Tuscany and the Emilia prevented the troops and the volunteers from crossing the frontier. Then a painful contest took place between the national impulse of those who felt the duty of carrying on the movement and the party who were in power. Nor did the latter, in its resistance, have recourse to fair means. Availing themselves of the prejudice, often refuted by facts, yet always rife, that Mazzini and his friends were working for the Republic, the rulers of Central Italy, with the exception of Farini, organized a regular proscription against all active patriots. Then it was that, among others, Rosolino Pilo, one of the chief promoters, and now but too likely a martyr,1 of the Sicilian insurrection, was, on the plea of his relations with Mazzini, kept a prisoner for more than a month by the police of Bologna, who gave the people to understand that he was an Austrian agent in disguise.

Then Garibaldi, who had opened the subscription for "Il Milione di Fucili,"

Rosolino Pilo, of the marquises of Capace, has undoubtedly been the most active organizer of the Sicilian insurrection. Well known to his countrymen for his patriotism and courage since 1848, when he was yet almost a boy, he has been, during the last ten years of servitude, more than once in his native island under different disguises, encouraging his fellow-countrymen to the work of deliverance. He was one of the purest minds and most earnest hearts that I ever came in contact with. The accounts given of the severity of his wounds seem to leave no hope of recovery. -Since the preceding lines were written, I have received melancholy assurance that he died of his wounds on the 13th of June.

and was organizing the volunteers in the Romagna, through a commission conferred upon him by the king himself, was obliged to resign his office; and when, withdrawing from the "Società Nazionale," and protesting against its system of policy, he proposed a new association of Italian patriotism under the name of "La Nazione Armata," he was again compelled to renounce his purpose and retire, discouraged, into inactivity. Mazzini had been, meanwhile, sojourning for two months in Florence (July and August, 1859). I have a private document which proves beyond doubt the singlemindedness of his intentions. Some friend wrote to him, exhorting him to abstain from any interference in the state of affairs, as any action of his, amidst the apprehensions then prevailing, would only have tended to misconstrue his designs, excite opposition, and afford a pretext to persecution and calumny. He answered: "I do nothing but look, and "wait, and propose my ideas to some of "the chiefs, who probably will not accept "them. As to coming forward myself,

"or acting in any exclusive way, with "elements of my own, I do not even "dream of it. Let then my friends be "tranquil on this ground." When he saw that there was no chance of having his programme of action for national unity carried out by the men in power, he again left the country, and wrote his famous letter to Victor Emmanuel, which (if report be true) produced a deep impression on the mind of the king himself. Still the work in the south was going on, and Mazzini efficiently contributed to its progress. Crispi, the present secretary of the Provisional Government at Palermo, went twice to the island to urge on the movement. The Sicilian patriots were in constant communication with Rosolino Pilo, who, nothing daunted by the treatment undergone in Central Italy, was earnestly working with them in the name of Italian unity.

During the time of his sojourn in Florence, Mazzini wrote to Baron Ricasoli, who was seeking him in order to banish him a prisoner to some remote

quarter of the world, the following lines: "Eight or ten thousand men, and the "name of Garibaldi, with the Sicilian "movement now ripe through a long 'preparation, will lead to the insurrec"tion of the kingdom. The insurrec"tion of the kingdom would place the "Italian movement in such a position "as to enable the country to deal, on 'equal terms, with any power whatso"ever." Thus careless of persecution, he was thinking of, and working for, only the greatness of that country country-in which he was not allowed even freely to breathe. Again, in February last, on the occasion of the subscriptions opened at Glasgow for the Garibaldi fund, whilst acting in accordance with the great leader of the Italian volunteers, he wrote to that city as follows: "We are working actively in "the South (of Italy) to promote there

his

a change which would reach the aim

"at once. You helped us, through

"pecuniary assistance, when we were at "work in Northern Italy; help us if you can for the South. Explain to

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your countrymen that our aim is unity; "that there is the root of the question; "that Italy will never be tranquil, Europe never be at peace, whilst that supreme aim of ours is not reached." And, in that very letter, as in all other papers written of late by him, he distinctly declares that he postpones his political opinions to that aim. "You ought," he says to his correspondent, "to "trust our sincere love of our country, "to see from our self-abdication as to questions of form that we are neither "exclusive nor rash. . . . . The only "question between a fraction now in "power of the moderate party and our own, comprising, nuances à part, every man, from Garibaldi, as a citizen soldier, to me, as an Italian citizen-from "the volunteers in the army to the working and middle classes of our "towns-is a question of means. Shall "we depend on diplomacy, Congress, "French protectorate, &c., or shall we depend on our own forces, on the loud, "incessant proclamation of our wish and right, on our identifying the life of the

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"emancipated provinces with that of the "still oppressed, and in our unfolding "a whole, straightforward Italian policy "in that direction, and seizing boldly "the opportunity for carrying it out? "Are we to allow the movement to be "localised, or are we to try to nation"alise it?" This is the question; and the writer of the letter just quoted, has again, a few days ago, repeated the same declaration, through an article in the Unità Italiana of Genoa, in answer to attacks made against him, on the one side by the ministerial party, who accuse him of plotting for an exclusive form of government, and on the other by the uncompromising republicans, who accuse him of betraying his political ideal to his scheme of Italian unity. "Our cry," he says, "is unity, "liberty. As regards the rest we bow to "the will of the country." But there is a stereotyped phraseology of calumny, which is kept up by certain Italian correspondents of influential English papers, either to curry favour with the official party, or from personal motives beneath the notice of upright minds, according to which Mazzini and the Italian Republicans are obstinately conspiring, for their political dream, against the very life of their country.

The relations between the different parties in Italy are now these the great majority of the nation, in which all earnest patriots, whether of constitutional or of republican opinions, have joined, wish for independence and unity; every question of formal politics is set aside; and the cry of Italy and Victor Emmanuel calls upon the monarchy to follow out the programme of the nation. The party which tended to localise the movement, and would have been formerly satisfied with a confederation of separate constitutional states, is almost entirely dwindling away. Any minister in the free state who dared now openly to countenance such schemes, would lose his popularity. Thus the only real antagonism which survives the old parties in Italy is simply a practical one among those who admit in common that unity is the work of the times, but are

divided as to the opportunity of carrying it out by national means and self-dependent action, or entrusting it to eventuality and diplomatic subtlety. The former party is now growing far more influential than the latter, especially since the fact of Garibaldi's success has justified its views. It has for it the authority of that heroic leader himself, who, on leaving for Sicily, trusted to the hands of his friend Dr. Bertani, an appeal to the Italians for joint action; and is supported by that true foresight of the people which leads them to feel that every spot of their country not taken possession of by the nation will be invaded by foreign intrigue.

But to return to the Sicilians. On the 25th of March past, Rosolino Pilo, who had received information from Sicily that a crisis was at hand, set off from Genoa, with a military companion of the name of Corrado, in a sailing vessel, for his native island. After many hardships at sea, they landed near Messina on the 10th of April, and were able to enter the town in disguise, while the royal troops were bombarding it from the fort. Pilo wrote, on the 12th, an account of the state of things, saying: "Sicily feels more than any other province in Italy that the question is, "to be Italians.' I am sure of the triumph; yet you must think of assisting us. Shame to the other Italian provinces if they do not help the Si"cilian movement, which is not a sepa"ratist movement, but only and deeply "Italian."

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This young man, belonging to one of the most ancient and noble families of the island, having put himself at the head of his Messinian friends, joined with them the other bands from the interior, and fought gallantly in several encounters. He was thus an efficient instrument to give time to Garibaldi for his expedition; and was by the latter, on his arrival in Sicily, appointed to organize the insurrection in the district of Carini. He wrote again from that place a letter full of confidence and of generous feeling; but, alas! it was decreed by Providence that he should fall