PARTIES AND AFFAIRS IN ITALY.

I.—THE MODERATE PARTY.

I have been asked how many parties there are in Italy. You seem in England to be struck with this common yet unfounded notion, that we are too much di- vided to be able to achieve any good for ourselves. You fear that the spirit of the middle ages still lives among us. Undeceive yourselves. We are not more di- vided than a People necessarily is which awakes from a sleep of three centuries, and feels itself impelled by the hand of God to seek out its own destiny. We are groping in the dark; bat quite ready to rally together upon the first semblance of a path which any one of us may discover. We have only retained from the middle

ages what sooner or later will be the foundation of our country's salvation; our habits of Communal life, our Democratic recollections, and our enmity to the Bar- barian. As for the rest, we have, thank God, been redeemed by a sufficiently bitter expiation. There are with us, as everywhere else, many shades of political opinion; but you will find, however thoroughly you search, but two parties,—the Moderate and the National party; the party whose creed is that of a downward movement, from the

summit of society as it actually exists, down to the people; and the party whose faith is in an upward movement, and which seeks the formula of our progress, of

our future national life, from the very heart of the nation itself. The first party is represented by the notion, originating at Turin, of a Federative Diet; the other by the idea of an Italian Constituent Assembly, first promulgated in the organ of the Republicans, the "Italia del Popolo," and adopted, with all the au- thority which power bestows, by the Tuscan Ministers Montanelli and Gaerrazzi.

The question lies between these two parties; and the future of Italy depends upon it.

I propose to trace for the benefit of your readers in this first letter the charac- teristic features of the Moderate Party; I will describe those of the National Party in my next. Possibly this short sketch may not be entirely useless to you. Parties resemble each other everywhere; and our sad but inevitable conflicts may furnish some suggestions for your Democratic struggles. As for us, it matters much that public opinion in England should not be lead astray about us; not be- cause you are through your diplomacy at the present moment a mediating Power; not because we are destined to encounter each other as friends in the Mediterra- nean and beyond; but because you are a brave, good, and loyal people, whom we of the National party have learned to esteem and love, in that life of exile of which nothing will ever he effaced from our memories. The Moderate Party is of recent origin and constitution. Nevertheless, it was men who would now call themselves Moderates who applauded Austria in 1814; it was the Moderate men who, in 1821, subjected the Piedmontese insurrection to the desertion of the Prince Charles Albert; and lastly it was men who then took upon themselves the title of Moderates who destroyed the movement of 1831 by capitulating at Ancona. But they were then still only individual minds, feeble and devoid of revolutionary intelligence, such as are found in all great crises. The party was not at that time constituted. It was in 1843, shortly after the deaths of the brothers Bandiera, that the party first openly proclaimed itself. In the midst of agitations which had become the normal condition of Romagna, an in- surrection was heard of in Rimini, and it was said that a large white flag had been there unfurled. If this nameless banner meant nothing more than an entire absence of political ideas, it certainly bore a sense which has now become his- torical. However that might be, it being necessary to proclaim some formula in the face of the agitated populations, a programme followed the banner. It was a mutilated reproduction of the memorandum which the Five Powers had fruit- lessly enforced upon the Pope in 1831. Local administrative reforms were de- manded. The national Italian aspiration had no place in this feeble and mean- ingless production, which had been elaborated at Paris by a nucleus of men amongst whom I believe was one of the present Ministers of the Papal States. After all, this was but an affair of the advanced guard, for the body of the army was being organized at Turin. This town, with its aristocracy, its Jesuitism, and its middle class fashioned by habits of discipline to a regular pedantic existence, squared by the rule and line like their own streets and the houses they inhabit, was in reality a much more suitable centre for such a party than the eager, tur- bulent, and impulsive Romagna. Charles Albert reigned there. The years 1821 and 1833 weighed upon him like a double and irrevocable condemnation in the eyes of every one who had an honest heart in his bosom and a grain of logic in his head. But an old feeling of resentment for insults received from Austria in 1821, some dynastic military traditions, an instinct of aggrandizement character- istic of the house of Savoy, and a vacillating and uncertain character, all pointed out Charles Albert as a fitting instrument to those who made the Italian question one of honour, I should rather say of pride, and not one of dignity and progress; a question of mere independence, not one of true liberty. Mentally a kind of poli- tical Hamlet, condemned to a permanent want of equilibrium between his concep- tions and the faculties which should realize them, ambitions without energy, dis- trustful and suspicious because without virtue, despotic in inclination and liberal only through vanity, a prey to remorse, and worn out by terrors inspired by the Jesuits and the Patriots by turns, Charles Albert was indeed not unfit to be the man of a purely political party with no strong faith, and basing itself upon an aristocratic Liberalism in its chiefs and upon the passion of intrigue in its subal- terns. The Moderate party rallied and organized itself around him. A book entitled The Hopes of Italy, by Count Balbo, ushered the Moderate party into existence. This book, very insignificant in itself, without historical value, with- out political capacity, and revealing in every page an absolute ignorance of the elements then fermenting in Italy, but written with sincerity and in a spirit de- cidedly hostile to Austria, acquired a certain importance by the residence of the

writer at Turin, and by his personal acquaintance with the King. People saw in it a kind of semi-official manifestation of Charles Albert's tendencies. A question of duties between Piedmont and Austria, and some schemes for the construction o railways which Austria did its best to oppose, furnished grounds of complaint for the Turin papers: their publication was permitted; and a sort of tolerance hitherto unknown, and which could not fail to have a meaning in the eyes of the anxious people, established itself towards the press, for all that expressed antipa- thy to Austria and a desire for independence. Hope was again awakened; and everything was done to encourage it : anecdotes were invented, medals were struck , and an exiled writer already enjoying a high reputation came unexpectedly to lend the support of his pen to the mission of the initiative which they conferred upon Charles Albert. The party found itself all at once constituted.

Its theory may be said to have resolved itself thus: not to conquer the Govern- ment of Italy, but the Italian Governments; to address itself not to the People, but to the Princes; not to have recourse to insurrection, but to the slow gradual mo- derate progress du haul en bas; to renounce secret associations, and a clan- destine press; and to substitute for them, by flattering and wheedling the exist- ing powers, as much freedom as could be thus obtained for the lawful press. Its ideal was to form a league, an alliance of the Italian Governments, in order to maintain the independence of their states against the encroachments of Austria; and, as it was necessary in order to gain this end, to suppress all cause of alarm to these governments, it sought to separate as much as possible the cause of inde- pendence from that of liberty; to adjourn the one in order to occupy itself ex- clusively with the other. As to Lombardy, the Moderate party knew not what to do with it. They never even dreamt of insurrection there. Their stronger heads put off that question until the European crisis, which must sooner or later be brought on by the inevitable dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. In all this there was neither an understanding of the present nor foresight for the future.

With you, and wherever constitutional life is of many years' standing, the ex- istence of a Moderate party is easily understood. It would be that of men who, taking as their starting-point the guarantees and the liberties already conquered, would desire to progress by degrees, in developing one by one the consequences of the principle of national sovereignty already implanted in the laws, as opposed to those who discovering an element in the state not actually represented would take that as their point of departure, and reorganize society at a blow, were it even at the price of insurrection. But with us, without recognized rights, without li- berty, without constitutional guarantees, for at that time the popular mani-

festations had as yet obtained no statutes, what in the face of a great national question could be meant by Moderate party ? It was as if we should try to make

a lever act without a fulcrum. Convert the Princes I The Liberal party had already tried with every one of them, and failed in each instance; and it was es- sential to the plan of these men to bring over six at once—six Princes belonging

to different families, subjected to different influences, suspicions and jealous of one another. Evidently, all that the Moderates could hope for was to obtain by the aid of an opinion rendered imposing by the action of the very men whom they repulsed, some ameliorations of detail, some administrative reforms: beyond these, nothing but the popular element sincerely and energetically directed could avail for further conquests. But popular suffering was too keen to allow reason to have fair play: like a drowning man, the people would have clutched at a straw. Strong faiths have not yet ripened amongst us; they exist in our masses but only at the stage of instincts; they reveal themselves, as events have already proved and will continue to prove, more and more under the action of exceptional circumstances; they kindle at the breath of enthusiasm: but in a normal condition the people too willingly substitutes the idol for the god, power or the appearance of it for principle. Jesuitical education has done much evil with us: the reaction against this education is accomplished; but in a country where religion has been by its own chiefs prostituted to power, that reaction could only take place in the name of the destructive, negative, and materialist doctrines of the eighteenth century. Jesuitism, despotism, materialism, have conspired to stifle the inspirations of our national traditions, to the advantage of I know not what Machiavellian and tortuous habits of thought, which are dignified by the name of practical, but which are only mean. Charles Albert was not esteemed; but his army was much wanted. No man gave him credit for sincere and loyal intentions; but it was said that having taken one step he would be obliged to take others, and that when he should desire to stop, they would know how to force him onwards or overthrow him. The important point was to have the soldiers, the arsenals, the resources of

an already constituted state. How to procure these ? By insurrection? The many fruitless efforts of the past had discouraged all those who judge of the pos- sibility of an enterprise by the immediate success of the attempts which must necessarily precede its triumph. Besides the uncertain multitudes, and besides the timid patriots who found the new route opened to them much easier to tra- verse than that of conspiracies and revolts, there was a crowd of individuals sur- rounding all the Powers, endowed with the passion for intrigue, and finding them- selves more in their element amidst the intricate machinery of a complicated plan of princely revolution, than upon the straight and honourable but perilous way pointed out to them in their deaths by the martyrs of the Italian cause. All this increased the party. Pamphlets were written, newspapers established. Some unimportant governmental concessions began to give an appearance of verifi- cation to the system. Then, as if to complete the experience, Pins the Ninth appeared. His amnesty came to impress with the seal of prophesy the ideas of the Abbe Gioterti, and to give a fresh impetus to the Moderate party. Hopes were changed into cer- tainties, and joy became delirium. I remember well offering a tolerably correct judgment upon Pius the Ninth, in the midst of the phrensy of enthusiasm which had invaded even your island: s good but feeble soul, gifted with virtues which would make an excellent village curate; but without either energy of will, depth of convictions, or grandeur of ideas: loving popularity, and therefore capable of being carried by it beyond his own views; but easily alarmed, governed by his Catholic prejudices, and not com- prehending his epoch—an epoch in which a great religious as well as political re- volution is being elaborated. I then compared his work to that of the poor adept in magic of Goethe, who having got from his master the secret formula by which he was enabled to supply himself with water by the aid of a stick, without having thought of learning that by which the stick could be stopped in its work, soon found himself up to his neck in water. The water has indeed been mounting

since then; and the spirit which Pius the Ninth has, providentially no doubt, in- voked, will not stop so soon; for it is God alone who may say, It is enough.

But these things were not then thought of in Italy; they thought of nothing but the sudden, almost miraculous, realization of the programme of the Moderates. The party remained alone, triumphant, on the arena. It intoxicated itself with pride, with projects of Princely leagues, of Federal Diets, and of Papal benedic- tions. One would have said that the golden age had already commenced. Some progress was in fact made, but solely by virtue of the movement from below. To those who silently watched the course of events, it became evident that there was in all this a great error: the effect was being mistaken for the cause. The blood of martyrs had not vainly sunk into the earth; like volcanic agencies, it heaved and worked beneath the agitated soil. Opinion bad become a power. The would-be Liberalism of Charles Albert, and the Popular inspirations of Pius the Ninth, were only its results. The People, in taking these men as its idols, yet regarded them simply as instruments, and was ready to overturn them the moment they ceased to represent it in its own manner; even in the height of its

enthusiasm it endeavoured to control them, and in reality did so. From the be- ginning, with the exception of the Papal amnesty, it was always by public manifestations, (di piazza, as they were contemptuously designated by our Liberal aristocracy,) which had been so much preached against, by emeutes or indeed by open revolt, that all the Royal concessions were obtained. It was to the emeutes at Livorno, in Romagna, and at Rome, that we owed an increased liberty of the press and the institution of the National Guard. It was the people signing their collective petitions upon little tables in the streets at Genoa, and their subsequent attacks upon the convents, which determined the expulsion of the Jesuits from the Sardinian states. It was the glorious insur- rection in Sicily which gave us the constitutions, (sta tu ti ,) the first serious im- portant concession by the existing powers to the power of the future. Nothing of this was to be found in the programme of the Moderates. Six months later they were completely out of date. But they put a good face upon the matter. Their organs blamedbeforehand; but after success they applauded, and took the credit of it to themselves. The People, which is not ambitious, willingly allowed them to as- sume the merit of its own conquests. I have under my eyes at this very moment the manifesto of the Roman Ministry, composed of the chiefs of the Moderate party at Rome: you know whence this Ministry sprang; well, any one examining it without having heard the particulars of the insurrection, would infer that Pius the Ninth was himself the author of the change. Such have been their invariable tactics for three years: it has enabled them, and still enables them, to surmount every crisis, and to monopolise the direction of the Popular movements, in order to destroy the consequences naturally resulting from them. In the midst of all this, a difficulty arose which it was found impossible to put on one side—the National question. It had grown and was increasing with every emeute. The instinct of the country was true to itself. The People felt that in spite of all promises it could never count upon its Prince, or upon the con- tinuance of the advantages which it gained, whilst Austria was there: it made war with Austria, the expulsion of the Barbarians, the condition the sine qui non of progress. It was also the test to which it determined to submit the intentions of its governors. The cry of War to Austria!' raised at the same moment in all the towns of Italy, could not but awaken a terrible echo: in Lombardy; and thus it proved: all was in movement in Milan, and whilst a quasi• legal opposition was being organized amongst the higher classes, the spirit of revolt and insurrection was rife amongst the people. The Moderate party perceived that unless Royalty in Italy assumed the initiative in national emancipation, it was lost. It determined that Charles Albert should take upon himself the intiative; and then it was that the designation of the Sword of Italy began to go the round of the papers; and, whilst they preached peace to the Lombard populations on the one side, every- thing was done on the other to oblige Charles Albert to take a decisive step, The men of the Moderate party who had organized themselves in Milan, under Messrs. Casati, Borromeo, Gianni, and other old and new patricians, offered him through their agents this terrible alternative—the Iron Crown or the Republic. In reality, the Republic was in all hearts at Milan: more than that, it was in the law of things. Where the governing power was foreign and the question did not admit of any possible transaction, the People alone, once the insurrection completed, would re- main sole sovereign in the arena.

But, nevertheless, neither the intrigues by which he was besieged, nor the love of glory which it was very easy to awaken, nor the gravity of the danger, had power over this timid and enervated soul. God be thanked, the initiative did not belong to him; the national struggle receives not its impulsion from a royal hand. The people alone shall inaugurate it. The insurrection at Milan, originated by the youth of the middle classes and by the people, broke forth in the midst of their negotiations: the whole of Lombardy rose en masse. The Austrians were obliged to take refuge in their fortresses. It was only then, when placed between the imminent danger of an insurrection in his own states, which the war-cry uttered at Milan had intoxicated with enthusiasm, that the King marched. The victory was already gained at Milan and every- where when his proclamation appeared. He crossed the frontier, and the cohort of Moderates followed precipitately upon his steps. The question between the two principles was to be decided upon the plains of Lombardy. The Moderate party thus attained its apogee: it had a Pope, a King, an army, and the enthusiasm of the Italian population. It only wanted a truth for its principle; but that want sufficed for its destruction.

, I shall reserve for another letter the history of its fall. JosErn MAZ.ZINI.