THE ITALIAN PATRIOTS OF 1821-244 Tin interest which attaches to
this brief memoir of a leading partizan of a once unsuccessful cause, is a strong testimony to the influence of personal amiability of character, since almost every page, thanks to the simplicity of the narrator, who for once has given us
* Abel Drake's Wife. By John Saunders. Lockwood and Co. t An Epoch of my Life : Memoirs of Count John Arrivabene, with Documents, Notes, &c., and Six Original Letters of Silvio Pettieo. Translated by (Count) C. Arrivabene. L. Booth. an autobiographical sketch free from the charge of vanity or self- glorification, bears internal evidence to his utter unfitness for the conspirator's life which a too sanguine disposition chalked out for him. We should fear to be accused of insensibility to suffering and exile, if we were to say that Count Arrivabene brought upon himself the imprisonment, confiscation, and ultimate poverty-stricken expa- triation of which we have so touching a narrative in this brief but pathetic memoir. Yet nothing is more certain than that, just as revolutions are not made with rose-water, so no one of our author's personal characteristics ought ever to mix himself up with great enterprises, whose success depends upon individual strength of character. The very account he gives of himself shows us the rash impulsive nature of the man, le mar toujours ear les levres, who was in- veigled into danger by his more earnest associates, thrown over- board by them, because they knew that by any legal proceeding or process of martial law, short of an Austrian military commission of the years 1821-24, he must be acquitted of any overt treason, and who ultimately was compelled to flee into an exile that imparted the hardening touch to his character which it lacked in the days of his would-be co-operation with the patriots of the first Italian move- ment.
The Count is still among us, the last survivor, if we mistake not, of the band of Italian patriots whose spirit chafed at the Treaty of Vienna as the knell of their country's independence. The overthrow of Bonaparte in 1814 found him, at the ripe age (for a conspirator) of 27, looking back upon the nine years during which the Kingdom of Italy had lasted, as an epoch of his life, during which he had "passed those years so full of great events in the most complete and shameful idleness." The same saivetewhich prompts him to such a confession, the more extraordinary that he had made the acquaintance of the illustrious Count Confaloaieri so far back as 1807, accom- panies him throughout the memoir, and we therefore are prepared to understand how, when examined before the Military Commission, he had the weakness to acknowledge that Porro had brought to Zaita (p. 37) a certain song which spoke of the "soldiers of his Majesty as mercenary legions of slaves.' It tells, we think, alike against the system and against the importance of the man, that the having read this particular "cantata" (a very stinging summary of Austrian misrule, of which a copy is furnished in the appendix), and the having been "trepanned"--no other word rightly expresses the circumstances —by Silvio Pellico into taking part in a Carbonaro meeting, were the head and front of his offending against the Austrian Government., Thereader of coarse indignantly demands whether we hold that such venial breaches of arbitrary regulations justify the severity of the Austrian Government, or can remove the load of infamy from its wretched Italian tools, the Salvottis and Dosmos, whose descen- dants and successors, in this their hour of retribution, we re- commend to the charitable notice of Sir George Bowyer and the Marquis of Normanby. We reply, No! but Count Arrivabene challenges our estimate of his public career, and we unhesitatingly pronounce him to have been one of those who, to use the em- phatic language of Scripture, are spued out because they are neither hot nor cold, who in one breath denounce oppression, and in the next protest they did not mean to go so far—who in theory have utterly broken with the oppressor, yet lack the courage to break openly. Italy has had hosts of such patriots. We concede to Count Arrivabene a pm-eminence among them if he would rest content with it.
But we gladly do him the justice to believe that, looking back from the threshold of another existence, he regrets poignantly he did not remain to share that confinement in the dungeons of Spielberg which has immortalized those of the noble band whose devotion to Italian independence showed what heroic elements still survived in the national character. The memoir itself is singularly well-timed, considering bow the Italian question has for upwards of two years been hanging fire, and seems destined to continue to do so for at least another year. Here we see what the system is which Ultra- montanes, Irish brigades, and Conservatives, hungry for office, would reimpose upon Italy. The simplicity of the translator, we may re- mark, has led him to misapprehend the meaning of his own languwe even. The author, when at last permitted to enjoy an hour's walk in the prison garden at Venice, overhears one fisherman ask the other wiry that gentleman is confined ; and on being told that he must be a Carbonaro, asks what is a Carbonaro, and what do the Carbonari want to do. His companion replies, in Venetian patois, "1 voleva tirar zo PIroperator." This the translator renders, " They want to overthrow the Emperor ;" whereas, upon the face of it, the real meaning is, "They aim at the Emperor's life," thus removing the explanation entirely from the ground of general dissatisfaction with the system, to that of personal assassination of an individual sur- rounded by the Catholic Church with the tegis of Divine Right and sacred inviolability. This was and is a favourite policy with the I.11- tramontane party, and furnishes a clue to much if not all the brigand- age which at present taxes the energy of the Turin Cabinet in Southern Italy. In fact, the exclamation of the honest boat- man furnishes a key to the supremacy during so many years of the Austrian rule, and is one of the strongest illustrations of the necessity that existed for the philippic which Garibaldi addressed the other day to the authorities of Pavia respecting the importance of "self-education," the lack of which, he rightly said, has hitherto been the strongest shackle that has fettered Italy. To dissociate principles from individuals is the last and most difficult lesson of Constitu- tionalism; but it is, when once attained, the surest bulwark alike against private conspiracy and public terrorism.
Count Arrivabene gives an excellent and most lifelike account of the delivery of the sentence by the Commission (1824) against Confa- lonieri and the heroic Andryane, who, we presume because he was a foreigner, has hitherto hardly received from the friends of Italy that justice to which his single-minded devotion to the cause of Italian freedom entitles him. How feeble do the details of the escape into Switzerland, or even the six unpublished letters of Pellico, read beside that terribly laborious "art of conversation" kept up by Andryane with Confalonieri, when the gallant Frenchman, after months of continuous effort, succeeded in making his fellow-pnsoner, who luckily happened to be confined in the adjoining cell, comprehend that each letter had its definite number of taps on the walls, by which singular code of signals the two noble victims were enabled for a few brief years to beguile their captivity! Let the reader imagine the painful uncertainty of such a mode of signalling, the burning desire for sympathy, and unconquerable devotion to the cause which could prompt the interchange of ideas under such disadvantages, and then turning to the common-place details of Count Arrivabene's flight, which differs but little from any ordinary narrative of the kind, he will, in the presence of such harrowing memorials of the sufferings of the Count's fellow-martyrs, question the good taste of parading par- ticulars of an escape from the opportunity of displaying similar mag- nanimity of character. Nevertheless, we recur to the opinion we expressed when we began, by confessing the personal charm which pervades this valuable con- tribution to the history of a period, of which we in England have but a vague idea. But we cannot agree with those who consider Con- falonieri, Pellico, Arrivabene, and others as the "pioneers" of Italian
liberty. They foreshadowed it ; they were enthusiasts, who felt that "coming events cast their shadows before ;" but between the dreamers and the doers is fixed a gulf which the former at least can never hope to cross. Not one of the patriots of 1822 would or could have exercised the patient foresight of Cavour, or have emulated the dignified devotion to duty displayed by Ricasoli, in that most difficult of all positions, a constitutional,Minister, who has lost his Sovereign's confidence, and has, like Clarendon, become personally obnoxious as well. We do not make these strictures in depreciation of the title of the earlier patriots to the gratitude of their countrymen. But public sentiment upon Italian matters was debauched many years ago by the appearance of "Le Mie Prigioni," by Silvio Pellico, who really comes out in very poor colours in the present work. The sweet temper of Count Arrivabene seeks to conjure up barely plausible excuses for the fact of Pellico having blabbed out the names of all who took wt in that revolutionary meeting at Paehio's country. house near Milan, a few days before the outbreak of the Italian re- volutionary movement at Alessandria, 10th March, 1821. "God forbid,' writes the Count (p.. 40), "that I should blame Pellico for having repeated to the Commission of Venice the few words on Carbonarism which had passed between us two at Zaita !" He finds for him the very lame apology that he, Pellico, had not known how to resist that impulse which obliges one to tell the truth, come what may ! It is quite apparent from this that though the Count has, as he touchingly tells us, learnt that he is indebted to his exile for benefits which can never be prized too highly by any one who values the dignity of man he has not discovered that even the most stringent canons of constitutional law do not require a man to criminate himself, while common sense and humanity combine to attach an ugly name to that incontinence of speech which drags others into danger unnecessarily. And it is significant that when, after nineteen years of exile, Arrivabene was enabled, in 1843, to visit Turin, he even then felt that Pellico owed him an explanation which never came, and that the last of the six letters of Pellico is the only one that bears internal evidence of their ever having met even, and that is dated 1852.
On the whole, the impression left upon us by this interesting book is—as regards the author, Qua diabk allait-il faire dans mite galire —as regards Italy, that she is fortunate in having such a roll-call of patriotic sons, who, even in her darkest days, have not despaired of their country. We may also wonder at the support given by a cer- tain party in England to the rOime which would perpetuate those fearful abuses, the overshadowing horrors of which rest like a thunder-cloud over the life of so harmless a man as Arrivabene, who under a milder rule would probably have been a useful, perhaps even a public-spirited citizen. We in England can hardly, it is true, figure to ourselves a social state in which a man is compelled to be on his guard against his friends and himself—where a word, sometimes even a sign, may become matters of deadly peril for others as well as himself. may in this light, the present memoir is but one protest the more against the cruel Austrian espionage that almost goaded such moderate men as Arrivabene into joining the Carbonari, that haunted the social circle, that pried into domestic life, that con- demned on suborned and unsupported evidence, and that finally hunted its victims into exile or the living grave of a Venetian prison. Nothing that its defenders can advance will atone to Englishmen for a system of Social Terrorism unparalleled since the Lei des Suspects was passed by the National Convention in the delirium of 1793. That, be it remarked, was passed in a moment of national frenzy ; this later horror was a state policy, calmly discussed and coolly acted upon. Yet if, as Carlyle says, "it is the Speaking Hundreds and units who make the world ring with their wall," how comes it that the fate of the Italian patriots of 1821-24 has been accepted by their countrymen in silence ? The answer is, that the popular instinct is rarely at fault, and their countrymen, while doing justice to their noble motive, feel that their precipitancy and unfitness only aggra- vated the national misfortunes. And for similar reasons, we, as candid lookers-on, cannot feel that any great principle is likely to profit by memoirs of inefficient aspirants after freedom such as Count Arrivabene, Pellico, and the others whose names are associated with the movement of forty years ago. We acknowledge the argumentum ad miserkordiam, but beyond that we cannot go. The test and the justification of revolution is success. Harmodius and Aristogiton owe their immortality to that grand ingredient of all insurrectionary movements, Success, if even it be but temporary. It is a harsh, perhaps even a cruel doctrine, but the revolutionist who has failed has little, if any, real claim upon our political sympathies. He has only riveted upon his fellow-countrymen the galling chain which he himself escapes by death or expatriation. To know the opportunity for successful revolt is only given to the few leaders and statesmen whose lives make nations as well as history, and among these not even Confalonieri, much less Pellico or Arrivabene, can claim to be enrolled. We accord them our sympathy in their sufferings, but we doubt the reality of their mission.
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