STATE OF ITALIAN AFFAIRS.
THE commencement of what seems to be another revolutionary movement in Italy, prompts the question, What is the actual situation of that country ? what are the real circumstances, what the hopes ? The letters by Joseph Mazzini, the third and con- cluding one of which we publish this week, afford useful mate- rials towards a judgment. We have been glad to give those letters a circulation among many who may be deemed political opponents of the writer. Although differing from Mazzini in the strong- est degree, we cannot join in the idle and malignantly ignorant cry against his personal character ; when the whole weight of the evidence to which we have access tends to display him as a man of chivalrous devotion, self-denying, exalted in enthusiasm above the possibility of double-dealing. We believe his words as the pure reflex of his belief and purpose ; coloured nevertheless with the deepest hues of a sanguine imagination. As evidence on the side of the Republican party, his account may be said to derive confirmation from the papers by the Marchioness of Belgiojoso in the Revue des Deux-Mondes ; but indeed they need no such corroboration. Mazzini is the recognized father of that party in Italy which is just now in the ascendant, and therefore he is the most legitimate exponent of its policy and hopes. From his letters we are to learn what has been and is the policy of the Re- publican party ; what is the utmost that can be said for its hopes.
The prospect is not cheering. According to our correspondent, a large and influential party in Italy has turned traitor to the na- tional cause. The secret of the Italian defeat in 1848, he avers, was the conduct of the Moderate or Monarchical party, by whom " a Dynastic project was substituted for the Insurrectionary Republican idea ": the Moderates, playing into the hands of the King of Sardinia, made the attempt to emancipate Italy from Austria and Austrian policy subservient to the project of con- structing a kingdom of Northern Italy for Charles Albert ; but, wholly defeated, its chosen leader baffled and exposed, the party is bankrupt in character, and entirely hors de combat. Such we take to be the general effect of Mr. Mazzini's representations. But if it is thus, we should say, so much the worse : it is tanta- mount to saying, that the princes of the Italian states, the aris- tocracy, and the Monarchical doctrinaires, are set aside—that the larger half of political society in Italy is no longer available for Italy.
The remaining section, the Republican party, now occupies the field : what is it, what its conduct, its policy ? The Republican party does not coincide with the limits of any particular class ; taking the whole of Italy, perhaps, it excludes no particular class. It does not include the whole of the "nobles "—the gentry of Italy ; its nucleus is to be found among the professional men ; its greatest strength among officers of the armies. It has in- formation, intelligence, energy ; it may be truly described to comprise the flower of Italy. The great exception to it, un- luckily, is " the people,"—which in Italy may be discontented, roused, led, but is never political; nor will it be made so under many and distant years of training. The Republican party is a fractional minority of the people, a minority even of the po- litical society of Italy. Mr. Mazzini expressly admits as much- " Our faith," he says, "was not generally shared." The party holds to its tenets with a persevering equanimity that possesses much admirable dignity, though it is thereby blinded to facts which surround it. The doctrine which Mr. Mazzini now pro- claims has all along been the doctrine of the party—" Nothing great can henceforward be accomplished through a King." When, therefore, we read the deplorable charge against Charles Albert and the Moderates—a charge which carries with it very strong suspicions--that they purposely kept back and broke up the patriot Volunteers, we are bound to bear in mind, that although the Republicans had colourably waived the establishment of the Republic, they really entered into the contest with the foregone conclusion that Charles Albert would betray them, and that there should be no kingdom of Northern Italy, but only one Italy, Charles Albert its " first citizen." However sincere their wish
to be honest and fair dealing,—and we believe it to have been so with many, Mazzini among the number,—it is evident that the fixed ideas still swayed their minds. In other words, they expected Moderates to waive their opinions and opportunities, princes to descend from their thrones, in order to fight for Italy one and self.. constituting—to shut their eyes and open their months for what Italy should give them. The Republicans encountered the distrust they evinced. They chose to ignore the circumstances. They have divided the political public of Italy in civil war, and perhaps driven one half into alliance with Austria. They would not seize the possible—they could not join heartily in the war of Italian independence. Such are the circumstances under which the party enters upon the war of the Republic. Certain diplomatists have talked for some time of a Congress at Brussels, to " settle" Italian affairs. Six months ago such a Congress might have done service : among other good offices, it might have brought larger numbers of Italians within the pale of a practical policy. At present it is difficult to descry any ele- ments of settlement on which the proposed Congress could set to work. The Italians have undone everything like order in their own position. Austria, which was losing ground when Italy for a moment seemed to be united, has recovered all her ground, be- fore enfeebled and disunited foes. France, whom the Italian Monarchists dreaded as the importer of Republicanism into the peninsula, now holds aloof, or threatens to aide with Austria—if Austria will patronize President Bonaparte. Whatever the rights and duties of England in respect to intervention, our re- presentatives have managed to make it so disastrous, that the warmest friends of Italy will agree with her enemies, that it is better for us not to interfere at all. It is not easy to discern any ground of beneficial diplomatic action within the usual course of policy. Should the Congress indeed meet—should it be really bent upon tranquillizing Italy with a lasting peace—the diplomatists might still find a clue out of the labyrinth, in the real facts of the case. If they could regard princes and peoples, nobles and repub- licans, the national welfare and vested interests, Austria and Italy, in their actual, not supposititious relations—could keep steadily in view the welfare of Italy and of Europe—they might discover measures to recommend. But such measures would in- volve great changes.
"The relation of the Lombardo-Venetian kingdom to the Austrian empire," says Mr. Monckton Milnes, " can hardly have realized the hopes of the founders of the new order of Europe. It certainly was not intended that one of the richest, most accessible, and most improveable of the districts of the earth, inhabited by a frugal and industrious people, an intelligent and active middle-class, and a wealthy and polished nobility, should be permanently held in subjection to the authority of a strange and distant capital, by the sole tenure of military rule. It surely was not contemplated that the pleasant land between the Alps and the Po, the line of historic and decorated cities, leading to the wondrous one which had of old been wedded to the sea, and all the host of gay towns and villages that border the most beautiful lakes and most fruitful plains of the Italian peninsula, should be compressed beneath a German and Slavonic soldiery, and regulated by officials speaking an alien language, and referring to a far and unknown centre of domi- nion. Such a destination could not reasonably form part of any scheme which pretended to public equity, and did not profess to disregard the welfare of man- kind?*
Most true : but other gigantic absurdities exist in Italy, and equally forbid any real settlement or unbroken peace while they survive. Italy cannot remain as she has been, even if this Re- publican effort fail. The only thing certain is the absolute un- certainty of the existing state.
* " The Events of 1848, especially in their relation to Great Britain. A Letter to the Marquis of Lansdowne. B7 Richard Monckton Milnes, M.P." A pam- phlet of 70 pages, containing large, just, and statesmanlike views of foreign expressed with the author's characteristic bonhomie and benevolence of feeling.
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