[June, From the British Quarterly Review. ITALY AND ITALIAN NATIONALITY.* WE can not say that the rise of a new nation has elicited any literature worthy of the occasion. The pamphlets at the foot of this page, besides treating the subject in a fragmentary manner, are singularly wanting in amplitude of comprehension and strength of argument. The cause of the discarded princes is utterly rotten: but we were hardly prepared to expect that the very worst cause would fall into the very worst hands. Some gentlemen never feel so much at home, or realize the full strength of their powers, unless when employed in the defense of some monstrous paradox. Like those itinerant performers of athletic feats who extort the wonder of our urban populations by balancing long poles mounted with heavy weights upon their upper lip against all the known laws of equilibrium, they seem to place their pride in uphold * Napoli ed Austria, di GIOVANNI GIMELLI. To rino. 1859. La Diplomagia e la Quistione Italiana, lettera di L. C. FARINI al Sig. Guigl. Gladstone. 12mo. Torino. 1856. La Quistione Italiana. Seconda lettera de L. C. FARINI al Sig. Guigl. Gladstone. 12mo. Torino. 1858. Il Conte Buol ed il Piemonte, de L. C. FARINI. 12mo. Torino. 1859. Toscana ed Austria, di Sig. RIDOLFI. 12mo. Firenza. 1859. Fra un Mese! Ipotesi di BOGGIO. Torino. 1859. 12mo. La Politica Napolionica et quella del Governo Rome et le Monde. Par N. TOMMASEO. 1859. Paris. Le Pape et le Congrès. Paris: E. 1859. Dentu. Encore un Mot du Pape et du Congrès. Paris: E. Dentu. 1860. ing opinions contradicted by every body's experience, and in maintaining a cumbrous load of theories upon grounds utterly incompetent to shadow of an argument. But we must support the say that the abettors of Austrian rule in Italy have deplorably failed, by performances of this kind, to elicit any thing from the crowd but their heartiest contempt. Whether we turn to Villemain's or Montalembert's pamphlets, to the rash speeches of the Irish tribunes or the Pope's encyclical letters, in every quarter we find the cause of a denationalized Italy plunged into a bathos so far below mediocrity, that we fear our readers will hardly thank us if we attempt to extricate it, even for the sake of exposing the wretched materials employed in its defense. For any feat of mental dexterity based upon illusion, to be worthy of analysis it some degree of success. But in this part ought at all events to be attended with of our subject we shall be deprived of the charm attending the dissection of an able would not be balanced, the poles have adversary's argument: for the weights broken down, and the actors have earned for themselves the derision of Europe. We must, however, do our Irish neighbors the credit of signaling them out in this strange exhibition as the most conspicuous instances of failure. They have attempted to perform the most, and they have achieved the least. Montalembert would leave Central Italy to its fate. He of an unwilling people. He only breaks would not force the rulers upon the necks down where his religious feelings lead him Pope, on the basis of his religious supremto support the temporal power of the acy. M. Villemain, on the other hand, evidently thinks the present government of the Pope a weight too great even for his abilities to sustain, and directs the brunt of his attack against the provisional governments of Italy. But our Irish friends, with far feebler powers of ratioci nation, in their usual chivalrous manner, would support both loads at once. The have brought to a good cause. The mode of doing this is quite of a piece with the folly of the attempt. Premises and conclusions are laid down, which not only contradict actual experience, but directly invert it. Then an attempt is made to connect one with the other by a process of argument which completely tears them asunder. Never was human reason in so drunken a state before. Under the elixir of religious fanaticism, its powers are put forth in a suicidal struggle to inflict mortal wounds upon itself. In the fields of speculation the views which necessitate such blind folly would meet with our antagonism: but they raise our double antagonism when an attempt is made to mold the civil world in conformity to them, and to force them on the perplexed understandings of prime ministers. We would appeal to our English constituencies, how far it is desirable, by returning equipollent sections to parliament, to render this driveling idiotcy the keynote to the foreign policy of the British Empire. Nor can we speak very highly of the efforts of those who have employed their pens on the other side of the question. Whatever assistance Italy may derive from French bayonets, it is pretty evident she can derive none from French pamphlets. The brochures which have recently issued from the Parisian press, in favor of the Imperial policy, are mostly confined to the Papal difficulty; and these are not the spontaneous product of their authors. The government suggests the topics, and limits the scope of the paper, and the writer merely fills up the rough outline, as an artist a composition picture, according to the suggestions of his employer. We get, therefore, in these productions, the formal pleadings of hired advocates, instead of those discursive flights of genius in which a Thiers or a Guizot would have applied to Italy the sagest deductions of history, enlivened with the efforts of a reasoning fancy, and calculating with the utmost nicety the effect of a new nation on the future of Europe, as an astronomer estimates the disturbing influence to the solar system when a new planet swims into his ken. Were this sort of dictation employed in the right direction, it would be pernicious. But when used to gild a false policy with the appearance of reason, it totally strips the writers of that strength which they would otherwise French writers, in this respect, have labored under the peculiar disadvantage of having a bad model. The pamphlet which the French Emperor employed all his resources to have scattered broadcast over Europe, and which bears unmistakable marks of its royal parentage, is only an elaborate effort at self-refutation. Most assiduous care is taken, at the conclusion, to contradict every principle which had been laid down with equal care at the commencement. When we see the powers of a great nation evoked, not simply to admit, but to defend, this contradictory thesis with all the forms of argument, we are mournfully reminded of the action of those principles which in a few score years reduced the descendants of the sprightly wits of the Suburra to a level with the barbarians who dwelt upon the frontiers of the lower empire. As we do not, however, think that Napoleon is emulous of the fame of any of the descendants of Augustus, and as we also believe him born, whether he intends it or not, to render signal services to humanity, we must entreat him to confine himself to action. As he values his reputation, let him write no more pamphlets. He was once saved by the eloquence of Berryer, but nothing can save him from the effects of his own eloquence. Nor do the Italian pamphleteers, whose pens are unbridled, in this matter indemnify us for the suspension of the mind of France. They have been for the most part actively engaged in the struggle, and, like officers in a battle, were too much bent in pushing the enemy from their immediate front to observe the general issues of the contest. Rodolfi settles the matter with Austria as far as regards Florence, Azeglio as far as regards Rome, Gimelli as far as regards Naples, and Farini flies to the rescue in the case of Piedmont, where all reasoning would now seem to be superfluous, unless that accompanied with whiffs of grapeshot and a glittering array of bayonets. When they escape from the narrow sections of the subject to wide generalities, it is only to indulge in high-flown panegyrics about liberty and enlightenment, much in the style in which Alfieri makes his Timoleons and Brutuses rant at the foot-lights, or to which a classical Radical like Grote has recourse when he addresses himself to the refined constituency of the Tower Hamlets. But there is clearly more in this Italian business than these gentlemen appear to dream of, or than they deem it prudent to meddle with at present. The question was not merely between Piedmont and Central Italy; or between Rome and the Legations. It concerns the entire Peninsula; and it not only concerns the entire Peninsula, but the future condition of Europe. For Northern and Central Italy, commanding two seas, and guarded by a chain of mountains, can not be submerged into one grand state without absorbing Venetia and Naples, any more than a consolidated France could have allowed a Duke of Normandy to set up a conflicting rule upon its borders; or than our own Edwards could have permitted their frontier provinces to be disturbed by the sway of Gaelic chieftains. If Victor Emmanuel be allowed to consolidate his new kingdom, even Napoleon will find it difficult to fulfill his promises of keeping Rome for the Pope. For, as soon as Venice shall discard the Austrian, and Sardinia merge her Piedmontese into an Italian policy, no power on earth can keep the two southern states from coalescing with their brethren, without actually emboweling the country. It is in the nature of things. Small States on the same peninsula are almost invariably absorbed by the larger States, even when their governments are unexceptionable. But when their governments are effete, and that of their aggrandized neighbor is sound, it would require nothing less than an intervention of heaven to save them. Italy then, after the sleep of centuries, is destined to rise up, like a second Pallus, encased in arms. The lessons of civic wisdom and national concord, the banner of constitutional freedom, guarded by the spear and the shield, are no more destined to remain sterile in her hands, in the nineteenth century, than the Institutes of Justinian in the twelfth century, or the Greek Primer and the inspirations of the pencil in the fifteenth century. Down-trodden nationalities, at present crushed beneath the weight of heterogeneous organizations, are certain to catch the flame. And if these regain their independence, Europe is destined to see its affairs guided by conventions in comparison with which, as regards their permanent effects on the destinies of humanity, the Congress of Westphalia or Vienna will shrink to the dimen sions of a municipal council or a parish vestry. If any country has the right to make reprisals on the present system of international policy, it is undoubtedly Italy. For since its inauguration, she has been the mere makeweight by which rival sovereignties have sought to compound their differences and drive a hard bargain with each other. If other nations have lost their independence, at least their territory has been respected. They have lost their individual agency to find themselves members of a more powerful nation. But Italy has been torn into shreds and patches to serve as a standing political convenience. While a French priest has ruled at Rome, and the Spaniard at Naples, the Dukes of Savoy have governed Piedmont, Austria has presided over Milan, and a scion of Bavaria has found himself very comfortably settled in Sardinia. If Philip V. renounced Milan and Naples in favor of the Hapsburgs, at least he found no difficulty in securing the investiture of Parma and Placentia for his eldest son Don Carlos. If Austria resigned the Netherlands in order to gratify the Belgium whim for independence, an indemnity was immediately found for her in Venice. If the first Napoleon wanted an appanage for his sister Eliza and her husband, nothing was more simple. He had only to slice Lucca and Piombino from the Tuscan territory, and present the Italians with a new Principality. Any old dowager of Austria, any cadet of the reigning family of France, any half-brother of a collateral branch of royalty in Spain, who wanted to see their superscription upon a medal, and to be the center of a court, had only to look to Italy, and the thing was done. Indeed the separation of the Peninsula under foreign and necessarily conflicting rule, great as that evil undoubtedly is, sinks into nothing when compared with the facility with which, by this sort of arrangement, that rule was tossed from the hands of one dynasty into those of another. Not only has every Continental nation, at some time or other, seated the scions of its house upon some Italian throne, but each Italian throne has been occupied by them in succession. The Frank, the German, and the Spaniard, within the last few centuries, have each exercised sovereignty at Naples and the Two Sicilies, and marched each other out of the palaces of Tuscany and Milan. |