insurrection itself, and composed of those who have shown themselves alike the boldest and wisest guides of the people during the struggle. When chosen beforehand, the choice usually falls upon those who owe their influence either to their having held office in the past, or to wealth or family; good men, it may be, but not possessing the secret of arousing the people either to holy rage or holy daring; having no confidence in the people, no conception or power of revolutionary initiative, and no sense or comprehension of its true aim, they too often unconsciously betray their mission either through ignorance or fear.

The last half century has frequently seen republican insurrections against foreign dominion handed over to the guidance of men who had come to terms with that dominion by accepting office under it; and insurrections, which, like that of Poland, had been both prepared and initiated by the democratic element, yielded up to the influence of princes and aristocrats, and then allowed miserably to consume themselves in a circle of compromises, which, without obtaining a single real advantage from the governments, impeded, restrained, and finally exhausted alike the energy of the people and the enthusiasm of the sister nations. In Lombardy, when, from ill-timed modesty, weakness, or culpable carelessness, the promoters of the insurrection withdrew from the task of directing its development, the government was placed in the hands of men either incapable, like Casati; aristocratic at heart, like Borromeo; or intriguers, like Durini; men whose courtier-souls were unable to exist without a master, and who cast the liberty, the people, and the future of Italy, without even a shadow of compact or guarantee, at the feet of Charles Albert.

The

WHEN I arrived in Italy, the time for remedying the errors I have described was almost over. Moderates governed everything; the rest blindly followed their lead, and the people, amongst whom they had spread the most atrocious calumnies against the Republicans, had still unbounded faith in the king. Two paths were open to a man holding my belief:

To withdraw entirely, and even as Thrasea, covering his head with his mantle, withdrew from the cowardly and corrupted senate, abandon a land forgetful of principle and doomed to destruction; to retrace my steps into exile, and in exile hold aloft the Republican flag; to make known the whole truth, regardless of men and things, unheeded or condemned by the living, so that posterity should at a future day acknowledge it, and admire one who had never failed to proclaim it, - - and this was the path pointed out by every indignant impulse of my own heart; or to resign myself to the actual force of circumstances, and endeavor gradually to modify them so far as to achieve one step in advance towards one at least of the terms of our problem unity; to abstain from forsaking my brothers, although mis

taken, and avoid interrupting the emancipatory tradition already initiated; to refute by patient sincerity and mournful reverence for the country's will those accusations of intolerance and of an exclusive and dictatorial spirit cast upon the Republicans; to hold my peace, without apostatizing as to one portion of the truth, for the sake of the possible realization of the other part, and, unsustained by their illusions, tread with the people the via crucis of deceptions they were destined to pass through, so as to have one day the right to say to them: I was with you in your sufferings, remember; at any rate to teach them a lesson of love and of the constant duty of sacrifice, even the sacrifice of reputation, and, though not of truth itself, of the pride of truth, for the sake of that we love.

Some men, many
Sirtori at the time
To Sirtori, who in

This was the path I chose. years afterwards-only Giuseppe -reproached me for that choice. March, 1848, founded a democratic society in Milan, and wrote to me on his departure for Venice that I was a deserter from the Republican faith, no answer is required. He is now one of the king's generals, and a believer in the omnipotence of the Royal Statuto; I am still an exile and a Republican. But to others, to my brothers in belief, I will say that I have frequently looked back upon that period of my life with sadness, but without a shadow of remorse. When I reached Italy we Republicans were an imperceptible minority. The people were not-in Italy they never will be-monarchical, but they were what is now termed Opportunists: they saw before them an organized force; an army of Italians ready to combat the abhorred foreigner; men whom

they had been accustomed to regard as apostles of liberty assured them that the army was their sole salvation; it was headed by a king, and they consequently hailed as liberators both army and king.

At the moment of the popular triumph, at the end of the fifth day of the Milanese insurrection, when the people, intoxicated with victory, stood alone in the field, the word Republic might have been spoken; but to speak it in April could have served no useful purpose, and would have given rise to the worst of all wars, a civil war. Moreover, to what purpose do we constantly speak of the sovereignty of the people, and our reverence for the national will, if we are to disregard it so soon as it shall pronounce in contradiction to our wishes? Was it not our especial duty, as Republicans, without neglecting our mission of modifying opinion through an apostolate of ideas, to educate men to abstain from all violation of it by force? We had had a right to take the initiative when the Italian people were universally enslaved; we alone were then able, and therefore bound to lead the way; but when once the people were risen and free, we had no other rights than those of counsel, vote, or action, according to their mandate.

As to the plan of isolating one's self from the movement, in order to be free to declare the whole truth, I regarded it as a temptation of the Ego, unconsciously attaching more importance to its own dignity and the effect to be produced upon posterity, than to the aim to be reached the welfare of the Father-land, distempered and deceived indeed, but none the less dear and sacred, both in the past and future. Rousseau might have been justified in living a solitary life and declaring without reticence all that

he believed to be truth, because he neither sought to bring about nor foresaw the imminence of a revolution in the practical sphere; but in my belief the revolution was already begun. Moreover he was solely a man of thought, not of thought and action. Now I believed that if we Republicans had a special mission, it was precisely that of reducing thought to action, so far as circumstances allowed; of never separating our destiny from that of our native land; of sharing every pulsation of our country's life, of endeavoring at least to diminish her sufferings, when we could not put an end to them; of achieving for her one degree of progress in education, one fraction of our ideal, when the realization of the complete ideal had become through no fault of ours-impossible.

Practically I foresaw the ruin of the royal war; but one hope still cheered my saddened spirit, and that hope was named Venice. The Republican flag still waved over Venice, and I believed that when imbecility and treason should have done their work in Lombardy, the eyes of all men cleared from deceitful visions-would be fixed upon that banner. Venice, then, would become a new centre of resistance, a new leader of the people's war. This idea, about which I was silent, was the cause of my sending the Antonini legion to Venice; for this I counseled Garibaldi, when he arrived from Monte Video, to hasten thither, and place himself and his brave band under the orders of the Venetian Government; as it was for this that, at a later period, I endeavored to concentrate Michiewicz's Polish legion there. When treason and imbecility had fulfilled their work in Milan, however, all possibility of an appeal to Lombardy was destroyed.