Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 09: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great ReformersHubbard, Elbert
History
Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 09: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers
Hubbard, Elbert
Reformers
Mazzini and Garibaldi were totally different in their methods and
habits of thought. Garibaldi reverenced Mazzini and called him master,
and Mazzini admired the daring of Garibaldi, and no doubt was
influenced and encouraged by him to continue sending out his little
leaflets of liberty, which were secretly printed and circulated, read
and reread, and passed along. Examined by us now, they seem innocent
indeed, as harmless as pages lifted from Emerson's essay on "Nature,"
but actually they were the dynamite that was to rend the rocks of
Italy's Gibraltar of orthodoxy.
Matters were now culminating fast. Mazzini and Garibaldi were
organizing secret bands of "Young Italy." The arrangement was to
secure and hold a certain point on the Swiss frontier as headquarters,
and from there make open war upon Austria and the Pope. Like John
Brown, these zealous revolutionaries felt sure that, at the call to
arms, the subjugated provinces would cast off their shackles and join
hands with the liberators. They did not realize that slavery is a
condition of mind, and that as a class slaves are quite happy in their
serfdom, being as unaware of their true condition as are those caught
in the coils of superstition. No one sees the coils but the free man
on the outside. The beauty of freedom's fight is that it frees the
fighter.
The secret societies known as "Young Italy" failed in their secrecy.
No secrets can be kept except for a day. Spies were duly initiated,
and the report of the daily doings was handed in to the Pope and his
council. To capture Garibaldi and Mazzini and hang them would have
been easy; but to do this might bring about the very storm so much
feared. So the word was passed that the conspirators were to be
arrested; a price was placed upon their heads, and an opportunity was
given them to escape.
Mazzini traveled leisurely through France, which offered him safe
passage to London. Garibaldi remained on the border, and with a little
band engaged in joyous guerrilla warfare, hoping for a general revolt.
The time was not yet ripe, and nothing he could then do would gather
up the scattered forces of freedom and crystallize them.
Fighting was then going on in South America--when are they not
fighting in South America?--and Garibaldi thought he saw an
opportunity to strike a blow for freedom, and so he sailed away for
the equator, filled with a passion for freedom, desiring only to give
himself for the benefit of humanity. Yet his heart was with "Young
Italy," and that the time would come when he would return and break
the fetters that the Pope had forged for the minds of men, he always
knew and prophesied. Such was the firm purpose and unwavering faith of
Joseph Garibaldi.
* * * * *
Arriving in South America, Garibaldi took time to investigate
conditions. Then he offered his services to Don Gonzales, who had set
up a republic on a side street, and was fighting the power of the
Emperor of Brazil.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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