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It matters little, you will say; between these aims there is an indissoluble tie, and we shall all understand one another. I do not share your hope. No; all will not understand you. And you will find among those who say they are of us, I know not how many, to whom the pretext offered by this ill-defined name will suffice to make your true thought continue to be misunderstood. For the perception of the aim as well as for the choice of the means, you assemble yourselves, in adopting such a denomination, under the yoke of equivocation. With difficulty can you withdraw yourselves from its consequences.

ferent branches of industry; this Congress, | Liberty and Justice. Why not give to your for example, shows the progress which we Congress the baptism of these equally sahave made of late years in the manufacture cred names? Why substitute the conseof revolutionists. On the whole, they are quence for the object? not wholly uninteresting; they certainly do not fail on the side of being pompous, respectable, and totally futile; their resolutions go to something very definite, and indicate some of the confused tides of feeling which are current amongst the masses, and therefore worth noting by the higher classes. The English contribution of Messrs. Odgers and Cramer is not calculated to shine very brilliantly by the side of a genuine hero, after his own fashion, like Garibaldi; but they are perhaps on a level with the foreign members in the substance of their doctrines, though they cannot give elegant dress to their remarks, for which the language of the birthplace of the principles of 1789 seems to be necessary. It is hard to think very highly of a Congress composed of gentlemen of this calibre, and from which men of real ability seem to have pretty generally shrunk; and it is not very probable that they will be allowed to become our masters and carry out their principle, for they have some strong forces to encounter before they can go far in the path they have marked out. Still the affair is worth noticing as a symptom of the opinions entertained by a class which daily becomes of more importance with the spread of democratic tendencies.

I abhor equivocation. In it, for now the third of a century, is to be found the source of our errors, and of our impotence.

I saw in France, in 1830, a whole party which, whether Republicans or whatever else they might be, desired the fall of every Bourbon. But that party ceased to be when they were persuaded that for the cry against the Bourbons, frequent violaters of the Charter, it was far-seeing tactics to substitute, in the way of the Revolution, the cry of Vive la Charte! The Revolution took place, but the people had accepted seriously the programme cry, which was nothing else than an artifice, and from the Revolution came forth nothing but a Bourbon substitution and a corrected Charter.

In 1848 there existed in Italy no faith whatever in the Monarchy or in the Papacy our historical tradition was Republican, From The Examiner, Sept. 28. and a numerous succession of martyrs in

M. MAZZINI'S LETTER TO THE MEMBERS
OF THE PEACE CONGRESS.

A CORRESPONDENT sends us the following full translation of the letter of M. Mazzini in the Unita Italiana. We gave last week a summary of its contents.

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structed us in an aim which should embrace in itself Unity and the Republic. But it appeared, among us also, to some among the leaders, that it was a work of far-seeing and of tactics, to diminish difficulties by dismembering the problem; they pretended to avail themselves, first, of the forces of the Monarchy and of the ancient prestige of the Papacy to conquer Unity, and then out of Unity to bring the ruin of the two antiquated elements. They agitated the multitudes in the name of Pius IX.; they taught them the formula, "Italy one under the dynasty of Savoy." From this abnorYour intentions, I have no doubt, are mal conjunction came forth only defeat, holy; you wish what I wish, liberty for all, misfortune, and shame, for ten long years; justice for all, and the brotherhood, the then material Unity without moral Unity, association of all countries. But you call the body without the soul of Italy, an infanyourselves the Congress of Peace. Now cy which resembled decrepitude, and the peace can only be the consequence of necessity of a second Revolution, which

Citizens, It is impossible for me, for many reasons, to assist personally at your Congress in Geneva, but and I say it with deep-felt regret the denomination chosen by you, and the end to which it points, would prevent me, I fear, even if these impediments did not exist.

must, some future day, cut off the chain by which we are now bound to the inspirations of foreign despotism, and are thus impeded in our growth.

And even now, while I write, the equivocation becomes aggravated under the form of spiritual and temporal dualism on the Roman Question, and so impedes its solution. Italy has men without logic and without belief, who assume to tear his crown from the Pontiff, prostrating themselves at the same time before the tiara - to conquer Rome with a banner which bears upon it, "the Catholic Apostolic Religion is dominant in Italy"—to drag on to this a Monarchy whose power is derived from the mother authority, and which knows the fate which awaits it when this object is attained. To the windings of these men, who do not scruple to say, "the Papacy has no longer life for itself or for any; Rome belongs to the nation which can and ought to live," - we owe Aspromonte and the strange spectacle of a Chamber which has decreed Rome to be the capital of Italy, and yet stops short in Florence; of a Government which says, "the temporal power is a usurpation," and yet gathers troops on the frontier of that contrasted sovereignty to defend it from every assault of Italians; of a people who affirm at every hour their own right over Rome, and who await always with a servile patience that Rome, weak, unarmed, with the flower of her sons in prisons or in exile, with the Damocles sword of Imperial France suspended over her head, should emancipate herself by her own forces.

No; in the presence of these repeated lessons, I will not say, from the hope of calling the majority around an innocent banner, "peace is my object." The majority, lukewarm, timid, void, in its normal conditions, of enthusiasm and of sacrifice, will cling, remembering the assumed obligations, to that banner when, to conquer a decisive victory, you will believe the moment come to veil it and to fight.

Now you know it: that inevitable moment will come. Peace cannot become the law of human society until the struggle has been undergone which will establish life and association on the basis of Justice and of Liberty, on the ruins of every Power existing in the name, not of principles, but of dynastic interests.

A necessary struggle: a war holy as peace, from whence shall descend the triumph of Good. Were not those European battles holy which saved, some hundreds of years ago, our dogma of Liberty from irruptive Mahometan fatalism? Was not the

heroic war of the people holy which swept from the soil of the Low Countries the firestake of the Spanish Inquisition? Do not all our hearts throb remembering the six years of war for Hellenic Independence which awoke Greece to a second life — an epic poem which still awaits its last canto? Did we not salute with a cry of enthusiasm the battles which attested to us from period to period the immortal life of Poland? You have among you some of my Italian fellowcitizens: not one who is not ready to recommence the struggle against Austria, if Austria were ever to return to invade our Lombardo-Venetian lands. They tell me Garibaldi brings to you his assent: ask him if he does not meditate at this very moment war against the Papal troops. You will salute with a long throb of admiration the presence among you of a man whose friendship honours me, of the head of the American Abolitionists, of William Lloyd Garrison; but will you not remember that the crowning of his apostleship, and the immense conquest of liberty for our black brethren, are due to four years of gigantic battles?

I repeat it, I do not misunderstand your intentions. The battles which you reject are not those of which I speak: they are those which, directed by castes or by kings, repress Liberty in the bosom of a people, or Justice and Love in international relations. But how will you provide to reject these? The question of the means is supreme. The importance of your work in popular opinion is closely connected with

it.

It is necessary, above all, to obtain national disarmament; then to substitute for permanent armies the armed people, the military orders of which Switzerland gives you an example. Do you think you can succeed in this without a Revolution? Permanent armies are now the only protection of existing Governments; do you believe you can persuade Governments to commit suicide? And if even in some States, where opinion freely expressed prevails at length over power, you succeed in attaining pacifically the great object you have sought, would you not leave those few States in the power of the vast despotic States, which would continue armed, and among which the law of silence takes from you every means of action? For you a general simultaneous disarmament is necessary. This must be the work of a Congress of the Nations, held by delegates freely and loyally elected, whose decisions shall be ratified by their electors. Will you obtain this without Revolution, without war?

I have studied the action of the party of peace in the sphere exterior to power in England. The pacific school of Manchester, the school of Cobden and Bright, obtained from important services rendered to the country in the economical question, a predominant influence. What were the results? England had a programme, often betrayed, but which, however, gave moral encouragement and support to the peoples, whose formula was: "Religious, Civil, Economical Liberty for the whole world; " that school has substituted for this programme a policy of non-intervention which, not being adopted by despotic Governments, has lost every character of principle to become the expression of a fact, of a local abdication, and-by announcing the determination of non-intervention for Good has animated despots to intervene for Evil. It has unnerved, bastardized the moral sense, the humane sense, the sentiment of solidarity which ought to unite all the sons of God under a single banner of common amelioration; it instilled into the mind the egotism which says: "Each within his own confines, each for himself;" it prolonged the duration of the Austrian usurpation, which was only restrained by war, and the duration of the Mahometan usurpation in Europe, which can only be overcome by insurrection and by war. It in fact occasioned the war in the Crimea, by persuading Russia that England would continue always inert, and isolated France recede before the struggle. And when the war burst forth, that school, by limiting it to Sebastopol and hastening the conclusion, prevented the good which might have come out of it, the emancipation of Poland, the lasting enfeeblement of Russia, the stirring up of the European populations subjected to Turkey; and left intact and suspended all the questions which might have been brought to an end for ever. Will not similar results come forth from your apostleship? I fear it. I fear that it will not prevent the war of kings, but dismember and disorder the forces destined for the war of the peoples.

upset except by forces of the same kind; that where tyranny, injustice, and arbitrariness reign there is no peace, but long and latent war; that every year of this dissimulated and cowardly war lays a stratum of corruption on the heart of the peoples who have to undergo them; that for this very reason time is precious, duty urgent, war often inevitable and sacred.

Among the many who are unnerved, soft, uncertain, your word of peace will descend, there is no doubt, well received and followed out - it does not exact serious sacrifices: but they will turn it against your secret thought. They will preach in your name, under the shadow of the banner raised by you, patience and resignation, trust in the slow, imperceptible work of time. They will crush with the name of imprudence every rising of the people against the reign of evil. They will teach others not to understand the virtue, the power of any bold initiative; they will substitute for it the worship of a public opinion, which is in substance nothing but the element prepared for action. They will justify with a doctrine, holy in itself, but immature and inopportune at this period, every hesitation dictated by fear, every shameful desertion, every servile concession of those who, among the tempests, seek repose and health for themselves.

No, this is not our intention.

In a world given to oppression, to moral anarchy, to the corruptions of privilege, to the caprice of individuals, to the brutal force which supports them, the intention which duty points out to us is the triumph of moral law, the suppression of all that opposes its fulfilment, the re-arrangement of Europe, the sovereignty of the nations of free, equal, associated; the assistance of all to all for the emancipation of all who are oppressed, for the amelioration of all who suffer, for the education of all, the independence of all, the armament of all. Our intention is the re-establishment of Poland, the fulfilment of German unity, of Italian unity, of Hellenic unity; a Danubian confederation substituted for the Austrian Empire, an oriental Switzerland substituted for the Turkish Empire in Europe; a Scandinavian union, an Iberian union, liberty for France; the Republican United States of Europe;

This day there is a want of the nerve of the mind, of the energy of convictions, of unity between thought and action, of the holy indignation against evil. There is a want of the belief that life is a sacrifice and a battle; that we are all, individuals a permanent international Congress above and peoples, pledged for great and noble causes; that this common bond ought to be affirmed by actions, that actions are determined by the rule of obstacles, that moral obstacles ought to be combated by moral forces, but that material obstacles cannot be

all. The intention - why not avow it? is a last great, holy crusade, a battle of Marathon in behalf of Europe, for the triumph of the progressive principle over the principle of retrogression, or of immovability.

This is the intention; do not conceal it, do not mask it; have the courage of Greek faith; inspire with this faith and this courage the peoples who are lulled to sleep.

When at the summit of your edifice you shall have substituted justice for arbitrariness, truth for falsehood, duty for egotistical interests, the republic for monarchy, you will then have peace; not sooner.

Transform your Congress; let it become a Congress of the men of duty, of liberty, of association. Let it extend over Europe. "The Universal Republican Alliance," whose nucleus exists already in the United States of America. The brief time which remains to me of life shall be consecrated to the development of your work. To-day I remain uncertain, and I esteem you too much not to say it to you openly. Yours,

September 6th, 1867.

66

question, what he thought America would be in a hundred years England as seen through a solar microscope." It was perhaps too much to expect of Mr. Sumner's catholicity that he should cite the prediction of the Marquis de Montcalm when dying at Quebec, that though Wolff by his victory transferred the sway of America from France to England, it would remain with England but for a short time - the most remarkable of the American prophecies, - but it savours of ingratitude that the glowing and really eloquent predictions of Thomas Paine as to the future of an independent America, which the soldiers of Washington read by their camp-fires, should have been neglected in a paper that often strains into prophecies the merest contemporary statements of fact.

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The line of Seneca - for Mr. Sumner GIUSEPPE MAZZINI. goes back so far-"Nec sit terris ultima Thule" is only connected with the subject because Columbus quoted it in a letter to Queen Isabella; though that, as well as the suggestion of Strabo, that two inhabited lands might be found "prolonged into the Atlantic Ocean," may serve to indicate the

From the London Review, Oct. 5. early period at which the eyes of mankind

AMERICAN DESTINY.

At

were turned expectantly westward.
the period of the voyage of Columbus that
mariner could hardly have read any con-
temporary writings that would not have
pointed him in the direction of his dis-
covery. Bishop Berkeley was hardly more
distinct in his prophecy two hundred and
thirty-six years after the discovery of
America than the Italian Pulci, who, a gen-
eration before that event, wrote

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"Men shall descry another hemisphere

*

*

*

*

But see, the sun speeds on his western path
To glad the nations with expected light."

THE Hon. Charles Sumner has recently written a monograph, which he calls "Prophetic Voices about America," intended to group together whatever the Old World has prophesied concerning the New, both before and since its discovery. Although the essay has about it a good deal of the American eagle - which Mr. Emerson once described as sometimes curiously resembling a peacock it bears the marks of considerable research, and is a contribution of some importance towards a chapter of history that can only be completely written at a maturer period of American It is rather, however, with the prophecies thought. Some of the earlier prognostica- made concerning the destiny of America tions concerning the future of America are, after it was colonized, that the monograph however, conspicuously absent. It is singu- is concerned. Some of these, it must be lar that the very vague prediction of Tur- admitted, are more quaint than important; got in 1748, that America "would do what notably that of Sir Thomas Browne, who Carthage did" a prediction which the sees America in the future "divided begrowing discontent of the colonies naturally tween great princes," and engaged in "pisuggested should not have reminded the ratically" assaulting and invading "their senator of the more glowing language in originals"-i.e., the nations of the Old which Montesquieu admonished Europe of World. It is, indeed, plain that the "prophthe strength and greatness of the people ecies" about America only became clear growing up in the woods of America. And when they had facts upon which to base even the good Bishop Berkeley's line, themselves so long have mankind been "Westward the course of empire takes its acting upon the advice of Hosea Biglow, way," is hardly so profound as the omitted" Don't never prophecy onless you know." expression of Coleridge, in reply to the When, under the masterly neglect of the

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long colonial administration of the Duke of Newcastle, in the first half of the eighteenth century, New England and Virginia had between them matured the forces of an invincible insurrection, it was not wonderful that enthusiasts should arise to believe that America was to be the seat of the Fifth Empire, and the old traveller, Burnaby, was probably justified by the situation in 1775 in writing "an idea, strange as it is visionary, has entered the minds of the generality of mankind, that empire is travelling westward; and every one is looking forward with eager and impatient expectation to that destined moment when America is to give the law to the rest of the world." The elder John Adams wrote that nothing was " more ancient in his memory than the observation that arts, sciences, and empire, had travelled westward;" and though there is a tradition that there was found drilled in a rock of the old Plymouth shore - it was surmised by the hand of one of the pilgrims

"The Eastern nations sink, their glory ends, And empire rises where the sun descends,"

we cannot, in the absence of any authentication of the inscription, fail to recognise a post-fourth-of-July character in the couplet. The extent and particularity of the faith in the great destiny of America, whilst as yet the conflict with England was very critcal, was, however, certainly in some cases remarkable. Thus the Neapolitan, Abbé Galiani, a writer on international law, whose works are still of value, writes to Madame D'Epinay in 1776 some months before the Declaration of Independence :"The epoch is come of the total fall of Europe and of transmigration into America. All here turns into rottenness-religion, laws, arts, sciences and all hastens to renew itself in America. Therefore do not buy your house in the Chausée d'An'in; you must buy it in Philadelphia. My trouble is that there are no abbeys in America" The only reason given by the Abbé for his faith is, that "for five thousand years genius has turned opposite to the diurnal motion, and travelled from the east to the west." This was in the same year that Ad im Smith was representing the slow march of English speculation by concluding that, "in little more than a century" the seat of empire over America would, through the increase of American produce, be transferred across the Atlantic. The "Wealth of Nations," with this opinion in it, was published in

England simultaneously with the American Declaration of Independence!

Some of the most interesting prophecies collated by Mr. Sumner are those that were inspired by jealousy in the minds of various Governments of the continent of Europe holding colonies in the New World. A Dutch correspondent of John Adams writes in 1780, that he has heard it repeatedly said, "If America becomes free it will some day give the law to Europe; it will seize our islands and our colonies of Guiana; it will seize all the West Indies; it will swallow Mexico, even Peru, Chili, and Brazil; it will take from us our freighting commerce; it will pay its benefactors with ingratitude." The Count D'Aranda, the Spanish Ambassador at Paris, even whilst he was entertaining Jay and Franklin, wrote to his king (1783) concerning the danger into which the success of America in her war with England had brought the Spanish possessions in that hemisphere. How," he asks," can we expect the Americans to respect the kingdom of New Spain, when they shall have the facility of possessing themselves of this rich and beautiful country? He counsels that three infantas shall be placed in America -one as King of Mexico, another as King of Peru, and a third as King of the Terra Firma.

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Mr. Sumner gives a valuable statement concerning the famous "Monroe doctrine," the origination of which he attributes to Mr. Canning. He, with the majority of American writers on this subject, fails to note that a general view of the superior rights of the United States on that continent was expressed by the First Napoleon when he sold to President Jefferson the greater part of the valley of the Mississippi, in terms that acknowledge the Monroe doctrine." Nevertheless, there seems doubt that President Monroe received the theory from Canning. Earnestly engaged in resisting the designs of the Holy Alliance, Mr. Canning sought to enlist the United States in the same policy, and to that end represented to the American Minister in London, Mr. Rush, that America, equally with Europe, was endangered by the ambitious schemes of the Alliance. It was in almost the very language used by Mr. Canning that Mr. Munroe presently declared that his country would consider any attempt on the part of European Governments "to extend their systems to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety," and that it could not look upon any attempts at oppressing

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