They fought for a magnificent idea, and
even now, though the populace have to bear a taxation three times as
great as any known before in their history, the ordinary Italian will
say, "Yes, signor--the taxes are very heavy; we toil very hard and pay
much money; but who counts money? We are a nation now--a real nation;
Italy is united and free." That is the gist of the matter. The people
were bitterly ground down, and they are content to suffer privation in
the present so long as they can ensure freedom from alien rule in the
future. Nothing that the most hardly-entreated Briton suffers in any
circumstances could equal the agonies of degradation borne by the people
of the Peninsula, and their emancipation was hailed as if it had been a
personal benefaction by all that was wisest and best in European
society. The millions who turned out to welcome Garibaldi as if he had
been an adored sovereign all had a true appreciation of real liberty;
the masses were right in their instinct, and it was left for hysterical
"thinkers" to shriek their deluded ideas in these later days.
"But surely the Irish rose for freedom in 1641?" I can almost imagine
some clever correspondent asking me that question with a view to taking
me in a neat trap.
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