ABSTRACT
historical movements start at the top and penetrate downwards; the opposite is impossible. That is a proposition of which we ought to need no demonstration or reminder. Yet not only do we need both reminder and elucidation of it, but it is apt today to arouse murmurs of protest and to earn for its authors the facile condemnation of hide-bound Tory or reactionary, as if reason were not always a ‘reaction’ against unreason, and common sense against common nonsense. In this proper sense all thoughtful men are reactionaries, though they are by nature revolutionaries, the only true and constant revolutionaries, the shakers of the world. But according to the current myth it is the ‘masses’ who alone, it is supposed, can change the course of history and leave their mark upon it by their mysterious omnipotence. Theirs is the secret monopoly of irresistible power and wisdom, whose oracular whispers we must piously hear or solicit and obediently fulfil. Mazzini spoke a nobler, as well as a humaner language when he called them ‘the People.’ It was the people, in his view, who should alone have achieved liberation from the foreigner, the downfall of native tyrants, national unity, the proclamation of the republic, and the federation of nations. Brave, sound of heart, contemptuous of the royal armies and stronger, more single-minded than mercenaries could ever be, it should have conquered by daring to kindle its own fiery cross from the Alps to Sicily. Yet when we look below the surface, behind the imagery to the reality, when we watch the actual course of history, we discover 22that this ‘People’ is nothing but the great soul of Mazzini. His sublimely obstinate ideal was realized by men distinguished in thought, knowledge and moral enthusiasm, by bands of volunteers, few of whom came from the artisan or peasant classes, by the royal armies, by wise diplomacy. These were the forces which created an Italy free and independent, republican in spirit and in action, if not in form, which honoured Mazzini as its forerunner and educator, the first author of the mighty work.
