In considering this revolution, which destroyed the power of petty
tyrants and the authority of foreign despots, which gave a free
constitution and national unity to the whole country,--the rule of one
man by the will of the people, and the checks which a freely elected
legislature imposes,--it will be my aim to present chiefly the labors
and sacrifices of a very remarkable band of patriots, working in
different ways and channels for the common good, and assisted in their
work by the aid of friendly States and potentates. But underneath and
apart from the matchless patriotism and ability of a few great men like
D'Azeglio, Mazzini, Garibaldi, Manin, Cavour, and, not least, the King
of Sardinia himself,--who reigned at Turin as a constitutional monarch
before the revolution,--should be mentioned the almost universal passion
of the Italian people to throw off the yokes which oppressed them,
whether imposed by the King of Naples, or by the Pope as a temporal
prince, or by Austria, or by the various princes who had divided between
them the territories of the peninsula,--diverse, yet banded together to
establish their respective tyrannies, and to suppress liberal ideas of
government and all reforms whatsoever. All who could read and write, and
even many who could not, except those who were dependent on the
government or hopelessly wedded to the ideas and institutions of the
Middle Ages,--that conservative class to be found in every country, who
cling to the past and dread the future,--had caught the contagion
spread by the apostles of liberty in France, in Spain, in Greece, in
England. The professors and students in the universities, professional
men, and the well-to-do of the middle classes were foremost in their
discontent and in their zeal for reform. They did not agree in their
theories of government, nor did they unite on any definite plan
for relief. Many were utterly impractical and visionary; some
were at war with any settled government, and hated all wholesome
restraints,--communists and infidels, who would destroy, without