229 BOOK V. FROM THE PROCLAMATION OF THE REPUBLIC TO THE LANDING OF THE FRENCH FORCES AT CIVITA VECCHIA. CHAPTER I. APPOINTMENT OF THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE. NEW MINISTERS. REMARKS ON EACH. SYMPTOMS OF INTHE JOURNALS. NOTICE OF EVENTS IN TUSCANY: GLOOM AND SCRUPULOSITY OF THE GRAND DUKE. RE TOLERANCE. PORTS ABOUT HIS INWARD IDEAS AND FEELINGS. ASKS COUNSEL OF THE HOLY FATHER. HIS DEPARTURE UNDERHAND FROM SIENA. HIS LETTERS TO MONTANELLI.-THE CONSTITUTION SUBVERTED IN FLORENCE. -THE GRAND DUKE AT SANTO STEFANO. THE ITALIAN AND FOREIGN ENVOYS AT S. STEFANO. DIENCE OF THE GRAND DUKE. MENT AT FLORENCE. DISTURBANCES. ENTERPRISE OF GENERAL - COMMOTIONS; GUERRAZZI THE AGITATOR IN CHIEF. TEXT OF A LETTER FROM HIM TO BERGHINI. ALTERED INTENBARGAGLI AND SAINT-MARC AT S. STEFANO. LETTERS AND INFORMATION FROM GAETA. VERSATIONS BETWEEN THE GRAND DUKE AND THE ENVOYS. LEAVES S. STEFANO FOR GAETA.- TROUBLES OF THE CITY OF FERRARA.—FORAY OF HAYNAU; RIGOUR OF HIS CONDITIONS. THE Assembly, so soon as it had proclaimed the Republic, resolved to govern through the medium of an Executive Committee, to be composed of three persons, Italians, responsible, and removable (such are the written terms) at its pleasure: and it appointed Armellini and Montecchi, Romans, with Saliceti, a Neapolitan. Montecchi did not gain this elevation through his talents, or acquirements, or peculiar courage; but by his reputation as an honest man, by the incarceration which he had undergone in the reign of Gregory, and by the favour of the Republican party, with whose managers and leaders, when bearing arms in Venetia, he had closely allied himself. Saliceti, a Neapolitan exile, had a character for strict morality, and many virtues both of intellect and disposition; nor did his fame for probity really exceed the truth, but he had neither great powers nor extensive knowledge, nor were his liberal opinions disciplined by the philosophy of politics. They maintained in office a Ministers, Muzzarelli for Public Instruction, Sterbini for Public Works and Commerce, and Campello for War; while they nominated for Foreign Affairs Carlo Rusconi of Bologna, for the Interior Aurelio Saffi, for Justice Giovita Lazzarini, the two last from Forlì; and for Finance Ignazio Guiccioli of Ravenna. Carlo Rusconi, whom I have already mentioned, had a good name among the republicans, although without experience in public affairs. Lazzarini, a youth endowed with fine gifts both of mind and heart, was a friend of Saffi, who has likewise been named in these pages. Guiccioli had an ample fortune, a lively imagination, a love of show, and opinions sometimes moderate, sometimes not. Excepting Sterbini, the members of the Government were favourably received by the public at large, because if not capable of giving stability and order to the State, still they were considered to be no friends to silly or criminal courses, and to be more anxious for a share of glory, than for mere lawless power. Still, as they were not really sovereigns and directors of the State, but servants of the Sovereign Assembly, it is manifest that the Assembly alone had a paramount and effective controul, or rather a despotic supremacy. And inasmuch as despotic supremacy mars the abstract and universal right of freedom no more, when it is vested in an individual, than when exercised by those whom the multitude have chosen, it must be clear to all who penetrate into the rationale of government that, under the name of liberty, the State was or might be subject to despotic sway. Suppose, indeed, that the suffrages of the people were reckoned with the utmost precision attainable to man, and that every suffrage simply expressed the free volition of the voter; still it is evident, that the collective power and will, resulting from this computation, are of no other force or meaning than the power and will of numbers, that is of strength, that is to say, a morally and intellectually idealised absolutism. This, however, is not only anti-liberal, but radically unjust, for the very reason that all power is unjust and illegitimate, which in the abstract impairs and infringes the absolute and indefeasible right to freedom. Absolute sovereignty, whether of people or of kings, is the sovereignty of numbers or force: they are terms co-extensive; they are dogmas of tyranny, condemned by God, because there is no other right Divine but that of Justice, the code of which is stamped by God in our immortal souls. When a State founds itself on those dogmas, after its old institutions have fallen by popular violence or the craft of faction, undoubtedly the deputies of what they term the Sovereign People cannot gather up and concentrate that sovereignty in their own persons, but are delegates or commissaries of the Sovereign, in whom absolute discretion and the supreme authority of force reside. Hence it happens that the popular veto, or in other words, the sovereignty of thews and sinews, constantly overhangs Assemblies composed according to the multiplication-table: so merely mechanical does all that system turn out to be, which many take for freedom elaborated to perfection. And the nearer any State thus algebraically constructed may be to its point of departure, the weaker it is; because the Sovereign People, which won the day, and got the honours of the ovation and every body's homage, continues in the conscious pride of power, which it feels that it never has alienated, because they have declared its prerogatives inalienable; and occasionally threatens or attempts to whip its servants, as for example the Sovereign People of Paris tried in May and June, 1848. Nay more, as far as the scrap-logic of the sovereignty of the people, the algebra of multitude, the dynamics of brute force will go, they are in the right; and the delegates, who curb them with the strong hand, are subjects who put their Sovereign in chains. I really pity those, who, while extolling the suffrage of the many, direct and universal, dream that they are the partisans of pure freedom; they are but absolutists, and partisans of force. Now, the Roman Assembly took its origin not so much from the free voice of the people at large, as from the got-up lists of the Clubs; and accordingly did not give its attention to making the community contented, and the Constitution which it was inaugurating permanent, so much as to the gratification of those who had taken to themselves the name and prerogatives of the Sovereign People; that is, of a political faction, of the clubs, and the ringleaders of sects, and of the scatter-brained set that always carol in the wake of those who move on the fastest; so that the Roman Assembly was doomed from birth to follow, whether with a good or an ill grace, the lead of a few meddlers; and thus accordingly it did, almost invariably. The Executive Committee and the Ministers issued a programme, in which, amidst a haze of sentiment, were mingled words of conciliation, harmony, and tolerance. But at one moment a certain Sabbatini, a notary of Ancona, and then Filopanti of Bologna, rose in the Assembly, at the instance of the agitators, to blast, by means of crafty or frivolous questionings, those members who had voted against a Republic; at another, some Deputy would put on the notorious Phrygian cap, which, unless it were a carnival freak, was assuredly no symptom of tolerance; at another, some democratic master-of-the-ceremonies would ostentatiously deposit that symbol on the top of the Cross which crowns the obelisk in the Piazza del Popolo, amidst the acclamations of Sterbini's mob of workmen. One day, the livery servants on the car |