By degrees certain words acquired more and more a mystical significance in Mazzini’s mind; the very name of Rome, for instance, had for him a sort of talismanic fascination, not unlike that possessed by Jerusalem for the mediaeval Christian.  When he spoke of the people or the republic he frequently used those terms in an ideal and visionary sense (as theologians use the Church) rather than in one strictly corresponding with the case of any existing nation, or any hitherto tried form of government.  This does not alter the fact that his theories, which have been briefly summarised, are not hard to comprehend, as has been said by those who did not know in what they consisted, nor, taken one by one, are they novel.  What was new in the nineteenth century was the appearance of a revolutionary leader, who was before all things a religious and ethical teacher.  And though Mazzini never founded the Church of Precursors, of which he dreamt, his influence was as surely due to his belief in his religious mission, as was the influence of Savonarola.  The Italians are not a mystical people, but they have always followed mystical leaders.  The less men are prone to ideal enthusiasm the more attracted are they by it; Don Quixote, as Heine remarked, always draws Sancho Panza after him.

Mazzini had a natural capacity for organisation, and the Association of Young Italy which he founded at Marseilles, the first nucleus being a group of young, penniless refugees, soon obtained an astonishing development.  Up to the time of his ‘Letter to Charles Albert,’ his exile had been so far voluntary that he might have remained in Piedmont had he agreed to live in one of the smaller towns under the watchful care of the police, but he declined the terms, and the first effect of the ‘Letter’ was a stringent order to arrest him if he recrossed the frontier.  He was not surprised at that result.  Mazzini’s attitude towards the Sardinian monarchy was perfectly well defined.  Republican himself, even to fanaticism, he placed the question of unity, which for him meant national existence, above the question of the republic.  He did not believe that the House of Savoy would unite Italy, but if unity could only be had under what he looked upon as the inauspicious form of monarchy, he would not reject it.  He was like the real mother in the judgment of Solomon, who, because she loved her child, was ready to give it up sooner than see it cut in two.

Apart from personal hereditary instincts and predilections, Mazzini thought that he saw in the glorious memories of the Italian republics a clear indication that the commonwealth was the form of government which ought and would be adopted by the Italy of the future.  But, unlike most politicians, he laid down the principle that, after all, when free, the nation must decide for itself.  ‘To what purpose,’ he asks, ’do we constantly speak of the sovereignty of the people, and of our reverence for the national will, if we are to disregard it as soon as it pronounces in contradiction to our wishes?’