He did not succeed in making the majority of his countrymen republicans, but he contributed more than any other man towards inspiring the whole country with the desire for unity.  Herein lies his great work.  Without Mazzini, when would the Italians have got beyond the fallacies of federal republics, leagues of princes, provincial autonomy, insular home-rule, and all the other dreams of independence reft of its only safeguard which possessed the minds of patriots of every party in Italy and of nearly every well-wisher to Italian freedom abroad?

In 1831, most educated Italians did not even wish for unity, and this is still truer of the republicans than of the monarchists.  Some, like Manzoni, did wish for it, but, like him, said nothing about it, for fear of being thought madmen.  A flash of the true light illuminated the mind of Giro Menotti, but that was extinguished on the scaffold.  Then it was that Mazzini came forward with the news that Italy could only be made free and independent by being united; unity was the ruling tendency of the century, and, as far as Italy went, no Utopia, but a certain conclusion.  This was repeated over and over again, wherever there were Italians, over the inhabited globe.  By means of sailors, ‘Young Italy’ spread like lightning.  Giuseppe Garibaldi was made a member by a sailor on the shores of the Black Sea.

With the masses, unity proved the wonder-working word which Confalonieri had said was the one thing needful—­a word yet fitter to work wonders than ‘War to the Stranger.’  Among the cultivated classes, it was much slower in gaining ground, and particularly among statesmen and diplomatists.  But in the end it was to convert them all.

‘"Young Italy,"’ writes Mazzini, ’closed the period of political sects, and initiated that of educational associations.’  ’Great revolutions,’ he says again, ’are the work of principles rather than of bayonets.’  It was by the diffusion of ideas that ‘Young Italy’ became a commanding factor in the events of the next thirty years.  The insurrectional attempts planned under its guidance did not succeed, nor was it likely that they should succeed.  Devised by exiles, at a distance, they lacked the first elements of success.  The earliest of these attempts aimed at an invasion of Savoy; it was hoped that the Sardinian army and people would join the little band of exiles in a movement for the liberation of Lombardy.  The revolution of 1821 had evidently suggested this plan to Mazzini, but it was foredoomed to misfortune.  The Piedmontese authorities got wind of it, and a hunt followed for the members of ‘Young Italy’; most severe measures were taken; there were eleven executions, and numberless sentences to long terms of imprisonment.  Jacobo Ruffini, the younger brother of the author of Dr Antonio, and Mazzini’s most beloved friend, committed suicide in prison, fearing to reveal the names of his associates.  The apologists for Charles Albert say that if he had not shown the will and ability to deal severely with the conspirators, Austria would have insisted on a military occupation.  Whatever were his motives, this is the saddest page of his unhappy reign.