“We call brothers men of all nations who believe and hope in the improvement of the human family, and seek the occasion to further it; but you, especially, we call brothers, you Germans, with whom, we have in common so many noble sympathies,—­the love of the arts and higher studies, the delight of noble contemplation,—­with whom also we have much correspondence in our civil destinies.

“With you are of first importance the interests of the great country, Germany,—­with us, those of the great country, Italy.

“We were induced to rise in arms against Austria, (we mean, not the people, but the government of Austria,) not only by the need of redeeming ourselves from the shame and grief of thirty-one years of the most abject despotism, but by a deliberate resolve to take our place upon the plane of nations, to unite with our brothers of the Peninsula, and take rank with them under the great banner raised by Pius IX., on which is written, THE INDEPENDENCE OF ITALY.

“Can you blame us, independent Germans?  In blaming us, you would sink beneath your history, beneath your most honored and recent declarations.

“We have chased the Austrian from our soil; we shall give ourselves no repose till we have chased him from all parts of Italy.  No this enterprise we are all sworn; for this fights our army enrolled in every part of the Peninsula,—­an array of brothers led by the king of Sardinia, who prides himself on being the sword of Italy.

“And the Austrian is not more our enemy than yours.

“The Austrian—­we speak still of the government, and not of the people—­has always denied and contradicted the interests of the whole German nation, at the head of an assemblage of races differing in language, in customs, in institutions.  When it was in his power to have corrected the errors of time and a dynastic policy, by assuming the high mission of uniting them by great moral interests, he preferred to arm one against the other, and to corrupt them all.

“Fearing every noble instinct, hostile to every grand idea, devoted to the material interests of an oligarchy of princes spoiled by a senseless education, of ministers who had sold their consciences, of speculators who subjected and sacrificed everything to gold, the only aim of such a government was to sow division everywhere.  What wonder if everywhere in Italy, as in Germany, it reaps harvests of hate and ignominy.  Yes, of hate!  To this the Austrian has condemned us, to know hate and its deep sorrows.  But we are absolved in the sight of God, and by the insults which have been heaped upon us for so many years, the unwearied efforts to debase us, the destruction of our villages, the cold-blooded slaughter of our aged people, our priests, our women, our children.  And you,—­you shall be the first to absolve us, you, virtuous among the Germans, who certainly have shared our indignation when a venal and lying press accused us of being enemies to your great and generous nation, and we could not answer, and were constrained to devour in silence the shame of an accusation which wounded us to the heart.