Builders of United Italy (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: GIOBERTI, THE PHILOSOPHER /lOBERTI'S signal gift to his countrymen - was his great book, " II Primato d' Italia," a statement of the causes of Italy's early primacy among European nations, and a philosophic theory for her regeneration. Like Savonarola he flayed the vices of his time and preached redemption through Christian living, but, unlike the great Fra, he undertook to teach that the Church was no less fitted to be the seat of statecraft than of religion. It was this that gained him the ear of Rome as well as that of Piedmont, and made it seem for a moment as though he had found the solution of Italy's troubles. The effect of the " Primato " was felt from Turin to Naples. " The book," said Minghetti, the statesman of a later decade, " seemed to some an extravagance, to others a revelation. The truth is, that while many of its ideas were peculiar to the author, and partook of his character, his studies, and his profession, the substance of it responded to a sentiment still undefined, but which had been slowly developing in the minds of Italians. The idea of nationality had, in the previous years,spread far and wide through many channels, open and secret, and the desire of a great and free country had taken possession of the majority of the younger men; but the methods hitherto employed had proved so inefficient that weariness and disgust had followed. Experience had proved that conspiracies, secret societies, and partial insurrections were of no utility?that they made the governments more severe, retarded civil progress, arrested the increase of public prosperity, plunged many families into misery, and did not even win the approbation of civilized nations. " The rumors of wars and of European insurrections which were circulated every spring time, the mystic declamatio...