Rassegna storica del Risorgimento

920
Pia Onnis
In ogni caso, crederanno gli operai inglesi ohe noi giamo onesti, e che cerchiamo di abbattere per sempre le due teste del dispotismo europeo, Papa e Imperatore' Che non lo faremo per beneHcio dell'aristocrazia, ma per l'intero popolo? Se è così, siano coerenti e dimostrino con un atto esterno che sono al vostro fianco. Se approvate domandate carte e statuti o a Sydney Hawkes o a me. Noi abbiamo, anche, grandi cartelli.
Sempre vostro fedele
Gius. Mazzini.
Radnor Street, King's Road, Chelsea (pubblicata nell'originale inglese in CABE, Life and letters of G. J. Holyoake, London 1908, I, 237).
My dear Sir,
IV.
(London) July 31 (1852).
I have stili to thank you for the noble appeal you have inserted in the Reasoner in favour of the Shilling Subscription in aid of European Freedom . May it be responded to ! I have never made any appeal for material help to the English public But, once the scheme started, it seems tome that not only the good of the European cause, but the honour of those amongs your countrymen who believe in the duty of upbolding the sacred rights of Liberty against Tiranny, is involved in the success. Electoral movements, where the vote is a privilege given to the few, may fail without damaging the character of a nation; a movement like the one you promote cannot. It is an appeal which nobody can resist on the ground of impossibility. It is a strow of hands demanded from those who have no vote and must, for the, honour of their country, seize every opportunity of manifesting their tendencies, their sirnpathies, their aspirations. It is a sort of review of the democratic forces of England deuling before European democracy, and vouchsanng for a better life stirring in the depthy of British souls than that which a Cabinet protolising with the Holy Alliance can ever manifest. Ali those who give one shilling in aid of European freedom are pledged to the cause of liberty at home. Success on a wide scale would be a mighty fact ascertained for England and Continental Europe at once.
Since your appel in the .Reasoner, some three hundred patriots have been arrested in the Lombard-Venetian provinces; more than 100 have escaped into Kedmont or Switzerland; 400 families have been plunged in agonies of grief and terror. One of my friends, Giovanni Pezzotti, fearing that physical and moral torture might weaken bis determination and extort from him some revelations, has hung himself m bis dungeon at Milan with his own cravat. State trials are about being initiated by military commissions and General Benedek, the man who directed the wholesale Galli-cian butcheries, is to preside over them. At Forlì, under popishrule enforced by Austnan bayonets, four working men have been shot, as guilty of having defended themselves against the aggression of some governement agents. The town was fined in a heavy sum because on that moumful day many of the inhabitants lcft it, and the theatrcs. were empty in the evening. Is the one shilling subscription, as a protest against sucu facts, an exaggcrated demand?