A Meeting for Garibaldi

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Preparations are being made for a Garibaldi meeting in London; another was held yesterday in Gateshead, a third one in Birmingham is announced, while Newcastle began the cycle of these popular demonstrations last Tuesday. A brief report on the Newcastle meeting may serve to indicate the characteristic mood prevailing here. Such a meeting is always a curious event. The one in question took place in Newcastle Town Hall. Mr. Newton (a town councillor) opened the proceedings with a speech in which he said, among other things:

“As long as Italy is not free, no freedom is possible in Europe. As long as France keeps a great army in the heart of Europe, there is no guarantee even of the freedoms we now boast. It should not be forgotten for an instant that the true cause of the disaster that has befallen Garibaldi is to be found not so much in Italy as in Paris. The French ruler is the true author of that misfortune. (Loud applause.) It is the same force that has silenced the press and the rostrum, that has suffocated, gagged, and unmanned the whole of France. I do not doubt that a day of reckoning will come, that the coup d’étatc will be punished, that Providence will demand atonement for its sins and crimes! Great self-control is needed to speak calmly of France’s behaviour towards Italy. Ever since the time of Charles VIII it has made it its business to destroy Italy and make Italy the pretext for breaking the peace of Europe... I have read somewhere that the old Romans did not dare to proceed with the trial of Manlius in view of the Capitol. Is there an inch of Italian soil that could bear a trial of Garibaldi?...”

Jos. Cowen moved that a memorandum be sent to Lord Russell demanding that the British government should urge the French Emperor to evacuate Rome.

“Rome,” he said, “is the old and honourable capital of Italy.... How does this ancient seat of civilisation come to be held prisoner by the troops of a foreign despot? What more right do French troops have to Rome than to Naples, Turin or London? (Loud applause.) The Pope had fled, refused to return, and left Rome without a government for three months. At that point, the Romans elected their own government. While they were still engaged in setting up the new organisation, they were attacked by the same French who had set them an example a year earlier.

“Inconsistency is too weak an expression to describe such conduct. It was infamous (furious applause), and history will brand every Frenchman who took part in this nefarious deed.... With the possible exception of the partition of Poland, there has never been a more shameless violation of every principle of national independence and the law of nations than that committed by the French bands of pretorians in murdering the Roman Republic! Rome fell in June 1849, and Louis Bonaparte holds it to this day, a full 13 years!... When his ministers explained to the French National Assembly that the expedition was due to anarchy in Rome, they were lying. (Hear, hear!) When his officers explained to the troops in Toulon, who objected to the annihilation of a sister republic, that the struggle was not against Rome but against Austria, they were lying. After the army had landed in Civitavecchia, they lied again, proclaiming to the people that they came not as enemies but as friends, and deceitfully interweaving French and Italian flags! The French plenipotentiary and his underlings lied when they gained admission to the triumvirs on the pretext of negotiations but actually for the purpose of studying the state of the defences. General Oudinot lied when he promised not to attack the city before June 4 but actually attacked it on the 2nd, and thus took the Romans by surprise. The entire conduct of the French in this infamous action was deliberate and hypocritical guile. (Loud applause.)

“From Louis Bonaparte down to his lowest agents, they all deceived Rome, the French people and Europe. Louis Bonaparte never wanted a free Italy. What he wants is a Sardinian kingdom in the north, another kingdom in the south under Murat, and a third in the centre for cousin Plon-Plon. (Applause and laughter.) These three small monarchies, all linked to the house of Bonaparte by family ties, all seeking their inspiration in the Tuileries, would assure Louis Bonaparte of a great increase of his power in Europe. The plan was not a bad one, and its execution would have done honour to his dexterity, but Garibaldi thwarted it. (Storm of applause.) For the moment Garibaldi is disarmed. This makes it all the more the duty of the English people to put an end to the encroachments of French despotism and to close the gates of Rome to the pretorian hordes of the coup d’état.... Bonapartism is the source of all the evil in Europe. But the days of its power are numbered.... An implacable will, hundreds of thousands of soldiers, all the deadly instruments of war in profusion, a senate packed full of servile place-seekers, a house of representatives drummed up by gendarmes and prefects—but on the other side stands human nature, which has to defend its eternal rights!” (Storm of applause.)

Mr. Co-wen then argued in favour of and read the memorandum to Lord Russell, which was adopted unanimously, after the attempt of a certain Mr. Rule to take the part of “our noble ally across the Channel” was buried under a storm of hisses, yells, catcalls and laughter.

Mr. Rutherford (A Protestant minister) then made the second motion, to this effect:

“This meeting invites General Garibaldi to take up residence in England and assures him of the constant and growing admiration of the English people.”

In supporting his motion Mr. Rutherford remarked, among other, things:

“It the Pope should find Rome too hot, he too will find asylum in England. We will even welcome him, not as a secular prince but as the head of an enormous church.”

The motion was adopted unanimously. The chairman closed the proceedings with a violent apostrophe against “the despot of Paris”.

“Let him remember ancient Italy with its Brutus and Cassius; let him remember the Nemesis that dogs his heels; let him reflect, like Macbeth, that an armed hand and a helmeted head can spring from the earth, and let him not forget that not all the Orsinis have had their heads cut off.”

Thus spoke Town Councillor Mr. Newton.

The present language of English newspapers and meetings is reminiscent of the first days after the coup d’état, in such vivid contrast to the later hvmns to the “saviour of society”.