nst
whom no charge could be substantiated. These rigorous measures struck
terror through the peninsula, and instantly stopped the propagandism of
the journal; still hundreds of emigrants, fearful of being compromised,
poured in from Italy, and the police redoubled its vigilance in watching
over their proceedings. But a step backward was what Mazzini never could
take; he looked his dangers full in the face, and tempted fate, not only
for himself, but, unhappily, for his colleagues also. The sufferings of
his party seemed to call upon him for vengeance, and he sought it by
joining himself to a Polish committee, and projecting the attempt upon
Savoy, in 1833.

It is a singular fact in the moral history of man, that in the course of
his life he almost invariably falls into some error, or commits some
fault, which he has either condemned, or suffered from, in others. This
appears to have been notoriously the case in this ill-planned,
ill-organized, ill-conducted expedition. It was planned in a secret
society, whereas Mazzini had always advocated open appeals to the people;
he had always inculcated distrust of heads of parties, and he intrusted
the command of the troops to General Romarino, a Pole, He had insisted
upon the necessity of whole provinces rising _en masse_, if a revolution
was to be effected, and he saw General Romarino set out from Geneva, to
carry Savoy, with a handful of men. Mazzini himself, with his utmost
efforts, scarcely got together five hundred followers, of whom not one
half were Italians; and it was with difficulty that they, tracked every
where by the police, succeeded in rallying at the small village of
Annemasse, to the amount of two hundred; when lo! Romarino, who had always
shown himself wavering and undecided, turned his back upon them, even
before they had cast eyes upon the enemy--and thus in one single day did
Mazzini see vanish at once, the hopes and toils of two years of incessant
labor and anxiety. In vain he plied his pen still more vigorously, and
called around him "Young Switzerland," "Young Poland," "Young France," and
even "Young Europe" at large; few responded to his ardent voice: the
Moderates, taking advantage of his discomfiture, and appealing to the
selfish prudence of all parties, under the plausible argument of trusting
in moral force, turned, for the time, the tide of popular opinion, and
Mazzini, banished from France, proscribed in Switzerland, and sentenced to
death in Italy