The Sun.
London, England, 1860-11-12 00:00:00

RETIREMEN7 OF GARIBALDI FROM

NAPLES.

Everybody will feel it to be a matter of course
—though with it half the interest of the drama
passes away—that Garibaldi should retire. His
vocation is too noble, his spirit too unworldly, to
allow him to take a place among ordinary politi-
cians doing the every-day work of human afft.irs.
He only follows the example of Washington, and
every other honest Dictator, in leaving others to
share both the spoils and the responsibilities of civil
government. We know too well what that mean:
in this instance. The alternate anarchy and mis-
government of 1,000 years have produced their
natural fruits on the various races of Sicily and
Southern Italy, preventing' them from coales-
cing into one free people, and rendering them
at once bad subjects and worse rulers, neither
peaceful nor warlike, short-sighted both in their
policy and their passions, and only dexterous
at one weapon—the universal poinard. The
battle is over. Most likely while we write
Gaeta, which Napoleon pronounced indefen-
, Bible, has admitted the King of Italy, and, as far
as concerns public allegiance and the open field,
Italy is one. But the vendetta will still rage ;
conspiracy will proscribe its victims ; there will
be a hundred candidates for one office in a country
where to thousands office is the only escape from
starvation; factions will contend for power; the
Mazzinists will seek to mar what they cannot make
their own ; and in the remote Calabria and the
mountainous Abruzzi brigandage, on the plea of
loyalty, will defy and baffle Victor Emmanuel, as
it did Napoleon and Joseph Bonaparte. It is vain
to expecta quiet time when 80,000 armed men have

been disbanded and an army of needy employes
turned adrift. The strong hands now at work will
not be at a loss for the only effective remedies.
They will follow up outrage with prompt retribu-
tion, and teach by " examples." This is not the
work for the man who could scarcely bring himself
to bombard Capua with its garrison of 9,000 sol-
diers. Garibaldi will not be a policeman or an exe-
cutioneer. There are plenty of men only too glad
of these employments, when gilded with splendid
names and sweetened with comfortable pay. Even
to keep the peace of a country, to reform the crimi-
nal law, and to substitute prisons for dungeons are
not the tasks for the Italian Liberator. Nor would
he find it a work to his taste, to extract from the
proverbial selfishness of the Neapolitan proprietors
that revenue which the service of the country really
requires, and the proper expenditure of which adds
to the wealth of all classes. The Piedmontese finan-
ciers and the Piedmontese army will know how to
do this, and Italy requires it as much as England
and France do their high rate of taxation. But
Garibaldi would rather leave this work to others.
It i 3 not to be imagined, however, that the ruling
spirit of the cause can contemplate its future
struggles without the wish to be doing something.
By the time Garibaldi has rested from the fatigues
of this unexampled campaign he will find the world
ripe for more work such as he can best do. His
little island, with its surrounding islets and rocks,
between Corsica and Sardinia, his farm and primi-
tive homestead, his simple labourers and his live
stock, will no more satisfy him than they dill the
warriors and statesmen and poets of Rome who
sought such retirement. Soon or late, in one form
or another, the struggle between constitutional
and despotic institutions, between the will of many
and of one, will be renewed, and Garibaldi has
shown that his love of liberty is not confined to one
name, to one soil, or one people. Already more than
once, and not the least on this occasion, he has
avowed ideas and hopes that are not fulfilled even
in the establishment of a united nation under a
Constitutional Government and a liberal dynasty.
We cannot think ourselves that he will ever live to
find a better refuge for liberty. But it is evident
that if Garibaldi could have carved the future as he
wished it would not have been what we see. Such
visions, however, do not sleep. A man may sleep
on a throne, in a palace, in a bureau, and even in a
command ; but not so the enthusiast who has de-
voted his whole life to a sacred principle. That
fire keeps him always awake. If' there should be
else where such a conflict as that which we may call
terminated in Southern Italy, we venture to say
that Garibaldi will give the aid which he has him-
self received. It is needless to anticipate the
place or the shape of such a possible struggle, or to
assume it free from error; but whatever may be
said of the other actors in it, the part of Garibaldi,
we cannot doubt, will be heroic and singleminded.
At first sight it might seem a waste of power
that the man who almost singlehanded has delivered
half Italy from its foreign rulers, and who has
never shown himself but to conquer, should suddenly
quit the scene in which so much remains to be done.
But he does not quit it, any more than the com-
mander who for days and weeks is not seen by his
army, or the statesman who, out of office, and per-
haps out of sight, still sways the opinions of his
country. Garibaldi is there, almost within sight
of Italy. His enterprise, his daring, his success,
his abnegation, all tell the tale on
,the quick and
susceptible nature of his countrymen. For one
Garibaldi, no doubt, hundreds are tracing out
for themselves a like path to the skies. It is
the vulgar sequel that too often darkens a
glorious beginning, and deprives it of its charm
with the young and the generous. For what is
the career that chiefly takes with the young,
that kindles them to great deeds, and inspires them
with a romantic devotion? It is not the life of a
Marlborough or a Wellington, however useful and
glorious. It is the life of the man who does a great
deed, and then either dies or withdraws. , But, it
the retirement of Garibaldi taught nothing else
than disinterestedness, that would be worth many
political services. Such a lesson is pre-eminently
required. It must be felt that the part taken by sore
of the leading actors before us is most questisonab-ie.
The alloy of baser motives and sinister methods is
so serious as to amount to a politico. scandal, and to
close the lips of many who `'could otherwise be
glad to hail free Italy. There are blots in this
great cause that we would be able to wipe away,
and, as this cannot be done by argument, it is some-
thing that we can point to a man of unquestioned
integrity and purity of motives. Let Victor Em-
manuel's be the ordinary case of a man Rho wishes
to add to his territory, his subjects, his cities, his
palaces, and his reveumes—though this would not
be a fair account of him ; let Cavour be a statesman
who treats the foe with no more mercy or truth
than they deserve ; let the Emperor of the French
be nothing more than. an Emperor—still we can
take refuge under the spotless shield of the Italian
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where he leads, even though we may share some of
his own feelings as to his colleagues, and some of
his misgivings as to the incidental results.