The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1871-01-12
ITALIAN UNITY,
A Letter from the "QunRer Poet" j. G.
whittier.

A Letter from the FQuaEer Poet" j. G.
AMEsBURY, 1st Mo-, 4th 1871 - Theodore
Roosevelt Chairman Committee of Arrange
ments.-Dear Friend:-It would give me more
than ordinary satisfaction to attend the meeting
on the 18th inst. for the celebration of Italian
unity, the emancipation of Rome, and its occu-
patton as the permanent capital of the nation.
For many years l have watched with
movement on the Italian peninsula, and
especially every effort for the deliyerance of
Rome from despotism counting its age bycen-
turies. looked at these struggles of the people
with little reference to their ecclesiastical or
sectarian bearings. Had L been Catholic in
stead of Protestant / should have hailed every
symptom of Roman deliveTance from Papal rule,
occupying, as have, the standpoint of a repub-
lcan radical desrous that all men, of all creeds,
should enjoy the civil liberty which priced so
highly for myself.
lost all confidence in the French republic of
lo49 when 1t forfeited its own right to exist by
crushing out the newly-formed RomaH republic
under Mazzini and Garibaldi. From that hour
it was doomed, and the eXpation of its mon
strous crime is still going on. Ny sympathies
are with Jules Favre and Leon Gamoetta in
their efforts to establish and sustain q republic
in France but / confess that the investment of
Paris by King William seems to me the logical
sequence of the bombardment of Rome by
Oudinot. And is IL not significant fact that
the terrible chassepot, which made its first
bloody experiment upon the half-armed Italian
patriots without the walls of Rome, has failed
in the hands of French republicans against the
inferior needle-gun of Prussia? It was said of
a fierce actor in the old French Revolution that
be demOralized the guillotine. The massacre at
Mentano demoraliZed the chassepots.
The withdrawal of the temporal power of the
Pope will prove a blessing to the Catholic
Church as well as to the world. Many of its
most learned and deyout priests and laymen
have long seen the necessity of such change,
which takes from it a reproach and scandal that
could no longer he excused or tolerated A
century hence ii will have as few apologists as
the InQuisition or the massacre of st. Bar
tholOmew.
In this hour of congratulatiOn let us not for
get those whose suffering and self-sacrfce, in
the inscrutable wisdom of Providence, prepared
the way for the triumph which we celebrate
AS we call the long illustrious roll of Italian
patriotism-the young, the brave and beautiful
the gray-haired, sanity confessors-the
scholars, poets, artists, who, shut out from
human sympathy, gave their lives for God and
country in the slow, dumb agony of prison mar
tyrdom, let us hope that they also rejoice with
us; and inaudible to earthly ears, unite in our
thanksgiving: -"Alleluia! for the Lord God om-
nipotent reigneth! He hath avenged the blood
| OF Ills serYantsl"
In the belief that the unity of Italy and the
| overthrow of papal rule will strengthen the
| cause of liberty throughout the civilized world,
am very truly thy friend,
JonN G. WHITTIER.