Everything pointed the same way. The prevalent sympathy was for France. Victor Emanuele wished Italy to join in the war against Prussia. Garibaldi and his volunteers were fighting in the ranks of the French armies, public opinion followed, fascinated, the tragedy of the Paris Commune. Moreover the taxes and customs duties, often on articles of neces sity, pressed heavily, and a wind of rebellion blew from all quarters, against these imposts, against the men who devised them, and against the institutions for whose benefit they were levied. Poverty in the country districts was great. Italian government bonds were 40 per cent below par, the rate of exchange was 15 per cent against Italy, trade was depressed and in dustry arrested. Unpopular taxes are a strong inciter to rebellion, and the recent examples of successful revolt suggested a means of speedy and practical relief for the impoverished na tion.
In the year 1872 Rome was released from the temporal power of the Church; that same year saw the completion of the patriotic era and the birth of avowed socialism. The inter nationalist doctrine, as then professed by the Internationale, spread over all the land. In Bologna, in March 1872, and in Rimini in August of the same year, were held the first meetings of the Italian sections of the Inter nationale. The second of these meetings pro posed the international socialist congress that was held at Saint Imier in Switzerland, 15 Sept. 1872. At this same congress the deputies of five national federations — followers of Ba kounine — repudiated the autoritario movement begun by Marx, which was the actual origin of Italian socialism.
This Internationalist movement — or militant socialism — though begun so late in Italy, spread rapidly. It soon numbered more than 50 federated sections, and possessed more than 20 periodicals. Soon there were Internationalist uprisings. The year 1873 was one of great suffering both in the farming communities and in the cities; and in the first months of 1874 strikes and tumults arose in nine cities. In the single month of July there were commotions in 16 different places in Central Italy. In August there was a widespread Internationalist move ment in Romagna, and it also lasted long Tuscany, and in Puglia there were uprisings in stigated by the notorious Enrico Malatesta.
A pitiless struggle now began between the Italian police and the Internationalists. Indeed the police organization was the only real op ponent, since juries were always willing to acquit. Yet, so powerful is the Italian police system—it was even more powerful then— that the new-born party endured terrible or deals. Meetings were dispersed, associations forbidden, newspapers suppressed, the liberty of some individuals abridged, forbidding them to go to certain places or to meet certain persons or to be found out of doors after a certain hour.
Ammonizione and doinicilio coon° were very real political weapons 30 years ago. But public and private meetings were held, circulars and periodicals secretly printed, and the proletarian movement was not entirely suppressed until after the final insurrectionary rising at Bene vento in South Italy marked the death of Inter nationalism.
Lacking all intellectual preparation, the prod uct of temporary economic conditions, the dream of disordered imaginations, unable to perceive the true ideals and purposes of Italian socialism, and unable to devise a practical way of obtaining them, these anarchists and pseudo anarchist strivings failed. Yet in the same sense as the pathological temperament of an epileptic is in harmony with his convulsions, so were these convulsive movements of the Inter nationale in harmony with actual conditions of Italy at that time. Indeed they were the only movements that could be in accordance with those unhealthy conditions.
In Lombardy the different ethnical charac ter of the people and ,a better sug gested that the amelioration of social conditions could best be obtained through lawful political agitation; hence it presented collectivism, and not communism as its goal. These two char acteristic features of what has. been called the Milanese dogma, gave it the name of legali tario or autoritorio. The leaders of this move ment were Enrico Bignami and Osvaldo Gnocchi-Vianni, who wrote in the periodical La Plebe, first published in Lodi and afterwa‘d in Milan. Except in Lombardy, Italy did not sup port this movement for legalized socialism. Its methods were too modern, too scientific, too conservative, to appeal to a people ignorant, exasperated and with little political experience. Better rebellion and anarchy than the slow political and social preparations counseled by the law-abiding collectivists of the Milanese group.
After the failure of the Internationalist out breaks, disputes arose between them and the Legalitarians and many of the working classes abandoned Internationalism. The capitalistic party waged war indiscriminately against Mi lanese Legalitarians and Internationalists. The leaders of these opposing extremes of social ism, involved in one common persecution and exile, soon realized that although divided on matters of minor importance, they could agree on many fundamentals, and that their only chance of success was in a union against the common enemy: capitalism and reaction.