Carbonari : members of a secret society advocating political freedom spread over Italy, Spain, & France in early 19th cent., which probably began in the kingdom of Naples. After 1830 the Italian section was absorbed by the Risorgimento movement.
... effecting them every means which can be suggested by human cunning or put into motion by unscrupulous force. Italian patriotism previous to the advent of Mazzini was cast in this Machiavellian mould. The Carbonari movement which was Italy's first attempt to live was permeated with it. Mazzini lifted up the country from this low and ineffective level and gave it the only force which can justify the hope of revival... He was wrong, but not wholly wrong. The temper and methods of Cavour were predominatingly Machiavellian. He resumed that element in Italian character and gave it a triumphant expression. Like the Carbonari he weighed forces, gave a high place to concrete material interests, attempted great but not impossible objects and by means which were bold but not heroic, used diplomacy, temporising and shuffling... into these aspirations and the emotional fervour with which he invested his Liberal ideal of a free Church in a free State, measure the spiritual gulf between himself and the purely Machiavellian Carbonari. It was this that gave him the force to attempt greatly and to cast all on the hazard of a single die. He had therefore the inspiration of a part of the Mazzinian gospel and he used the force which ...
... Egypt alive and secure the immortality of the Nationalist Page 898 movement. When a movement for independence begins with diplomacy and Machiavellianism, it is doomed to failure as the Carbonari movement failed in Italy. God is not with it. It does not rely on the eternal principles of truth and virtue, but on the finite strength of human intellect and human means and to that finite strength ...
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