Mazzini was disappointed in the new Italy, but this disappointment did not dull his ideological commitment to universal progress. In this 1870 letter to Emilie Venturi, the English wife of an Italian nationalist, Mazzini voiced his unqualified support for Venturi’s efforts to advance the cause of women’s rights. Not content to merely confirm his agreement with Venturi, Mazzini placed women’s rights in the larger context of the struggle for universal human rights. As you read the letter, think about Mazzini’s argument. Why did he support women’s rights? What light does his position on women’s rights shed on his understanding of the meaning and importance of Italian nationalism?

My Dear Friend,

Can you doubt me? Can you doubt my watching from afar with an eager eye and a blessing soul the efforts of brave and earnest British women struggling for the extension of the Suffrage to their sex, or for the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Act, which is only an incident in the general question — Equality between Man and Woman — sacred for any sensible, logical, and fearless man who fights for any question involving Equality, to whatever class or section of mankind it applies? Could I ever feel safe in my right and duty to struggle for Equality between the working-man and the so-called Upper Classes of my own country, if I did not deeply and warmly believe in your right and duty? Is your question less sacred than that of the Abolition of Slavery in America, or of serfdom elsewhere? Ought it not to be even more sacred to us when we think of our mothers and remember that the most important period — the first period — of our education is entrusted to you?

Are not all questions of Equality groundless — a mere selfish rebellion — unless they derive their legitimacy from a single, general, all-embracing principle — the oneness of mankind — the basis, the soul of your Religion? Do not those who deny the righteousness of your claims bow to the words of St. John: “That they may be one, even as we are one: I in them, and thou in me: and that they may be made perfect in one”; and before those of St. Paul: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus”?

These words, they say, apply to heaven. Don’t they know that what is decreed in heaven must and will have to be fulfilled on earth?

Yes, we are all the children of God, free and equal in Him, and it is high time, after eighteen hundred and seventy years since the word was spoken, and whilst new religious truths are already dawning on the horizon, for its being practically understood and applied in its direct consequences to human life and society.

One God, one Life, one Law of Life: this is, or ought to be, our common belief; and wherever the stamp of Humanity is on a created being, there we find Freewill, Educability, tendency to Association, capability of indefinite progression, a source of the same general principle to legislation in all branches of human activity.

No question ought to be solved without our asking ourselves: How far does the proposed solution minister to Moral Education? And is not the feeling of self-dignity, the deep conviction of a task to be fulfilled here down (below) for our own improvement and that of our fellow-creatures, the initiatory step to all education? Must it not start by repeating to those we want to educate the words you quoted: you are a human being; nothing that concerns mankind is alien to you? Crush in man the innate sense of self-respect, you decree the helot [serf]. Sanction to any amount moral inequality, you create rebellion with all its evils — or indifference, hypocrisy, frivolity, and corruption. Punish the sinner, leaving the accomplice untouched, you suppress, by fostering in the punished one a sense of being unjustly dealt with, all the good and the educational that there is in punishment. Claim the right of legislating for one class without that class being heard and somehow sharing in your work, you cancel at once the sacredness of the Law, and instil hatred or contempt in the excluded class.

In these simple, and to me obvious, principles, lies the justice of your claim concerning either the Suffrage or the minor point about which you are now agitating.

And in these, if you do not forsake or neglect them, you will conquer. Your cause is a religious one; don’t narrow it down to what is called a right or an interest. Let duty be your ground. Children of God as we are, you have a task to perform towards the progressive discovery and the progressive fulfillment of His Law. You cannot abdicate that task without sinning to God who appointed it, and gave you faculties and powers for its accomplishment; and you cannot fulfil the task without liberty, which is the source of responsibility. Your claim is the claim of the working-man — of Nations cancelled, like Poland, by brutal force from Europe’s map; of races dismembered, like the Slavonian, between foreign masters and doomed to silence. Like them all, you want to bring to the common work a new element of life and progress; you feel you have something to speak, legally and officially, towards the great problems which stir and torture the soul of mankind. There is your real ground for being heard, there your strength. Keep on that ground firmly, and do not allow expediency, unconscious selfism, or a fragmentary view of the struggle to lure you away from it.

There is a holy crusade going on through the world for Justice, Freedom, and Truth, against Lies and Tyranny. You are — battalion-like — fighting in it. Feel it and act accordingly. Sympathise with all who suffer and bleed, and you will be sympathised with; help, and you will be helped. There is no right unless a duty has been fulfilled; and the emancipation of the working-class is now at hand, because the working-man has, thank God, through the last half-century shown himself ready to any amount of sacrifice for any noble cause summoning the efforts of the good and brave.

Source: Alice de Rozen Jervis, trans., Manzzini’s Letters (London: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1930), pp. 201–204.

Questions to Consider