Clara Hopgood

'If we are to succeed, we must preach what the people understand.'

'Pardon me, that is just where you and I differ. Whenever any real

good is done it is by a crusade; that is to say, the cross must be

raised and appeal be made to something ABOVE the people. No system

based on rights will stand. Never will society be permanent till it

is founded on duty. If we consider our rights exclusively, we extend

them over the rights of our neighbours. If the oppressed classes had

the power to obtain their rights to-morrow, and with the rights came

no deeper sense of duty, the new order, for the simple reason that

the oppressed are no better than their oppressors, would be just as

unstable as that which preceded it.'

'To put it in my own language,' said Madge, 'you believe in God.' Mazzini leaned forward and looked earnestly at her.

'My dear young friend, without that belief I should have no other.'

'I should like, though,' said Marshall, 'to see the church which

would acknowledge you and Miss Madge, or would admit your God to be

theirs.' 'What is essential,' replied Madge, 'in a belief in God is absolute

loyalty to a principle we know to have authority.'

'It may, perhaps,' said Mazzini, 'be more to me, but you are right,

it is a belief in the supremacy and ultimate victory of the

conscience.' 'The victory seems distant in Italy now,' said Baruch. 'I do not

mean the millennial victory of which you speak, but an approximation

to it by the overthrow of tyranny there.'

'You are mistaken; it is far nearer than you imagine.'

'Do you obtain,' said Clara, 'any real help from people here? Do you

not find that they merely talk and express what they call their

sympathy?' 'I must not say what help I have received; more than words, though,

from many.' 'You expect, then,' said Baruch, 'that the Italians will answer your

appeal?' 'If I had no faith in the people, I do not see what faith could

survive.' 'The people are the persons you meet in the street.'

'A people is not a mere assemblage of uninteresting units, but it is

not a phantom. A spirit lives in each nation which is superior to

any individual in it. It is this which is the true reality, the

nation's purpose and destiny, it is this for which the patriot lives

and dies.' 'I suppose,' said Clara, 'you have no difficulty in obtaining

volunteers for any dangerous enterprise?'