TWO of the noblest works of statesmanship accomplished in Europe during the second half of the nineteenth century were the unity of Italy and the transformation and consolidation of the Austrian Empire into a free and constitutional power.* Both of these achievements were eminently beneficial to Europe and both under the influence of high suffrage parliaments seemed to have been definitely and permanently accomplished.
It is impossible to deny that the events of the last years have filled the well-wishers both of Italy and Austria with profound misgiving. The furious and sanguinary riots almost amounting to civil war that have taken place in Italian towns; the crushing and ever-growing weight of taxation; the steady growth of Italian Socialism;* and the manifest incapacity of a democratic parliament to command the confidence of the Italian people are signs that it is impossible to misread, while in the Austrian Empire race warfare has broken out with renewed intensity,* and the Parliament at Vienna has presented a scene of anarchy and riot which seems to make it scarcely possible that parliamentary government on its present basis can long continue.
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* The Unification of Italy (‘risorgimento’) was a process that lasted from 1848, the ‘year of revolutions’ on the Continent, through to the establishment of the Kingdom of Italy 1861 and transfer of the capital to Rome in 1871. The Austrian Empire was another of the European countries affected by the mood of 1848, and a new Constitution in 1849 confirmed the abolition of serfdom and took away censorship. In both cases, the hope was for greater liberties and regional self-determination, but the outcome was a strongly centralised State in which certain regions and pressure groups triumphed over the rest.
* The Italian Socialist Party was founded in 1892 (initially named the Party of Italian Workers) and quickly made gains. In 1897, support in Austria for the Marxist Social Democratic Party rose after suffrage was widened to include more men from the labouring classes. Lecky opposed socialism because he saw in it a return to the totalitarianism and state-worship fostered in the reign of King Louis XIV of France; had he lived to see fascism emerge in the 1920s, it would have been characteristic of him to condemn it with equal horror. See A Backward Step.
* The Austrian Empire encompassed territories that are now in Croatia, the Czech Republic, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia and the Ukraine. There was rising tension and resentment among the German population over their Slav fellow-citizens, and the political influence that their numbers gave them.