triots is universally recognized. Among the regular readers
of his _Giornale Italiano_ we find Monti and Foscolo. Clippings of his
articles were treasured by Mazzini and Manzoni, who often acted as his
secretary, called him his "master in politics."[5]

The influence of the Italian tradition summed up and handed down by
Cuoco was felt by Mazzini whose interpretation of the function of the
citizen as duty and mission is to be connected with Vico's doctrine
rather than with the philosophic and political doctrines of the French
Revolution.

"Training for social duty," said Mazzini, "is essentially and
logically unitarian. Life for it is but a duty, a mission. The norm
and definition of such mission can only be found in a collective term
superior to all the individuals of the country--in the people, in the
nation. If there is a collective mission, a communion of duty ... it
can only be represented in the national unity."[6] And farther on:
"The declaration of rights, which all constitutions insist in copying
slavishly from the French, express only those of the period ... which
considered the individual as the end and pointed out only one half of
the problem" and again, "assume the existence of one of those crises
that threaten the life of the nation, and demand the active sacrifice
of all its sons ... will you ask the citizens to face martyrdom in
virtue of their rights? You have taught men that society was solely
constituted to guarantee their rights and now you ask them to
sacrifice one and all, to suffer and die for the safety of the
'nation?'"[7]

In Mazzini's conception of the citizen as instrument for the
attainment of the nation's ends and therefore submissive to a higher
mission, to the duty of supreme sacrifice, we see the anticipation of
one of the fundamental points of the Fascist doctrine.

Unfortunately, the autonomy of the political thought of Italy,
vigorously established in the works of Vico, nobly reclaimed by
Vincenzo Cuoco, kept up during the struggles of the Risorgimento in
spite of the many foreign influences of that period, seemed to exhaust
itself immediately after the unification. Italian political thought
which had been original in times of servitude, became enslaved in the
days of freedom.

A powerful innovating movement, issuing from the war and of which
Fascism is the purest expression, was to restore Italian thought in
the sphere of political doctrine to its own traditions which are the
t