Giuseppe Garibaldi

Near to you, or far from you, brave people of Palermo, I am with you, and with you for all my life!

I have yet to thank you, as well as the brave national militia, for the faith you have placed in me and in the destinies of our country.

But as long as there are chains to be broken in Italy, I will follow my course or bury my bones there.

At Rome, people of Palermo, we will proclaim the kingdom of Italy, and there only will be sanctified the great family-bond between free men and those who are still slaves of the same country.

The people of Palermo, who showed no fear in face of those who bombarded their city, have shown themselves recently equally regardless of fear in face of corrupt men, who want to lead them astray.

You despised their counsels, and I thank you for it, you invincible people of the barricades.

People of Palermo, I thank you in the name of Italy for your resistance.

If I had followed their advice, I should not have crossed the Straits and restored seven millions of men to Italy.

People of Palermo, with whom I have shared fatigues, perils and glory, I am once more among you.

Can a people appreciate and derive much benefit from free institutions so long as they permit their senses to be cheated by such a palpable swindle as this?

It is to be hoped that he will, as soon as may be, commence the work of raising the Neapolitan people out of some of the absurd superstitions which have always kept them in ignorance, and made them the serfs of juggling priests.

I looked at him as if expecting to find that he was turned into a brute beast, for it was a den for a wild animal, not a chamber for a Christian man, in a country teeming with Christ's ministers, and where the holy Apostolic Catholic…

Nor is this to be wondered at, when ignorance was rewarded and learning discouraged by those twins of darkness, the sovereign and the clergy, and the only hopes of the Bourbons and the Vatican depend upon brutalizing the national mind.

It is clear that the intellect of the country has for years been out of it, or in seclusion, or in imprisonment.

The Neapolitans now reason and talk like men, and there is a degree of self-restraint about them which is in the highest degree creditable after the sufferings to which they have been so long exposed.

No; all this has passed away, and I meet erect, independent men.

In their very attitude, there is an air of self-respect and independence to which I have long been a stranger.

Revolution is said to turn the dregs uppermost; yet the appearance and manner of those who now appear on the scene contradict the common proverb.

A system was pursued that has been characterized as a perpetual violation of all law, and a practical denial of Christianity.

The latter were a sect to defend a vile political creed, and inflict chastisement on those who opposed it; but the former are banded together to assert the sacred rights of liberty.

They are admirable, and in themselves amount to a beneficial revolution; but the better and the more sweeping the changes that are introduced, the greater the necessity for some established government.

All contracts on property for the benefit of the order are annulled.

The order of Jesuits, with all their dependencies, is abolished in the territory.

The trial by jury in criminal cases is to be established.

Twelve infant asylums, one for each quarter, are to be established in the capital at the public expense, and are to be municipal institutions.