1 - Opening Mazzini’s Mail

Summary

The scandal associated with the opening of Giuseppe Mazzini’s private letters by the Post Office, on the orders of the government, fuelled a series of debates in the cockpit of the House of Commons. Those outside the House relied upon press reports on the debates for information, reports that included accounts of private letters and secret dispatches being brandished as evidence by both the home secretary, Sir James Graham, and his opponents. Two open letters to newspaper editors – Carlyle’s of June 1844 and Mazzini’s of February 1845 – were influential in their commentary upon the central themes of political honour and public morality. And Sir James Graham, leading statesman and devout evangelical, was humiliated when the ‘Grahamizing’ of letters became a craze, encouraged by Punch. But the general public remained on the outside, looking in upon the parliamentary hurly-burly.