Why was virtue important to Mazzini and young Italy

Giuseppe Mazzini (1805-1872) founded the nationalist movement Young Italy (La Giovine Italia) while in exile in France in the 1830s. In his essay "On the Duties of Man" (1844), Mazzini singled out the requirements for launching a national Resurgence (Risorgimento) - - the struggle for Italian unification and its liberation from Austrian rule. On the one hand, Mazzini mixes a liberal concern for national self-determination with a desire for the betterment of working-class people. On the other hand, he set the goal of spiritual regeneration for the national community through the bonds of solidarity - - to serve as springs for social action, but it was also seen as key for the emancipation of humanity at large. Thus, the solidarity of the national community is the precondition for the solidarity of all nations. Virtue, as an individual ethical quality, was seen as requisite for the moral and political education of the Italian people. But by using this concept Mazzini was also hearkening back to the virtus that characterized the honor, industriousness, self-sacrifice, and moral fortitude associated with the ancient Roman republican citizen. In a sense, this was a bid to recreate the cultural and political vocabulary of the ancient Roman Republic while endowing it with new meanings for sustaining a modern republican state.