• Mr. BIAGGI. Mr. Speaker, American history especially around the time of the American revolution is filled with heroes and patriots. Some of these are well known and have been treated kindly by history. Others have languished in greater depths of obscurity — but their contributions to the establishment of the American Nation are just as important. One such individual is Philip Mazzei — who played a quiet but powerful role in the shaping of the early American Nation and especially its sys

I wish to insert into the record an excellent essay about Philip Mazzei written by Sister Margherita Marchione a noted professor of history at Farleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey. Sister Marchione is the author of a number of books and articles about Philip Mazzei including some that feature his writings on issues such as the Constitution. Sister Marchione is an historian with impressive credentials. Her work on Mazzei has and will continue to do a great deal to get him the recognition he so richly deserves.

Sister Marchione's essay follows:

This year we celebrate the 200th Anniversary of the founding of the Constitutional Society by Philip Mazzei, an Italian and a great American patriot, who wrote In 1776: "We think that if we could have but one and the same Constitution for all the united Colonies, our union would be infinitely stronger."

Philip Mazzei used the World as his classroom and helped educate people everywhere to democratic ideals. He did this by word-of-mouth and by his writings on the political, financial, and social conditions in the Colonies. One appreciates Mazzei's faith in free speech and the power of exposure and recognizes his ideas on freedom, sex, property.

And as he was conscious of man's injustice to woman, so too was he conscious of the injustice of man to man: slavery. Not only men and agricultural products accompanied Mazzei to Virginia, but products of the mind and the lessons he, like Machiavelli, had learned from the study of Roman history. He also brought the ideas he had gathered from his reading of the Encyclopedists and Cesare Beccaria, and from his association with the best minds in Italy, France, and England.

Mazzei was a prolific writer and a proponent of religious and political freedom. Born December 25, 1730, in Tuscany, he lived in 20 cities in Italy. Turkey. Austria. England, United States, France, Holland, Russia and Poland during the 86 years of his life. In London he met Franklin and other members of the American colony, and learned that Virginia was climatically not unlike Tuscany. His imagination caught fire and as early as 1771 he drew up a plan for the organization of an agricultural company. He disposed of his London assets, went to Tuscany to procure men, plants, seeds, cuttings. implements, and knowledge necessary for the success of his new venture, and set sail on September 2, 1773, arriving in Virginia several months later.

Mazzei took his farming venture seriously. and organized a company to finance the implementation of the plan he had drawn up in London. Shares were sold and 31 colonial leaders, among whom were Lord Dunmmore, Washington, and Jefferson, invested in the enterprise. This was perhaps the first "Wine Company."

Mazzei's involvement in political affairs was constant. Indeed, his greatest contribution to the cause of the American Revolution was as propagandist. Not sharing the reluctance of the colonists to sever all ties with Great Britain. It was easier for him to advocate a complete break. He defended the American cause to European readers and fought against the misunderstandings and deliberate misrepresentations disseminated by European newspapers.

A concrete example of his desire to participate In the drafting of a constitution for the state of Virginia is the document "Instructions of the Freeholders of Albemarle County to their Delegates In Convention." In these "Instructions" Mazzei wrote: "The glory of having been the founders will afford such a gratification to our hearts as to over balance all the inconveniences and labours." It Is the "missing link" which places Mazzei with our Founding Fathers.

There is no doubt that this document-draft of "Instructions" was written by Mazzei. Its importance was recognized In 1952 when Julian Boyd stated in an editorial note (The Papers of Thomas Jefferson. Vol. 9 that Jefferson's "own draft-constitution of 1783 was influenced by these views of the Albemarle inhabitants." Boyd printed the clerk's copy found among Jefferson's papers. He was not aware that the document was Mazzei's.

When the Colony of Virginia was in need of money and army supplies, Governor Patrick Henry commissioned Mazzei to seek help in Europe, and authorized him to borrow 900,000 pounds at a maximum of five percent interest. On June 20. 1779, off the eastern coast, the ship was captured by an English privateer, and Mazzei was forced to throw his credentials overboard and remain in New York and Long Island for three months. While held prisoner on Long Island, he observed the preparations being made by the British, and so devised a plan of his own to bottle up the enemy by having superiority on water. He not only wrote this to Jefferson, but he also discussed it in Paris and sent a sketch to General Rochambeau. His plan was not carried out in New York because the British in the meantime had moved south. Was Mazzei's plan of attack put into operation at Yorktown instead?

Mazzei returned to Virginia in 1783 and began plans for the organization of The Constitutional Society which was as new as his 1776 revolutionary concept of "one and the same Constitution for all the united Colonies." Two years later he joined Jefferson who had become Minister to France.

In 1788, Mazzei published his 4-volume "Recherches historiques et politiques sur les Etats Unis de Amerique septentrionale." The work went through two French editions and a German adaptation. It is a reminder of the links between American and French political thought in the year immediately preceding the French Revolution. Mazzei's principal involvement with the Revolution was as an observer and a reporter. His participation in French affairs was related to his involvement with Polish affairs. He lived in Paris and functioned as an employee - first as agent and then as charge d'affaires — of King Stanislaus. He succeeded in reestablishing diplomatic relations between France and Poland. Soon after reading Mazzei's "Recherches," the King Invited him to Warsaw. Mazzei arrived there early in 1792, to be both friend and advisor. He wisely urged Stanislaus not to issue paper money, and wrote "Reflections on the Nature of Money and Exchange."

In 1802, at age 72, Mazzei traveled to Russia to claim Polish pension. When he returned to Pisa, he resumed the cultivation of his own little garden, happy to be just plain Pippo l'ortolano as his friends called him (Phil the gardener). He continued to offer his services to his adopted country. His final gesture of friendship to the United States was the hiring of two sculptors in 1802 for work in the national capital, Washington, D.C. From Pisa, at age 75, Mazzei set out for Rome, and hired Giovanni Andrei and Giuseppe Franzoni to bring their Italian artistic talents to the United States.

Mazzei's last years were spent gardening and writing his memoirs. His death on March 19, 1816, did not go unnoticed. Newspapers in New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia printed lengthy and accurate obituaries. A proposal to publish Mazzei's memoirs was also noted.

Philip Mazzei was remembered even though he had not returned to America in over 30 years. Jefferson commented in a letter to the American Consul in Leghorn: "He was of solid worth: honest, able, zealous in sound principles, moral and political, constant in friendship and punctual in all his undertakings. He was greatly esteemed in this country. ..."

Philip Mazzei was more than a transmitter of ideas, prolific writer, and cultivator of important political friendships. He was an active participant in world events. His "Memorie" give us an eyewitness account of the three great national upheavals of the late eighteenth century — the American and French revolutions, and the events which led to the second partition of Poland.

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