1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Sclopis di Salerano, Federigo

SCLOPIS DI SALERANO, FEDERIGO (1798–1878), Italian statesman and jurist. While still comparatively young he was appointed attorney-general to the Sardinian senate, and took part in the compilation of the new codes. An advocate of liberal ideas and reform, he proclaimed the necessity for a constitution, and was himself one of the authors of the Statuto, or Sardinian charter of 1848, which is to this day the constitution of the Italian kingdom; the introduction is entirely his work. Sclopis also wrote the proclamation in which Charles Albert announced to the people of Lombardy and Venetia his war against Austria. He was minister in the first Sardinian constitutional ministry under the presidency of Count Balbo, and afterwards president of the senate. In 1871 he was sent to Geneva as Victor Emmanuel's representative on the “Alabama” arbitration, and was chosen president of that tribunal; on his return to Italy the king conferred on him the Order of the Annunziata. The last years of his life were mainly occupied with municipal affairs and charitable administration at Turin. Between 1819 and 1878 he published over seventy works on history, jurisprudence, politics and literature, in Italian, Latin and French. At the age of thirty he was elected member of the Turin Academy of Sciences, of which he became life president in 1864; he was also foreign member of the Institut de France. His most important work is his Storia della legislaziona Italiana dalle origini fino al 1847 (Turin, 1840), issued as a sequel to his Storia dell' antica legislazione del Piemonte, published in 1833.

Among his other writings we may mention the following: Ricerche sui Longobardi in Italia (1827), Delle relazioni politiche fra la dinastia di Savoia e il governo Britannica dal 1240 al 1815 (1853), Rimembranze sul Conte di Cavour (1876), and Considerazioni storiche sulle antiche assemblee rappresentative del Piemonte e della Savoia (1878).

See E. Ricotti, Notizia biografica di F. Sclopis; A. Manno, Bibliografia degli scritti di F. Sclopis; M. Ricci, Necrologia di F. Sclopis (in the Archivio storico Italiano, ser. iv. tom. ii. p. 331 seq.).