currency, and, eventually, fiscal reform. The long-promised
abolition of the grist tax was not explicitly mentioned, opposition
to the railway redemption contracts was transformed into
approval, and the vaunted reduction of taxation replaced by
lip-service to the Conservative deity of financial equilibrium.
The railway redemption contracts were in fact immediately
voted by parliament, with a clause pledging the government
to legislate in favour of farming out the railways to private
companies.
Nicotera, minister of the interior, began his administration of home affairs by a sweeping change in the personnel of the prefects, sub-prefects and public prosecutors, but found himself obliged to incur the wrath of his supporters by prohibiting Radical meetings likely to endanger public order, and by enunciating administrative principles which would have befitted an inveterate Conservative. In regard to the Church, he instructed the prefects strictly to prevent infraction of the law against religious orders. At the same time the cabinet, as a whole, brought in a Clerical Abuses Bill, threatening with severe punishment priests guilty of disturbing the peace of families, of opposing the laws of the state, or of fomenting disorder. Depretis, for his part, was compelled to declare impracticable the immediate abolition of the grist tax, and to frame a bill for the increase of revenue, acts which caused the secession of some sixty Radicals and Republicans from the ministerial majority, and gave the signal for an agitation against the premier similar to that which he himself had formerly undertaken against the Right. The first general election under the Left (November 1876) had yielded the cabinet the overwhelming majority of 421 Ministerialists against 87 Conservatives, but the very size of the majority rendered it unmanageable. The Clerical Abuses Bill provoked further dissensions: Nicotera was severely affected by revelations concerning his political past; Zanardelli refused to sanction the construction of a railway in Calabria in which Nicotera was interested; and Depretis saw fit to compensate the supporters of his bill for the increase of revenue by decorating at one stroke sixty ministerial deputies with the Order of the Crown of Italy. A further derogation from the ideal of democratic austerity was committed by adding £80,000 per annum to the king’s civil list (14th May 1877) and by burdening the state exchequer with royal household pensions amounting to £20,000 a year. The civil list, which the law of the 10th of August 1862 had fixed at £650,000 a year, but which had been voluntarily reduced by the king to £530,000 in 1864, and to £490,000 in 1867, was thus raised to £570,000 a year. Almost the only respect in which the Left could boast a decided improvement over the administration of the Right was the energy displayed by Nicotera in combating brigandage and the mafia in Calabria and Sicily. Successes achieved in those provinces failed, however, to save Nicotera from the wrath of the Chamber, and on the 14th of December 1877 a cabinet crisis arose over a question concerning the secrecy of telegraphic correspondence. Depretis thereupon reconstructed his administration, excluding Nicotera, Melegari and Zanardelli, placing Crispi at the home office, entrusting Magliani with finance, and himself assuming the direction of foreign affairs.
In regard to foreign affairs, the début of the Left as a governing
party was scarcely more satisfactory than its home policy.
Since the war of 1866 the Left had advocated an Italo-Prussian
alliance in opposition to the Francophil
tendencies of the Right. On more than one occasion
Foreign policy of
the Left.
Bismarck had maintained direct relations with the
chiefs of the Left, and had in 1870 worked to prevent a Franco-Italian
alliance by encouraging the “party of action” to press
for the occupation of Rome. Besides, the Left stood for anti-clericalism
and for the retention by the State of means of coercing
the Church, in opposition to the men of the Right, who, with
the exception of Sella, favoured Cavour’s ideal of “a free Church
in a free State,” and the consequent abandonment of state
control over ecclesiastical government. Upon the outbreak of
the Prussian Kulturkampf the Left had pressed the Right to
introduce an Italian counterpart to the Prussian May laws,
especially as the attitude of Thiers and the hostility of the
French Clericals obviated the need for sparing French susceptibilities.
Visconti-Venosta and Minghetti, partly from
aversion to a Jacobin policy, and partly from a conviction that
Bismarck sooner or later would undertake his Gang nach Canossa,
regardless of any tacit engagement he might have assumed
towards Italy, had wisely declined to be drawn into any infraction
of the Law of Guarantees. It was, however, expected that the
chiefs of the Left, upon attaining office, would turn resolutely
towards Prussia in search of a guarantee against the Clerical
menace embodied in the régime of Marshal Macmahon. On the
contrary, Depretis and Melegari, both of whom were imbued
with French Liberal doctrines, adopted towards the Republic
an attitude so deferential as to arouse suspicion in Vienna and
Berlin. Depretis recalled Nigra from Paris and replaced him by
General Cialdini, whose ardent plea for Italian intervention
in favour of France in 1870, and whose comradeship with Marshal
Macmahon in 1859, would, it was supposed, render him persona
gratissima to the French government. This calculation was
falsified by events. Incensed by the elevation to the rank of
embassies of the Italian legation in Paris and the French legation
to the Quirinal, and by the introduction of the Italian bill
against clerical abuses, the French Clerical party not only attacked
Italy and her representative, General Cialdini, in the Chamber
of Deputies, but promoted a monster petition against the Italian
bill. Even the coup d’état of the 16th of May 1877 (when
Macmahon dismissed the Jules Simon cabinet for opposing the
Clerical petition) hardly availed to change the attitude of
Depretis. As a precaution against an eventual French attempt
to restore the temporal power, orders were hurriedly given to
complete the defences of Rome, but in other respects the Italian
government maintained its subservient attitude. Yet at that
moment the adoption of a clear line of policy, in accord with
the central powers, might have saved Italy from the loss of
prestige entailed by her bearing in regard to the Russo-Turkish
War and the Austrian acquisition of Bosnia, and might have
prevented the disappointment subsequently occasioned by the
outcome of the Congress of Berlin. In the hope of inducing
the European powers to “compensate” Italy for the increase
of Austrian influence on the Adriatic, Crispi undertook in the
autumn of 1877, with the approval of the king, and in spite of
the half-disguised opposition of Depretis, a semi-official mission
to Paris, Berlin, London and Vienna. The mission appears
not to have been an unqualified success, though Crispi afterwards
affirmed in the Chamber (4th March 1886) that Depretis might in
1877 “have harnessed fortune to the Italian chariot.” Depretis,
anxious only to avoid “a policy of adventure,” let slip whatever
opportunity may have presented itself, and neglected even to
deal energetically with the impotent but mischievous Italian
agitation for a “rectification” of the Italo-Austrian frontier.
He greeted the treaty of San Stefano (3rd March 1878) with
undisguised relief, and by the mouth of the king, congratulated
Italy (7th March 1878) on having maintained with the powers
friendly and cordial relations “free from suspicious precautions,”
and upon having secured for herself “that most precious of
alliances, the alliance of the future”—a phrase of which the
empty rhetoric was to be bitterly demonstrated by the Berlin
Congress and the French occupation of Tunisia.
The entry of Crispi into the Depretis cabinet (December 1877) placed at the ministry of the interior a strong hand and sure eye at a moment when they were about to become imperatively necessary. Crispi was the only man of truly statesmanlike calibre in the ranks of the Left. Formerly a friend Crispi. and disciple of Mazzini, with whom he had broken on the question of the monarchical form of government which Crispi believed indispensable to the unification of Italy, he had afterwards been one of Garibaldi’s most efficient coadjutors and an active member of the “party of action.” Passionate, not always scrupulous in his choice and use of political weapons, intensely patriotic, loyal with a loyalty based rather on reason than sentiment, quick-witted, prompt in action, determined and pertinacious, he possessed in eminent degree many qualities lacking in other
