the Left, which contrived to obtain six months’ supply on
account, and dissolved the Chamber.
The ensuing general election (November 1892), marked by unprecedented violence and abuse of official pressure upon the electorate, fitly ushered in what proved to be the most unfortunate period of Italian history since the completion of national unity. The influence of Bank scandals. Giolitti was based largely upon the favour of a court clique, and especially of Rattazzi, minister of the royal household. Early in 1893 a scandal arose in connexion with the management of state banks, and particularly of the Banca Romana, whose managing director, Tanlongo, had issued £2,500,000 of duplicate bank-notes. Giolitti scarcely improved matters by creating Tanlongo a member of the senate, and by denying in parliament the existence of any mismanagement. The senate, however, manifested the utmost hostility to Tanlongo, whom Giolitti, in consequence of an interpellation in the Chamber, was compelled to arrest. Arrests of other prominent persons followed, and on the 3rd of February the Chamber authorized the prosecution of De Zerbi, a Neapolitan deputy accused of corruption. On the 20th of February De Zerbi suddenly expired. For a time Giolitti successfully opposed inquiry into the conditions of the state banks, but on the 21st of March was compelled to sanction an official investigation by a parliamentary commission composed of seven members. On the 23rd of November the report of the commission was read to the Chamber amid intense excitement. It established that all Italian cabinets since 1880 had grossly neglected the state banks; that the two preceding cabinets had been aware of the irregularities committed by Tanlongo; that Tanlongo had heavily subsidized the press, paying as much as £20,000 for that purpose in 1888 alone; that a number of deputies, including several ex-ministers, had received from him loans of a considerable amount, which they had apparently made no effort to refund; that Giolitti had deceived the Chamber with regard to the state banks, and was open to suspicion of having, after the arrest of Tanlongo, abstracted a number of documents from the latter’s papers before placing the remainder in the hands of the judicial authorities. In spite of the gravity of the charges formulated against many prominent men, the report merely “deplored” and “disapproved” of their conduct, without proposing penal proceedings. Fear of extending still farther a scandal which had already attained huge dimensions, and the desire to avoid any further shock to national credit, convinced the commissioners of the expediency of avoiding a long series of prosecutions. The report, however, sealed the fate of the Giolitti cabinet, and on the 24th of November it resigned amid general execration.
Apart from the lack of scruple manifested by Giolitti in the bank scandals, he exhibited incompetence in the conduct of foreign and home affairs. On the 16th and 18th of August 1893 a number of Italian workmen were massacred at Aigues-Mortes. The French authorities, Aigues-Mortes massacre. under whose eyes the massacre was perpetrated, did nothing to prevent or repress it, and the mayor of Marseilles even refused to admit the wounded Italian workmen to the municipal hospital. These occurrences provoked anti-French demonstrations in many parts of Italy, and revived the chronic Italian rancour against France. The Italian foreign minister, Brin, began by demanding the punishment of the persons guilty of the massacre, but hastened to accept as satisfactory the anodyne measures adopted by the French government. Giolitti removed the prefect of Rome for not having prevented an expression of popular anger, and presented formal excuses to the French consul at Messina for a demonstration against that consulate. In the following December the French tribunal at Angoulême acquitted all the authors of the massacre. At home Giolitti displayed the same weakness. Riots at Naples in August 1893 and symptoms of unrest in Sicily found him, as usual, unprepared and vacillating. The closing of the French market to Sicilian produce, the devastation wrought by the phylloxera and the decrease of the sulphur trade had combined to produce in Sicily a discontent of which Socialist agitators took advantage to organize the workmen of the towns and the peasants of the country into groups known as fasci. Insurrection in Sicily. The movement had no well-defined object. Here and there it was based upon a bastard Socialism, in other places it was made a means of municipal party warfare under the guidance of the local mafia, and in some districts it was simply popular effervescence against the local octrois on bread and flour. As early as January 1893 a conflict had occurred between the police and the populace, in which several men, women and children were killed, an occurrence used by the agitators further to inflame the populace. Instead of maintaining a firm policy, Giolitti allowed the movement to spread until, towards the autumn of 1893, he became alarmed and drafted troops into the island, though in numbers insufficient to restore order. At the moment of his fall the movement assumed the aspect of an insurrection, and during the interval between his resignation (24th November) and the formation of a new Crispi cabinet (10th December) conflicts between the public forces and the rioters were frequent. The return of Crispi to power—a return imposed by public opinion as that of the only man capable of dealing with the desperate situation—marked the turning-point of the crisis. Intimately acquainted with the conditions of his native island, Crispi adopted efficacious remedies. The fasci were suppressed, Sicily was filled with troops, the reserves were called out, a state of siege proclaimed, military courts instituted and the whole movement crushed in a few weeks. The chief agitators were either sentenced to heavy terms of imprisonment or were compelled to flee the country. A simultaneous insurrection at Massa-Carrara was crushed with similar vigour. Crispi’s methods aroused great outcry in the Radical press, but the severe sentences of the military courts were in time tempered by the Royal prerogative of amnesty.
But it was not alone in regard to public order that heroic measures were necessary. The financial situation inspired serious misgivings. While engagements contracted by Depretis in regard to public works had more than neutralized the normal increase of revenue from taxation, Financial crisis. the whole credit of the state had been affected by the severe economic and financial crises of the years 1889–1893. The state banks, already hampered by maladministration, were encumbered by huge quantities of real estate which had been taken over as compensation for unredeemed mortgages. Baron Sidney Sonnino, minister of finance in the Crispi cabinet, found a prospective deficit of £7,080,000, and in spite of economies was obliged to face an actual deficit of more than £6,000,000. Drastic measures were necessary to limit expenditure and to provide new sources of revenue. Sonnino applied, and subsequently amended, the Bank Reform Bill passed by the previous Administration (August 10, 1893) for the creation of a supreme state bank, the Bank of Italy, which was entrusted with the liquidation of the insolvent Banca Romana. The new law forbade the state banks to lend money on real estate, limited their powers of discounting bills and securities, and reduced the maximum of their paper currency. In order to diminish the gold premium, which under Giolitti had risen to 16%, forced currency was given to the existing notes of the banks of Italy, Naples and Sicily, while special state notes were issued to meet immediate currency needs. Measures were enforced to prevent Italian holders of consols from sending their coupons abroad to be paid in gold, with the result that, whereas in 1893 £3,240,000 had been paid abroad in gold for the service of the January coupons and only £680,000 in paper in Italy, the same coupon was paid a year later with only £1,360,000 abroad and £2,540,000 at home. Economies for more than £1,000,000, were immediately effected, taxes, calculated to produce £2,440,000, were proposed to be placed upon land, incomes, salt and corn, while the existing income-tax upon consols (fixed at 8% by Cambray-Digny in 1868, and raised to 13.20% by Sella in 1870) was increased to 20% irrespectively of the stockholders’ nationality. These proposals met with opposition so fierce as to cause a cabinet crisis, but Sonnino who resigned office as minister of finance,
