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Rh Liberal chieftains. Hardly had he assumed office when the unexpected death of Victor Emmanuel II. (9th January

1878) stirred national feeling to an unprecedented depth, and placed the continuity of monarchical institutions in Italy upon trial before Europe. For thirty years Victor Emmanuel had been the centre point of national hopes, the token and embodiment of the struggle for national redemption. He had led the country out of the despondency which followed the defeat of Novara and the abdication of Charles Albert, through all the vicissitudes of national unification to the final triumph at Rome. His disappearance snapped the chief link with the heroic period, and removed from the helm of state a ruler of large heart, great experience and civil courage, at a moment when elements of continuity were needed and vital problems of internal reorganization had still to be faced. Crispi adopted the measures necessary to ensure the tranquil accession of King Humbert with a quick energy which precluded any Radical or Republican demonstrations. His influence decided the choice of the Roman Pantheon as the late monarch’s burial-place, in spite of formidable pressure from the Piedmontese, who wished Victor Emmanuel II. to rest with the Sardinian kings at Superga. He also persuaded the new ruler to inaugurate, as King Humbert I., the new dynastical epoch of the kings of Italy, instead of continuing as Humbert IV. the succession of the kings of Sardinia. Before the commotion caused by the death of Victor Emmanuel had passed away, the decease of Pius IX (7th February 1878) placed further demands upon Crispi’s sagacity and promptitude. Like Victor Emmanuel, Pius IX. had been bound up with the history of the Risorgimento, but, unlike him, had represented and embodied the anti-national, reactionary spirit. Ecclesiastically, he had become the instrument of the triumph of Jesuit influence, and had in turn set his seal upon the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, the Syllabus and Papal Infallibility. Yet, in spite of all, his jovial disposition and good-humoured cynicism saved him from unpopularity, and rendered his death an occasion of mourning. Notwithstanding the pontiff’s bestowal of the apostolic benediction in articulo mortis upon Victor Emmanuel, the attitude of the Vatican had remained so inimical as to make it doubtful whether the conclave would be held in Rome. Crispi, whose strong anti-clerical convictions did not prevent him from regarding the papacy as preeminently an Italian institution, was determined both to prove to the Catholic world the practical independence of the government of the Church and to retain for Rome so potent a centre of universal attraction as the presence of the future pope. The Sacred College having decided to hold the conclave abroad, Crispi assured them of absolute freedom if they remained in Rome, or of protection to the frontier should they migrate, but warned them that, once evacuated, the Vatican would be occupied in the name of the Italian government and be lost to the Church as headquarters of the papacy. The cardinals thereupon overruled their former decision, and the conclave was held in Rome, the new pope, Cardinal Pecci, being elected on the 20th of February 1878 without let or hindrance. The Italian government not only

prorogued the Chamber during the conclave to prevent unseemly inquiries or demonstrations on the part of deputies, but by means of Mancini, minister of justice, and Cardinal di Pietro, assured the new pope protection during the settlement of his outstanding personal affairs, an assurance of which Leo XIII. on the evening after his election, took full advantage. At the same time the duke of Aosta, commander of the Rome army corps, ordered the troops to render royal honours to the pontiff should he officially appear in the capital. King Humbert addressed to the pope a letter of congratulation upon his election, and received a courteous reply. The improvement thus signalized in the relations between Quirinal and Vatican was further exemplified on the 18th of October 1878, when the Italian government accepted a papal formula with regard to the granting of the royal exequatur for bishops, whereby they, upon nomination by the Holy See, recognized state control over, and made application for, the payment of their temporalities.

The Depretis-Crispi cabinet did not long survive the opening of the new reign. Crispi’s position was shaken by a morally plausible but juridically untenable charge of bigamy, while on the 8th of March the election of Cairoli, an opponent of the ministry and head of the extremer section of the

Left, to the presidency of the Chamber, induced Depretis to tender his resignation to the new king. Cairoli succeeded in forming an administration, in which his friend Count Corti, Italian ambassador at Constantinople, accepted the portfolio of foreign affairs, Zanardelli the ministry of the interior, and Seismit Doda the ministry of finance. Though the cabinet had no stable majority, it induced the Chamber to sanction a commercial treaty which had been negotiated with France and a general “autonomous” customs tariff. The commercial treaty was, however, rejected by the French Chamber in June 1878, a circumstance necessitating the application of the Italian general tariff, which implied a 10 to 20% increase in the duties on the principal French exports. A highly imaginative financial exposition by Seismit Doda, who announced a surplus of £2,400,000, paved the way for a Grist Tax Reduction Bill, which Cairoli had taken over from the Depretis programme. The Chamber, though convinced of the danger of this reform, the perils of which were incisively demonstrated by Sella, voted by an overwhelming majority for an immediate reduction of the impost by one-fourth, and its complete abolition within four years. Cairoli’s premiership was, however, destined to be cut short by an attempt made upon the king’s life in November 1878, during a royal visit to Naples, by a miscreant named Passanante. In spite of the courage and presence of mind of Cairoli, who received the dagger thrust intended for the king, public and parliamentary indignation found expression in a vote which compelled the ministry to resign.

Though brief, Cairoli’s term of office was momentous in regard to foreign affairs. The treaty of San Stefano had led to the convocation of the Berlin Congress, and though Count Corti was by no means ignorant of the rumours concerning secret agreements between Germany, Austria

and Russia, and Germany, Austria and Great Britain, he scarcely seemed alive to the possible effect of such agreements upon Italy. Replying on the 9th of April 1878 to interpellations by Visconti-Venosta and other deputies on the impending Congress of Berlin, he appeared free from apprehension lest Italy, isolated, might find herself face to face with a change of the balance of power in the Mediterranean, and declared that in the event of serious complications Italy would be “too much sought after rather than too much forgotten.” The policy of Italy in the congress, he added, would be to support the interests of the young Balkan nations. Wrapped in this optimism, Count Corti proceeded, as first Italian delegate, to Berlin, where he found himself obliged, on the 28th of May, to join reluctantly in sanctioning the Austrian occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. On the 8th of July the revelation of the Anglo-Ottoman treaty for the British occupation of Cyprus took the congress by surprise. Italy, who had made the integrity of the Ottoman empire a cardinal point of her Eastern policy, felt this change of the Mediterranean status quo the more severely inasmuch as, in order not to strain her relations with France, she had turned a deaf ear to Austrian, Russian and German advice to prepare to occupy Tunisia in agreement with Great Britain. Count Corti had no suspicion that France had adopted a less disinterested attitude towards similar suggestions from Bismarck and Lord Salisbury. He therefore returned from the German capital with “clean” but empty hands, a plight which found marked disfavour in Italian eyes, and stimulated anti-Austrian Irredentism.

Ever since Venetia had been ceded by Austria to the emperor Napoleon, and by him to Italy, after the war of 1866, secret revolutionary committees had been formed in the northern Italian provinces to prepare for the “redemption” of Trent and Trieste. For twelve years these committees had remained comparatively inactive, but in 1878 the presence of the ex-Garibaldian Cairoli at the head of the government, and popular dissatisfaction at the