454 



ITALY. 



jected to fierce attacks, which often had grounds 

 in unusual repressive acts. Crispi prohibited 

 the celebration, on Feb. 24, of the anniversary of 

 the proclamation of the republic at Rome in 

 1849, a festival that has been celebrated under 

 all former Liberal ministers. A Mazzini celebra- 

 tion in Livorno was likewise interdicted. Crispi 

 reduced to a nullity the right of questioning 

 ministers by evading or disdainfully refusing to 

 answer interpellations. He suppressed the Irre- 

 dentist committee in Rome, and when called to 

 account by his rancorous critic, Signor Imbriani, 

 he rebuked the President of the Chamber for not 

 calling his assailant to order, driving the Presi- 

 dent to resign, and making necessary the inter- 

 vention of the King, who brought about a recon- 

 ciliation. In matters of parliamentary privilege, 

 contrary to precedent, the minister interposed 

 his influence to withhold the right of immunity 

 from arrest and imprisonment from Prof. Star- 

 baro, a journalist, who had been convicted of 

 publishing a political libel, and as a demonstra- 

 tion against the Government had been elected to 

 the Chamber of Deputies, and from the Repub- 

 lican and Socialist Deputy, Signor Costa, who 

 had received the excessive sentence of three 

 years for having been mixed up in a collision 

 with the police on the occasion of a manifesta- 

 tion in honor of the memory of Oberdank, the 

 Irredentist. When the general commanding in 

 Africa expelled two Italian newspaper corre- 

 spondents from Massowah, he would not inter- 

 fere in response to popular clamor on their be- 

 half, and later he drew upon himself denuncia- 

 tions from the whole European press by order- 

 ing out of the country the Roman correspond- 

 ents of the " Frankfurter Zeitung " and of the 

 Paris " Figaro," under a law framed upon a 

 French act that has never been put in force since 

 the republic was established. The correspond- 

 ents, whose reports were colored by their hostility 

 to the triple alliance, had done nothing more 

 than repeat the gloomy forebodings of the Oppo- 

 sition journals, which exaggerated the embarrass- 

 ments of the treasury and nearly precipitated 

 a financial panic. To prevent a renewal of riot- 

 ous labor demonstrations the Government or- 

 dered extraordinary precautions to be taken when 

 the labor agitation that spread through Europe 

 in the spring of 1890 manifested itself in Italy. 

 Permission was given for a mass meeting of the 

 unemployed to be held in Rome on April 13, but 

 only in the court of the military barracks. Ex- 

 treme misery was common on account of the 

 building crisis and the suspension of the mu- 

 nicipal improvements, and the idle workmen ap- 

 pealed in vain to the Government for work to 

 support their starving families. A great crowd 

 gathered in the court-yard, while infantry, artil- 

 lery, and cavalry, filled the neighboring streets. 

 The meeting was closed by the inspector of po- 

 lice when the orator a wo'rking man named De 

 Sanctis inveighed against the inhumanity of 

 the Government, saying that the unendurable 

 condition of the people would not cease till they 

 took up arms, and the soldiers cleared the place 

 with fixed bayonets. Some of the mob fell upon 

 the carbineers with sticks, and later the crowd 

 attempted to reassemble in a public square, out 

 of which they were driven by the cavalry. Dem- 

 onstrations on the 1st of May were forbidden. 



Workmen attempted to hold a meeting in Rome, 

 and were dispersed by force at four successive 

 rendezvous. In Bologna and Faenza public 

 meetings were broken up by the police, and in 

 Turin there was a collision with the soldiery, and 

 shots were fired on both sides. Two great strikes 

 that broke out in Milan, in March, were caused 

 by scarcity of work, and one of these the Gov- 

 ernment ended by giving orders for railroad ma- 

 terial to the firms that had cut down their pay 

 rolls. For the want resulting from the cessation 

 of building in Rome, Milan, and other places, 

 no similar relief could be given. 



The bold measures taken to repress Irredent- 

 ism were defended with frank courage by the 

 Premier in his answers to Imbriani, and later in 

 the year in a speech at Florence, in which he 

 said that irresponsible agitators could not be 

 allowed to break treaties or to usurp the right of 

 deciding on peace or war, which belongs to the 

 highest authority of the state, and that the 

 principle of nationality could not be insisted on 

 by Italy with more reason than by Germany in 

 respect to the German portions of Russia and 

 the Hapsburg Empire, or against Austria with 

 more right than against the French in Corsica 

 and Nizza, the Swiss in Ticino, and the English 

 in Malta. The Republican and Irredentist move- 

 ment to break away from the Liberal monarchy 

 of the house of Savoy and its alliances would place 

 the very Constitution of the country in danger. 



A vote of confidence in the general policy of 

 the Government, taken on May 31, afforded a 

 decisive test of the undiminished parliamentary 

 strength of Signor Crispi, who was sustained by 

 five sixths of the Chamber. 



Legislation. The reconciliation of Church 

 and state was made impossible by the intrans- 

 igent declaration of the Pope, that the t.em- 

 poral power and the possession of Rome are 

 indispensable to the independence of the Holy 

 See. When the Pope took this attitude the 

 Government responded by proceeding to carry 

 out the long contemplated plan of taking the 

 control of charitable funds away from the clergy 

 and monastic brotherhoods, and introducing into 

 the criminal code a law by which preaching 

 against the acts of the Government is a punish- 

 ' able offense. These measures, and the raising of 

 a monument to Giordano Bruno, drew from the 

 Pope an allocution reiterating the demand for 

 the restoration of the temporal power as the 

 only safeguard of the Church, to which Crispi 

 replied by proposing a law to take a large num- 

 ber of female primary schools conducted by 

 sisterhoods from their charge and placing them 

 under lay control. 



The extension of the voting franchise in com- 

 munal elections did not have much effect in modi- 

 fying the character of the elections except in dis- 

 tricts where the Radical vote was already large. 

 The new civil code, which went into force on 

 Jan. 1, 1890, formally abolished capital punish- 

 ment through the whole extent of the kingdom. 

 This act could have but little practical effect in 

 either increasing or diminishing crimes against 

 the persons, for the reason that the death penalty 

 had been abolished in fact for a long period. 



In answer to the cry of the suffering proleta- 

 riat, the Government proposed, first, an organiza- 

 tion of public charity, such as has never existed 



