456 



ITALY. 



the Ministry of Public Instruction when the 

 Senate, actuated by hostility toward him, had 

 rejected his bill for unifying the laws of the 

 various once -independent states now forming 

 the Kingdom of Italy in regard to archaeologi- 

 cal discoveries and for protecting the archaeo- 

 logical treasures of the country by regulations 

 against exportation, defacement, etc. By the 

 decision of the Cabinet the bill was allowed to 

 go back to the Chamber to be restored to its 

 original form, with the understanding that if 

 the Senate then insisted on excising the clause 

 an appeal would be taken to the constituencies, 

 and that in the new Parliament enough addi- 

 tional Senators would be created to carry the 

 measure. When the bill came back from the 

 Chamber the Senate passed the objectionable 

 clause without demur. 



Reform of Local Government. The burden 

 imposed on the people by the enormous arma- 

 ments that Italy is obliged to keep up and to 

 continually enlarge as a member of the triple 

 alliance, by the expenditure on railroads beyond 

 present needs, which is also to a great extent a 

 necessity of the military situation, and by the gi- 

 gantic scheme of the National Government, emu- 

 lating the institutions of the long-established 

 and wealthy centralized nations, would be easy 

 to bear if they were not supplemented by excess- 

 ive local taxation, the proceeds of which are 

 very largely wasted. The taxation, which is do- 

 ing much to check the prosperity and hinder the 

 development of the nation, is indeed more that 

 of the local than of the national authorities, 

 and the chief cause is the general corruption in 

 the communal and municipal administration, 

 made possible by the complicated arrangements 

 of local government and the indifference of the 

 electors, not more than half of whom vote for 

 the delegates, although there is no Clerical ab- 

 stention, as in the national elections. The Gov- 

 ernment has hitherto been reluctant to interfere, 

 being deterred by consideration for the principle 

 of local self-government that has always been 

 one of the Liberal tenets. The bankruptcy of 

 the municipalities of Naples and Rome led to an 

 investigation of their affairs and to the interven- 

 tion of the state at the invitation of the local 

 authorities, and brought up the question of the 

 mismanagement of local affairs everywhere and 

 the necessity for greater central control. In 

 Naples the looseness and corruption with which 

 the finances of the city were found to have been 

 conducted surpassed the worst predictions, and 

 in Rome, while the giving of bribes and subsi- 

 dies and the pocketing of illegal perquisites were 

 less open and shameless, jobbery and extrava- 

 gance were quite as prevalent. "Of 8,257 com- 

 munes in the kingdom, more than 5,000 are in 

 debt. There are more than 100,000,000 lire of 

 loans on which the interest exceeds 6 per cent., 

 3,000,000 lire on which it is more than 7 per 

 cent., and 088,000,000 lire paying more than 10 

 per cent. The amount paid annually in excess 

 of the legal rate of interest is about 54,000,000 

 lire. Debts owed by communes to the provincial 

 governments have in several instances been set- 

 tled for 5 per cent, of the amount or simply 

 wiped out on the ground of insolvency. The 

 Parliament has frequently by special legislation 

 authorized communes to exceed the statutory 



limit of taxation. In rural communes it has- 

 been the practice to make appropriations for 

 private roads and other works that are of no 

 benefit to the commune or to the peasants who pay 

 the taxes, but only to individual wealthy and in- 

 fluential proprietors, a class that habitually 

 evades its fair proportional share of taxation. In 

 Naples an immense sum of taxes was reported 

 impossible of collection because the persons 

 taxed could not be found, and yet when the 

 names were made public by the Government in- 

 vestigation they were found to include some of 

 the most prominent citizens. Embezzlements 

 by communal treasurers were sometimes covered 

 up by secretly appropriating a sum to balance 

 the peculations, and in Naples the councilors 

 voted money for such purposes as the education 

 of their sons or simply as gratuities to municipal 

 officials. 



The Mayor of Rome, Signor Armellini, ad- 

 dressed a letter to the Secretary of the Interior 

 on the condition of the finances of the city, in 

 which he urged the imperative need of state as- 

 sistance. Not only would the Government have 

 to provide the money to pay interest on the 

 loan of 150,000,000 lire that it had guaranteed, 

 but to take over the work of erecting or restor- 

 ing numerous public buildings, the regulation of 

 the Tiber, and the building of streets and bridges, 

 or provide means for- carrying out these improve- 

 ments under state supervision. The city was at 

 the end of its resources, being compelled to im- 

 pose new taxes to meet current expenses. As 

 the result of an inquiry into municipal affairs, a 

 bill was proposed by Signor Crispi, the provisions 

 of which were so repugnant to the members of 

 the existing Municipal Council that they decided 

 to resign in a body. In the Chamber the bill 

 was hotly debated, and Menotti Garibaldi, pro- 

 testing that discussion was stifled, resigned his 

 seat on June 30 in order to consult the sense of 

 his constituency. The Irredentists, whose indig- 

 nation against the Government had been freshly 

 excited by its seeming indifference to the sup- 

 pression by the Austrian authorities of the so- 

 ciety called Pro Patria, the ostensible object of 

 which was to preserve and encourage the use of 

 the Italian language in Trieste and Trent, set up, 

 by way of protest, a journalist of Rome named 

 Barzillai, who was a native of Trieste. At the 

 last moment the Government put into the field 

 as the official candidate Count Antonelli, recently 

 returned from Africa. The exciting questions 

 discussed with so much animation in the Cham- 

 ber made no impression on the voters, who bore 

 a smaller proportion than usual to the number 

 on the register, not more than one sixth of the 

 voting population going to the polls. Garibaldi 

 received an insignificant number of votes, and in 

 the second election, Antonelli not having obtained 

 an absolute majority on the first ballot, the re- 

 sult indicated that the Radical, Conservative, 

 and other Opposition parties, even including the 

 Clerical abstainers, could not together muster 

 one third of the voters. Shortly before the 

 election Signor Fortis, a Radical, who had entered 

 the Cabinet as Under-Secretary of State in the 

 Interior Department in the hope of inducing a, 

 section of his party to join the ministerial ranks, 

 or at least to cease a factious opposition, retired 

 because he had failed in his task. 



