454 



ITALY. 



for 1884-'85, and of having sought to conceal it. 

 The deserters from the Ministerial party left 

 only a small majority for a bill providing that 

 the new indirect taxes should go into force im- 

 mediately in order to prevent loss of revenue. 

 Shortly afterward they would have carried a 

 vote against the Government on a formal ques- 

 tion, had not the Left sustained the ministers, 

 not being strong enough to assume the govern- 

 ment themselves. The growing hostility to- 

 ward the Government was revealed by the 

 election in Pavia. An eccentric scholar named 

 Sbarbaro published a paper called u Le Forche 

 Caudine," in which, in what he supposed 

 to be the interests of morality, he print- 

 ed some scandalous reports, partly true and 

 partly false, concerning prominent men, among 

 them members of the Cabinet. He was tried 

 and sentenced for slander to seven years and a 

 half of imprisonment. The Opposition press 

 raised a clamor against so barbarous a sentence, 

 and the Eadical and Conservative enemies of 

 the ministry joined forces in Pavia and elect- 

 ed the convict to the Chamber of Deputies in 

 the early part of 1886. They insisted that 

 the law granting immunity to members of 

 Parliament applied to his case, and the Gov- 

 ernment yielded the point, and released him. 

 But, when he again began to publish his jour- 

 nal, his constituents gave him so cold a recep- 

 tion that he resigned his seat. 



When Magliani presented his budget in the 

 beginning of March, Crispi, Cairoli, and Zanar- 

 delli from one side, and Coppino, Spaventa, 

 and Kudini assailed the Government at all 

 points. There were thirty-six orders of the 

 day proposed, but on the 6th of March the one 

 approved by the Government was voted with 

 15 majority, and the definitive budget was 

 passed shortly afterward with a majority of 

 36 votes. 



Dissolution of Parliament. Recognizing that he 

 could not carry on the Government with this 

 small and wavering majority, Depretis sent in 

 his resignation. The King called Biancheri, 

 President of the Chamber, but he declined 

 to undertake to form a ministry, and declared 

 that a coalition cabinet from the two wings of 

 the Opposition was an impossibility. King 

 Umberto, therefore, decided to dissolve the 

 Chamber, as proposed by Depretis. In his 

 report to the King, which was published with 

 the decree of dissolution, Depretis said that 

 the important acts of the last Legislature, such 

 as those dealing with accident insurance, lia- 

 bility of employers, the revision of the tariff, 

 the railroads, lowering of the price of salt, re- 

 duction of the land-tax, improvement of the 

 military power, equalization of land-taxation, 

 etc., had not been carried through without 

 causing differences of opinion to arise in the 

 bosom of the majority tnat deprived it of the 

 necessary decision for effecting the important 

 reforms that were still needed. The result of 

 the elections, which took place on May 23, 

 was a victory for the Government. About 



300 among the 508 newly elected deputies be- 

 longed to the Government party, but there 

 were dissensions within the party. 



The Opposition faction of the Monarchical 

 Left is commonly known as the Pentarchist 

 party, because it was founded in 1883 by five 

 leading Liberals Cairoli, Crispi, Nicotera, 

 Zanardelli, and Baccarini who united against 

 Depretis. Their chief complaint against the 

 Prime Minister was that, while he used severe 

 repressive measures against Republicans, Irre- 

 dentists, and Anarchists, he allowed the Cleri- 

 cals in Rome complete freedom for their trea- 

 sonable demonstrations. The Pentarchists 

 adopted no distinctive programme, excepting 

 the exclusion of Clericals from the communal 

 and provincial administrations and the pay- 

 ment of salaries to deputies. An episode that 

 occurred in the early part of 1886, after Pope 

 Leo's recent allocutions filled with invective 

 against the Government, intensified the wide- 

 spread animosity against the Church. A news- 

 paper in Rome published an account of a con- 

 spiracy of Clericals to overturn the monarchy 

 and restore the temporal power of the Pope 

 and the former reigning houses in Italy, with 

 the help of allies in Berlin, Vienna, and Paris, 

 and of accomplices among the high dignitaries 

 of the Church. The Pope himself was de- 

 clared to be cognizant of the plot. A certain 

 Count Dorides had been arrested for treason 

 because he had obtained, by bribing an official, 

 secret papers of the marine department, con- 

 taining naval instructions, and had sent them 

 to the Clerical committee in Paris. When in- 

 terpellated regarding the "conspiracy in the 

 Vatican," the Minister of Justice said that the 

 revelations in the newspaper accorded with 

 one of the documents of the trial. Cardinal 

 Jacobini at once sent word to the courts of 

 Europe that the document was a malicious 

 forgery, and complained bitterly that the Ital- 

 ian Government had not thus denoted it. The 

 Pentarchists, whose peculiar anti-Clerical views 

 have no motive except to outbid the Govern- 

 ment party for popular support, suffered some 

 losses in the general election. In the new 

 Chamber they counted about 150 votes. There 

 were individual Republicans, Socialists, and 

 Anarchists elected. The political convict Ci- 

 priani obtained a large majority both in Ra- 

 venna and Forli. The election was declared 

 invalid by the Chamber, because he was a com- 

 mon felon, but both constituencies chose him 

 again. After the elections the Government 

 attempted to suppress the Labor party, under 

 a law forbidding incitements to insurrection 

 and the overthrow of existing political institu- 

 tions. They were accused of seeking to pre- 

 pare an extensive strike of agricultural labor- 

 ers, and of encouraging such a strike in their 

 electoral programme. All the associations 

 that subscribed to the programme, of which 

 there were 150 in north Italy, were suppressed. 

 Eight of the leaders of the party, including the 

 candidates for the Chamber, were arrested in 



