THE MINGHETTI MINISTRY (1873-1876 A.D.)
The task of forming a new ministry was given by the king to Marco Minghetti who was leader of the opposition which was in the majority against the fallen ministry. The first note of the new ministry was a triumph of foreign policy. The visit of Victor Emmanuel to the emperors of Austria and Germany in their respective capitals in September, 1873, had placed a seal on the friendship of the two Transalpine powers.
[1874-1877 A.D.]
Successful as was the foreign policy of the government, it was counterbalanced by its unfortunate home policy. It will be forever a stain on its honour that on August 2nd, 1874, the minister Cantelli ordered the arrest and imprisonment of twenty-nine republicans who had assembled under the presidency of Aurelio Saffi in the Villa Ruffi to discuss the course to be adopted by their party with regard to questions interesting to the country and the line of conduct to be pursued in the event of a general election. However, the judicial authorities were perfectly just to the twenty-nine, and acquitting them all showed that if a police-ridden and licentious ministry was still possible in Italy, the era of partisan and corruptible magistracy was over. In 1874 the visits of the emperor of Austria to Venice and of the emperor of Germany to Milan helped to distract the attention of the country from the tumult which reigned in parliamentary parties and the revolution which they were preparing. The successor of Barbarossa came in October, 1874, to greet the king of Italy in the Lombardian metropolis and there to consecrate by his presence the elevation of the Italy which his predecessors had for so many centuries oppressed and martyrised. This splendid epilogue of the epic which had taken Italy from Novara to Rome was the fruit of the new civilisation which repeats by the will of the nation the judicial reason of its political existence; and this was primarily due to the miracle of a king in whom the glorious epic was personified.
But although the ministry had had its share in this marvellous event it had not succeeded in strengthening its existence, and already the members of the government, after having cradled themselves in rose-coloured hopes, on the eve of the reopening of parliament, in the autumn of 1875, felt the ground tremble beneath their feet. The opposition had become more audacious and more aggressive. It was the Right which had constituted the kingdom, after it had been set free by force of arms and made it really respected abroad and orderly and tranquil at home, as Minghetti said on the eve of giving up the government of it to the Left. Minghetti sent in his resignation which was accepted. The king intrusted to Depretis, the leader of the opposition, the task of forming a new cabinet. The Left, after having been the opposition for sixteen years, became the governing party.