It consisted of two parts. The first, containing thirteen articles, recognized (Articles 1 and 2) the person of the pontiff as sacred and intangible, and while providing for free discussion of religious questions, punished insults and outrages against the pope in the same way as insults and outrages against the king. Royal honours were attributed to the pope (Article 3), who was further guaranteed the same precedence as that accorded to him by other Catholic sovereigns, and the right to maintain his Noble and Swiss guards. Article 4 allotted the pontiff an annuity of 3,225,000 lire (£129,000) for the maintenance of the Sacred College, the sacred palaces, the congregations, the Vatican chancery and the diplomatic service. The sacred palaces, museums and libraries were, by Article 5, exempted from all taxation, and the pope was assured perpetual enjoyment of the Vatican and Lateran buildings and gardens, and of the papal villa at Castel Gandolfo. Articles 6 and 7 forbade access of any Italian official or agent to the above-mentioned palaces or to any eventual conclave or oecumenical council without special authorization from the pope, conclave or council. Article 8 prohibited the seizure or examination of any ecclesiastical papers, documents, books or registers of purely spiritual character. Article 9 guaranteed to the pope full freedom for the exercise of his spiritual ministry, and provided for the publication of pontifical announcements on the doors of the Roman churches and basilicas. Article 10 extended immunity to ecclesiastics employed by the Holy See, and bestowed upon foreign ecclesiastics in Rome the personal rights of Italian citizens. By Article 11, diplomatists accredited to the Holy See, and papal diplomatists while in Italy, were placed on the same footing as diplomatists accredited to the Quirinal. Article 12 provided for the transmission free of cost in Italy of all papal telegrams and correspondence both with bishops and foreign governments, and sanctioned the establishment, at the expense of the Italian state, of a papal telegraph office served by papal officials in communication with the Italian postal and telegraph system. Article 13 exempted all ecclesiastical seminaries, academies, colleges and schools for the education of priests in the city of Rome from all interference on the part of the Italian government.
This portion of the law, designed to reassure foreign Catholics, met with little opposition; but the second portion, regulating the relations between state and church in Italy, was sharply criticized by deputies who, like Sella, recognized the ideal of a “free church in a free state” to be an impracticable dream. The second division of the law abolished (Article 14) all restrictions upon the right of meeting of members of the clergy. By Article 15 the government relinquished its rights to apostolic legation in Sicily, and to the appointment of its own nominees to the chief benefices throughout the kingdom. Bishops were further dispensed from swearing fealty to the king, though, except in Rome and suburbs, the choice of bishops was limited to ecclesiastics of Italian nationality. Article 16 abolished the need for royal exequatur and placet for ecclesiastical publications, but subordinated the enjoyment of temporalities by bishops and priests to the concession of state exequatur and placet. Article 17 maintained the independence of the ecclesiastical jurisdiction in spiritual and disciplinary matters, but reserved for the state the exclusive right to carry out coercive measures.
On the 12th of July 1871, Articles 268, 269 and 270 of the Italian Penal Code were so modified as to make ecclesiastics liable to imprisonment for periods varying from six months to five years, and to fines from 1000 to 3000 lire, for spoken or written attacks against the laws of the state, or for the fomentation of disorder. An encyclical of Pius IX. to the bishops of the Catholic Church on the 15th of May 1871 repudiated the Law of Guarantees, and summoned Catholic princes to co-operate in restoring the temporal power. Practically, therefore, the law has remained a one-sided enactment, by which Italy considers herself bound, and of which she has always observed the spirit, even though the exigencies of self-defence may have led in some minor respects to non-observance of the letter. The annuity payable to the pope has, for instance, been made subject to quinquennial prescription, so that in the event of tardy recognition of the law the Vatican could at no time claim payment of more than five years’ annuity with interest.
For a few months after the occupation of Rome pressing questions incidental to a new change of capital and to the administration of a new domain distracted public attention from the real condition of Italian affairs. The rise of the Tiber and the flooding of Rome in December 1870 (tactfully used by Victor Emmanuel as an opportunity for a first visit to the new capital) illustrated the imperative necessity of reorganizing the drainage of the city and of constructing the Tiber embankment. In spite of pressure from the French government, which desired Italy to maintain Florence as the political and to regard Rome merely as the moral capital of the realm, the government offices and both legislative chambers were transferred in 1871 to the Eternal City. Early in the year the crown prince Humbert with the Princess Margherita took up their residence in the Quirinal Palace, which, in view of the Vatican refusal to deliver up the keys, had to be opened by force. Eight monasteries were expropriated to make room for the chief state departments, pending the construction of more suitable edifices. The growth of Clerical influence in France engendered a belief that Italy would soon have to defend with the sword her newly-won unity, while the tremendous lesson of the Franco-Prussian War convinced the military authorities of the need for thorough military reform. General Ricotti Magnani, minister of war, therefore framed an Army Reform Bill designed to bring the Italian army as nearly as possible up to the Prussian standard. Sella, minister of finance, notwithstanding the sorry plight of the Italian exchequer, readily granted the means for the reform. “We must arm,” he said, “since we have overturned the papal throne,” and he pointed to France as the quarter from which attack was most likely to come.
Though perhaps less desperate than during the previous decade, the condition of Italian finance was precarious indeed. With taxation screwed up to breaking point on personal and real estate, on all forms of commercial and industrial Finance. activity, and on salt, flour and other necessaries of life; with a deficit of £8,500,000 for the current year, and the prospect of a further aggregate deficit of £12,000,000 during the next quinquennium, Sella’s heroic struggle against national bankruptcy was still far from a successful termination. He chiefly had borne the brunt and won the laurels of the unprecedented fight against deficit in which Italy had been involved since 1862. As finance minister in the Rattazzi cabinet of that year he had been confronted with a public debt of nearly £120,000,000, and with an immediate deficit of nearly £18,000,000. In 1864, as minister in the La Marmora cabinet, he had again to face an excess of expenditure over income amounting to more than £14,600,000. By the seizure and sale of Church lands, by the sale of state railways, by “economy to the bone” and on one supreme occasion by an appeal to taxpayers to advance a year’s quota of the land-tax, he had met the most pressing engagements of that troublous period. The king was persuaded to forgo one-fifth of his civil list, ministers and the higher civil servants were required to relinquish a portion of their meagre salaries, but, in spite of all, Sella had found himself in 1865 compelled to propose the most hated of fiscal burdens—a grist tax on cereals. This tax (macinato) had long been known in Italy. Vexatious methods of assessment and collection had made it so unpopular that the Italian government in 1859-1860 had thought it expedient to abolish it throughout the realm. Sella hoped by the application of a mechanical meter both to obviate the odium attaching to former methods of collection and to avoid the maintenance of an army of inspectors and tax-gatherers, whose stipends had formerly eaten up most of the proceeds of the impost. Before proposing the reintroduction of the tax, Sella and his friend Ferrara improved and made exhaustive experiments with the meter. The result of their efforts was laid before parliament in one of the most monumental and most painstaking preambles ever prefixed to a bill. Sella, nevertheless, fell before the storm of opposition which his scheme aroused. Scialoja, who succeeded him, was obliged to adopt a similar proposal, but parliament again proved refractory. Ferrara, successor of Scialoja, met a like fate; but Count Cambray-Digny, finance minister in the Menabrea cabinet of 1868-1869, driven to find means to cover a deficit aggravated by the interest on the Venetian debt, succeeded, with Sella’s help, in forcing a Grist Tax Bill through parliament, though in a form of which Sella could not entirely approve. When, on the 1st of January 1869, the new tax came into force, nearly half the flour-mills in Italy ceased work. In many districts the government was obliged to open mills on its own account. Inspectors and tax-gatherers did their work under police protection, and in several parts of the country riots had to be suppressed manu militari. At first the net revenue from the impost was less than £1,100,000; but under Sella’s firm administration (1869-1873), and in consequence of improvements gradually introduced by him, the net return ultimately exceeded £3,200,000. The parliamentary opposition to the impost, which the Left denounced as “the tax on hunger,” was largely factitious. Few, except the open partisans of national bankruptcy, doubted its necessity; yet so strong was the current of feeling worked up for party purposes by opponents of the measure, that Sella’s achievement in having by its means saved the financial situation of Italy deserves to rank among the most noteworthy performances of modern parliamentary statesmanship.
Under the stress of the appalling financial conditions represented by chronic deficit, crushing taxation, the heavy expenditure necessary for the consolidation of the kingdom, the reform of the army and the interest on the pontifical debt, Sella, on the 11th of December 1871, exposed to parliament the financial situation in all its nakedness. He recognized that considerable improvement had already taken place. Revenue from taxation had risen in a decade from £7,000,000 to £20,200,000; profit on state monopolies had increased from £7,000,000 to £9,400,000; exports had grown to exceed imports; income from the working of telegraphs had tripled itself; railways had been extended from 2200 to 6200 kilometres, and the annual travelling public had augmented from 15,000,000 to 25,000,000 persons. The serious feature of the situation lay less in the income than in the “intangible” expenditure, namely, the vast sums required for interest on the various forms of public debt and for pensions. Within ten years this category of outlay had increased from £8,000,000 to £28,800,000. During the same period the assumption of the Venetian and Roman debts, losses on the issue of loans and the accumulation of annual deficits, had caused public indebtedness to rise from £92,000,000 to £328,000,000, no less than £100,000,000 of the latter sum having been sacrificed in premiums and commissions to bankers and underwriters of loans. By economies and new taxes Sella had reduced the deficit to less than £2,000,000 in 1871, but for 1872 he found himself confronted with a total expenditure of £8,000,000 in excess of revenue. He therefore proposed to make over the treasury service to the state banks, to increase the forced currency, to raise the stamp and registration duties and to impose a new tax on textile fabrics. An optional conversion of sundry internal loans into consolidated stock at a lower rate of interest was calculated to effect considerable saving. The battle over these proposals was long and fierce. But for the tactics of Rattazzi, leader of the Left, who, by basing his opposition on party considerations, impeded the secession of Minghetti and a part of the Right from the ministerial majority, Sella would have been defeated. On the 23rd of March 1872, however, he succeeded in carrying his programme, which not only provided for the pressing needs of the moment, but laid the foundation of the much-needed equilibrium between expenditure and revenue.
In the spring of 1873 it became evident that the days of the Lanza-Sella cabinet were numbered. Fear of the advent of a Radical administration under Rattazzi alone prevented the Minghettian Right from revolting against the government. The Left, conscious of its strength, impatiently awaited the moment of accession to power. Sella, the real head of the Lanza cabinet, was worn out by four years’ continuous work and disheartened by the perfidious misrepresentation in which Italian politicians, particularly those of the Left, have ever excelled. By sheer force of will he compelled the Chamber early in 1873 to adopt some minor financial reforms, but on the 29th of April found himself in a minority on the question of a credit for a proposed state arsenal at Taranto. Pressure from all sides of the House, however, induced the ministry to retain office until after the debate on the application to Rome and the Papal States of the Religious Orders Bill (originally passed in 1866)—a measure which, with the help of Ricasoli, was carried at the end of May. While leaving intact the general houses of the various confraternities Religious Orders Bill. (except that of the Jesuits), the bill abolished the corporate personality of religious orders, handed over their schools and hospitals to civil administrators, placed their churches at the disposal of the secular clergy, and provided pensions for nuns and monks, those who had families being sent to reside with their relatives, and those who by reason of age or bereavement had no home but their monasteries being allowed to end their days in religious houses specially set apart for the purpose. The proceeds of the sale of the suppressed convents and monasteries were partly converted into pensions for monks and nuns, and partly allotted to the municipal charity boards which had undertaken the educational and charitable functions formerly exercised by the religious orders. To the pope was made over £16,000 per annum as a contribution to the expense of maintaining in Rome representatives of foreign orders; the Sacred College, however, rejected this endowment, and summoned all the suppressed confraternities to reconstitute themselves under the ordinary Italian law of association. A few days after the passage of the Religious Orders Bill, the death of Rattazzi (5th June 1873) removed all probability of the immediate advent of the Left. Sella, uncertain of the loyalty of the Right, challenged a vote on the immediate discussion of further financial reforms, and on the 23rd of June was overthrown by a coalition of the Left under Depretis with a part of the Right under Minghetti and the Tuscan Centre under Correnti. The administration which thus fell was unquestionably the most important since the death of Cavour. It had completed national unity, transferred the capital to Rome, overcome the chief obstacles to financial equilibrium, initiated military reform and laid the foundation of the relations between state and church.
The succeeding Minghetti-Visconti-Venosta cabinet—which held office from the 10th of July 1873 to the 18th of March 1876—continued in essential points the work of the preceding administration. Minghetti’s finance, though less clear-sighted Minghetti. and less resolute than that of Sella, was on the whole prudent and beneficial. With the aid of Sella he concluded conventions for the redemption of the chief Italian railways from their French and Austrian proprietors. By dint of expedients he gradually overcame the chronic deficit, and, owing to the normal increase of revenue, ended his term of office with the announcement of a surplus of some £720,000. The question whether this surplus was real or only apparent has been much debated, but there is no reason to doubt its substantial reality. It left out of account a sum of £1,000,000 for railway construction which was covered by credit, but, on the other hand, took no note of £360,000 expended in the redemption of debt. Practically, therefore, the Right, of which the Minghetti cabinet was the last representative administration, left Italian finance with a surplus of £80,000. Outside the all-important domain of finance, the attention of Minghetti and his colleagues was principally absorbed by strife between church and state, army reform and railway redemption. For some time after the occupation of Rome the pope, in order to substantiate the pretence that his spiritual freedom had been diminished, avoided the creation of cardinals and the nomination of bishops. On the 22nd of December 1873, however, he unexpectedly created twelve cardinals, and subsequently proceeded to nominate a number of bishops. Visconti-Venosta, who had retained the portfolio for foreign affairs in the Minghetti cabinet, at once drew the attention of the European powers to this proof of the pope’s spiritual freedom and of the imaginary nature of his “imprisonment” in the Vatican. At the same time he assured them that absolute liberty would be guaranteed to the deliberations of a conclave. In relation to the Church in Italy, Minghetti’s policy was less perspicacious. He let it be understood that the announcement of the appointment of bishops and the request for the royal exequatur might be made to the government impersonally by the congregation of bishops and regulars, by a municipal council or by any other corporate body—a concession of which the bishops were quick to take advantage, but which so irritated Italian political opinion that, in July 1875, the government was compelled to withdraw the temporalities of ecclesiastics who had neglected to apply for the exequatur, and to evict sundry bishops who had taken possession of their palaces without authorization from the state. Parliamentary pressure further obliged Bonghi, minister of public instruction, to compel clerical seminaries either to forgo the instruction of lay pupils or to conform to the laws of the state in regard to inspection and examination, an ordinance which gave rise to conflicts between ecclesiastical and lay authorities, and led to the forcible dissolution of the Mantua seminary and to the suppression of the Catholic university in Rome.
More noteworthy than its management of internal affairs were the efforts of the Minghetti cabinet to strengthen and consolidate national defence. Appalled by the weakness, or rather the non-existence, of the navy, Admiral Military and naval reform. Saint-Bon, with his coadjutor Signor Brin, addressed himself earnestly to the task of recreating the fleet, which had never recovered from the effects of the disaster of Lissa. During his three years of office he laid the foundation upon which Brin was afterwards to build up a new Italian navy. Simultaneously General Ricotti Magnani matured the army reform scheme which he had elaborated under the preceding administration. His bill, adopted by parliament on the 7th of June 1875, still forms the ground plan of the Italian army.
It was fortunate for Italy that during the whole period 1860-1876 the direction of her foreign policy remained in the experienced hands of Visconti-Venosta, a statesman whose trustworthiness, dignity and moderation even political Foreign policy under the Right. opponents have been compelled to recognize. Diplomatic records fail to substantiate the accusations of lack of initiative and instability of political criterion currently brought against him by contemporaries. As foreign minister of a young state which had attained unity in defiance of the most formidable religious organization in the world and in opposition to the traditional policy of France, it could but be Visconti-Venosta’s aim to uphold the dignity of his country while convincing European diplomacy that United Italy was an element of order and progress, and that the spiritual independence of the Roman pontiff had suffered no diminution. Prudence, moreover, counselled avoidance of all action likely to serve the predominant anti-Italian party in France as a pretext for violent intervention in favour of the pope. On the occasion of the Metrical Congress, which met in Paris in 1872, he, however, successfully protested against the recognition of the Vatican delegate, Father Secchi, as a representative of a “state,” and obtained from Count de Rémusat, French foreign minister, a formal declaration that the presence of Father Secchi on that occasion could not constitute a diplomatic precedent. The irritation displayed by Bismarck at the Francophil attitude of Italy towards the end of the Franco-German War gave place to a certain show of goodwill when the great chancellor found himself in his turn involved in a struggle against the Vatican and when the policy of Thiers began to strain Franco-Italian relations. Thiers had consistently opposed the emperor Napoleon’s pro-Italian policy. In the case of Italy, as in that of Germany, he frankly regretted the constitution of powerful homogeneous states upon the borders of France. Personal pique accentuated this feeling in regard to Italy. The refusal of Victor Emmanuel II. to meet Thiers at the opening of the Mont Cenis tunnel (a refusal not unconnected with offensive language employed at Florence in October 1870 by Thiers during his European tour, and with his instructions to the French minister to remain absent from Victor Emmanuel’s official entry into Rome) had wounded the amour propre of the French statesman, and had decreased whatever inclination he might otherwise have felt to oppose the French Clerical agitation for the restoration of the temporal power, and for French interference with the Italian Religious Orders Bill. Consequently relations between France and Italy became so strained that in 1873 both the French minister to the Quirinal and the Italian minister to the Republic remained for several months absent from their posts. At this juncture the emperor of Austria invited Victor Emmanuel to visit the Vienna Exhibition, and the Italian government received a confidential intimation that acceptance of the invitation to Vienna would be followed by a further invitation from Berlin. Perceiving the advantage of a visit to the imperial and apostolic court after the Italian occupation of Rome and the suppression of the religious orders, and convinced of the value of more cordial intercourse with the German empire, Visconti-Venosta and Minghetti advised their sovereign to accept both the Austrian and the subsequent German invitations. The visit to Vienna took place on the 17th to the 22nd of September, and that to Berlin on the 22nd to the 26th of September 1873, the Italian monarch being accorded in both capitals a most cordial reception, although the contemporaneous publication of La Marmora’s famous pamphlet, More Light on the Events of 1866, prevented intercourse between the Italian ministers and Bismarck from being entirely confidential. Visconti-Venosta and Minghetti, moreover, wisely resisted the chancellor’s pressure to override the Law of Guarantees and to engage in an Italian Kulturkampf. Nevertheless the royal journey contributed notably to the establishment of cordial relations between Italy and the central powers, relations which were further strengthened by the visit of the emperor Francis Joseph to Victor Emmanuel at Venice in April 1875, and by that of the German emperor to Milan in October of the same year. Meanwhile Thiers had given place to Marshal Macmahon, who effected a decided improvement in Franco-Italian relations by recalling from Civitavecchia the cruiser “Orénoque,” which since 1870 had been stationed in that port at the disposal of the pope in case he should desire to quit Rome. The foreign policy of Visconti-Venosta may be said to have reinforced the international position of Italy without sacrifice of dignity, and without the vacillation and short-sightedness which was to characterize the ensuing administrations of the Left.