iiiliiiiiii ; ait* :); IV, 3 1924 028 277 683 Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924028277683 ITALY TO-DAY A History of Italian Unity 1814-1871 By BOLTON KING, M.A. In Two Vols., Demy 8vo, with Maps and Plans, 24s. net "There is a breadth of view, a political grasp, a remarkably quick and shrewd judgment running all through these volumes. . . . We must pronounce this work of Mr. Bolton King to be the history of the Italian movement. . . . faithful, sound and just." — Spectator, ' ' The study of this careful, learned, and moderate treatise is strenuously recommended ; it is the only adequate political history during the present century in the English, or perhaps in any language." — Speaker. " Undoubtedly the best history of the birth of modern Italy that has yet been written ; it is a book which will not soon be superseded. ' ' — Manchester Guardian. ' ' Immense industry, a good literary style, and a vivid appre- ciation of two or three of the most eminent actors in the move- ment have enabled Mr. Bolton King to produce the best and completest history thus far of Italian unity." — Westminster Gazette. ' ' Mr. Bolton King's history should take an honoured place in every public and private library in Italy. It has appeared very opportunely to fill a gap, which every one was beginning to deplore, the absence of a really accurate and non-partisan history of our risorgimento. . , . Every educated Italian ought to read it from beginning to end." — E. Giretti in Vita Internazionale. " This important work, which is an accurate history, based on original documents, of political events in Italy." — JVuova Antologia. ' ' Mr. Bolton King is perfectly fair in questions of passion and party that might distort the truth. . . . Every page displays the criticism he has brought to bear in the choice of documents and his conscientious search for truth." — YvES GUYOT in Intro- duction to the French translation. ' ' One can say that the objective history of Italian Unity has been written at last, for the first time. . . . Mr. Bolton King has been 'juste en tout et partout.' " — A. -Henri Becker in the Siicie. " Any one who wishes to understand the Italian history of the past century will find Mr. Bolton King's book a most valuable help." — " Jacques Helv^te." LONDON : JAMES NISBET & CO., LIMITED 21 BERNERS STREET Italy To-day BY BOLTON KING & THOMAS OKEY ' ' open my heart and you will see Graved inside of it, ' Italy. ' Stick lovers old are I and she ; So it always was, so shall ever he!" fLonfton JAMES NISBET ^ CO., LIMITED 21 BERNERS STREET igoi Printed by BallanTyne, Hanson ts" Co. At the Ballantyne Press PREFACE We have attempted in this volume to give an accurate and fair account of political and social questions in Italy at the present day. It would be presumptuous for foreigners to describe the inner life and thought of another country, and this we have not tried to do. We have limited ourselves to the outward manifestations of that life, as they shape themselves in politics, in social movements, in literature. Here the foreigner starts with the advantage that he is, at all events, compara- tively free from bias. We have approached the various problems without prepossessions, and we have done our best to understand and describe the point of view of each party. We have gone for our information to the men and literature of all sections — to Liberals and Catholics, to Socialists and Conservatives, to the leaders and the rank-and-file. It has been a pleasant task, not only because of the unfailing courtesy and lavish kind- ness of those whose help we sought, but because each further investigation has strengthened a faith in the future of Italy. These pages will prove, we hope, to the English reader, first, that the divisions in Italian life are neither as deep nor as permanent as they are vi PREFACE often thought to be ; next, that underneath the slough of misgovernment and corruption and political apathy there is a rejuvenated nation, instinct with the qualities that make a great people. "We would be the first to recognize that some of the subjects dealt with have received inadequate treatment; and we regret that the exigencies of space have pre- vented us from using much valuable material that has been supplied to us, and have compelled us to leave several important matters entirely untouched. But we believed it to be better to give a general view of Italian life within a readable compass, rather than overburden the book with details, which would only interest the specialist. It is impossible for us to thank sufficiently the many friends in Italy and England, without whose help this volume could not have been written. Among others who have assisted us we would wish to express our especial gratitude to Signor Adolfo Albertazzi, Baron Filippo Baeile di Castiglione, Monsignor Bacile, Mr. Alberto Ball, Count Ugo Balzani, Lieut. -Col. Enrico Barone, On. Leonida Bissolati, Comm. Luigi Bodio (late Chief of the Italian Statistical Office), Signor Mario Borsa, Signor Augusto Bosco, Padre S. M. Brandi, S.J. (editor of the Civiltd, Cattolica), Signor Ottone Brentari (editor of the Corriere della Sera), Don Brizio, Dr. Kenworthy Brown, Cav. Guerritore Enrico Broya, Prof. Alessandro Chiappelli, Signor Gustavo Chiesi, PREFACE vii Signor Salvatore Cortesi, Marquis Filippo Crispolti, Signer Dandolo (of the Padua Savings Bank), 'Signor Del Vo (of the Padua People's Bank), Marquis de Viti de Marco, Prof Luigi Einaudi, Cav. Eiccardo Ferrario (of the Milan People's Bank), Signor Guglielmo Ferrero, On. Giustino Fortunato, On. Antonio Frade- letto, Prof. Fr. Garlanda, Signor E. Giretti, Mr. T. C. Hay liar, Mr. Henry Higgs, Mme. Kuliscioff, Prof. Antonio Labriola, Mr. C. C. Lacaita and the fattore of his estate at Leucaspide, Prof. Cesare Lombroso, Signor Antonio Maffi (editor of La Cooperazione italiana), Count Maggiolini, Major Maggiolini, Dr. Olindo Malagodi, Donna G. Martini, Signor Filippo Meda, Monsignor Merry Del Val, Signor Giuseppe Micheli, Prof Gaetano Mosca, Mr. A. J. Mundella, Don E. Murri, Prof. Francesco Nitti, Marquis Fr. Nobili-Vitelleschi, Prof. Pietro Orsi, Count G. B. Paganuzzi (president of the Catholic Congress), Count Francesco Papafava, Countess Maria Pasolini, Signor Carlo Plaeci, Signor G. Quagliato (secretary of the SocietcL Braccianti of Cavarzere), Prof. Nicolb Eezzara, Signor Carlo Eomussi (editor of the Secolo), Mrs. Janet Eoss, Signor Adolfo Eossi (editor of the XIX. Secolo), M, Paul Sabatier, Signor Gaetano Salvemini, Padre Semeria, Signor Giancarlo Siemoni (Director- General of the Ministry of Agriculture), Miss E. M. W. Smith, Signor Amilcare Spadoni (manager of the Terni steelworks), Mr. Wickham Steed, Signor Jacopo viii PREFACE Tivaroni, Signer Matteo Troehet, On. Filippo Turati (editor of the Critica Sociale), Signor Paolo Valera, Prof. Pasquale Villari, Signor Eduardo Vivanti, Mr. H. W. Wolff; and the officials of the Savings Banks of Bologna, Milan, Padua, Parma, the People's Banks of Bergamo, Bologna, Cremona, Milan, Padua, the Lega Nazionale delle cooperative italiane, the Societa operaia maschile of Bologna, and the Banca coopera- tiva per gli operai of Bologna. BOLTON KING. THOMAS OKEY. February 1901. CONTENTS CHAPTER I POLITICS AND POLITICIANS History, 1871-87, i ; Crispi, 3 ; 1891-96, 5. The Eight, 6. The Constitu- tional Left, II. The Franchise, 13; influence and corruption, 15. The Chamber of Deputies, 19. The Senate, 26. The Monarchy, 26. CHAPTER II THE CATHOLICS A. Catholic Politics.— Strength of the Catholics, 29. The Catholic revival, 31. Leo XIII., 33. The Temporal Power, 37. The Lavirof Guarantees, 40. Chances of compromise, 43. The Papacy and France, 44. The non expedit, 46. Grovrth of conciliatory feeling, 49. Catholic-Moderate alliance, 52. B. The Social Woek op the Catholics.— Catholic Socialism, 54. The Congresses, 56. The Christian Democrats, 58. CHAPTER III THE SOCIALISTS History of Italian Socialism, 61. The Marxite School, 62. Attitude towards ( i)the peasants and cooperation, 64 ; (2) other Democratic parties, 66. The "minimum programme," 67. Socialist strength in (i) the middle classes, 69 ; (2) the artisans and peasants, 71. The Republicans, 74. TheEadicals, 75. The Extreme Left, 76. The Anarchists, 80. CHAPTER IV THE FATTI DI MAGGIO AND THEIR SEQUEL Discontent, 81. Sicilian riots of 1893-94, 83. Coercion under Crispi, 85 ; and Di Eudini, 87. The food riots of 1898, 89. The Fatti di maggio, 90. Coer- cion under Pelloux, 96. The decreto-legge, 101. The Extreme Left obstruct, 103. The elections of 1900, 106. The Saracco Ministry, 106. The Zanardelli Ministry, 109. X CONTENTS CHAPTER V NORTH AND SOUTH Southern Italy, in. Antagonism between North and South, 113. Results of Unity in the South, 114. Federalism, 115. The Oamorra, 117. The Mafia, 119. CHAPTER VI THE POVERTY OF ITALY Statistics of poverty, 124. Salaries and wages, 125. Food, 128. Pressure of taxation, 137. Richer or poorer ? 141. CHAPTER VII MANUFACTURES AND TRADE Growth of trade, 143. Chief industries, 144. Industrial capital, 147. Skill of artisans, 148. Electrical power, 148. Prospects of industry , 1 50. Pro- tection and industry, 152. CHAPTER VIII THE PEASANTS Agriculture, 156. Wheat, 158. Wine, 159. Olives, 161. Lemons and oranges, 162. Dairy and poultry produce, 163. The peasants, 164. Peasant-pro- prietors, 166. Mezzaiuoli, 168. Leaseholders, 171. Improvement tenancies, 173. Farming under bailiffs, 174. The agricultural labourer, 175. CHAPTER IX THE AGRICULTURAL REVIVAL The awakening of the peasants, 177. Remedies against malaria, 178 ; drought, 180; hail, i8o. Land-law reform, 181. The State and Agriculture, 182. Village Banks, 183. Agricultural Syndicates, 184. Cooperative dairies, 186. Travelling schools, 188. Cooperation at Ber- gamo 189 ; Parma, 189 ; elsewhere, 190. CONTENTS xi CHAPTER X COOPERA TION Cooperation in Italy, 193. Its present strength, 196. Savings Banks and People's Banks, 198. Post-OfBce Savings Bank, 204. Distributive Co- operation, 204. Productive Cooperation, 206. Cooperative Labour Societies, 207. Friendly Societies, 210. Trade Unions, 212. Chambers of Labour, 213. CHAPTER XI POOR LAW AND CHARITY Social legislation, 215. Insurance against Accidents, 216. Old Age Pensions, 217. Absence of Poor Law, 220. Charities, 221. Charities Lav?, 222. Private charity, 225. Free meals for school-children, 227. Local Charities, 229. Need of a Poor Lavy, 230. Monti di PietA, 231. CHAPTER XII JSDUCATIOAr Elementary education, 233. The communes and the schools, 240. Voluntary schools, 244. Secondary education, 244. Universities, 247. The edu- cated unemployed, 249. CHAPTER XIII CHURCH AND STATE The " Free Church in a Free State," 251. The Law of Guarantees, 252. Re- ligions education, 255. Civil marriage, 257. Church property, 258. Church and State, 261. CHAPTER XIV LOCAL GOVERNMENT Local life, 263. Local Government Law, 265. Government and the com- munes, 268. Local finance, 270. Abuses, 273. Municipalization of services, 275. CHAPTER XV FINANCE The National Debt, 277. Railways and the State, 278. Public Works, 280. Need of Economy, 281. Economies on the Army Budget, 283 ; and the Debt, 285. xii CONTENTS ' CHAPTER XVI FOREIGN AND COLONIAL POLICY Italy and France, 288. Tunis, 289. The Triple Alliance, 290 ; in 1887, 293 ; in 1891, 294. Prospects of its renewal, 295. Its effects, 297. Italy and England, 299. Brythrasa, 303. Italy in China, 309. CHAPTER XVII GREATER ITALY Emigration, 311. Its effects in Italy, 312. Emigration to the United States, 314 ; to South America, 314. Greater Italy, 317. The Government and emigration, 319. CHAPTER XVIII LITERATURE Literature in Italy, 322. Giosue Carduoci, 323. Olindo Guerrini, 328. Gabriele D'Annunzio, 330. Antonio Pogazzaro, 334. Giovanni Verga, 338. Emilio De Marchi, 341. Bdmondo De Amicis, 342. Giovanni Pasooli, 344. Matilde Serao, 347. Ada Negri, 349. Conclusion, 351. Appendix — List of principal books, 353. Index, 359. ITALY TO-DAY CHAPTER I POLITICS AND POLITICIANS History, 1871-1887 ; Crispi ; 1891-1896. The Eight. The Constitutional Left The Franchise ; influence and corruption. The Chamber of Deputies. The Senate. The Monarchy. One of the first facts that meets the observer of Italian life is the chaos and decay of the old political parties. They have lost faith in their principles, faith in their country, faith in themselves. Their policies seem little better than a selfish struggle for office, a blind resist- ance to forces that they cannot understand and cannot assimilate, and therefore fear. It was very difierent a generation ago. Nothing marks more pain- fully the blight that has fallen on Italian politics than the gulf between the Eight and Left of to-day and the politicians who governed new-made Italy. In the sixties and early seventies the Right were a great party. Conservatives by association, they had learnt from Cavour to be Liberals. They had a great statesman in Ricasoli ; leaders high in the second rank in Lanza and La Marmora and Sella. They had settled Italy ; they gave it a very large measure of free-trade, its railway policy, its new codes, its local government. 2 ITALY TO-DAY They made a bold attempt to fix the relations between Church and State. They struggled valiantly to re- store Italian finance, and Minghetti's budget of 1876 at last brought revenue and expenditure to a level. When Unity was once completed, they kept the country free from foreign entanglements or heavy military ex- penditure. They disliked any further extension of political freedom, but, with very few backslidings, they did not try or wish to curtail the statutory liberties of the country. But they were so intent on balancing the finances that they forgot social reform, and the taxes, which their policy compelled them to impose, weighed very heavily. In 1876 they were defeated, and the Left for the first time came into office. Nominally, it was more Liberal than the Right, but it had inherent weak- nesses, which robbed its Liberalism of reality. The small interval that parted its policy from that of the Eight had made it from the first a partisan opposition, that thought more of office than reform. It drew its strength from the South, and the South was the home of all that was unhealthy in political life. Most of its leaders, though patriots in a way, had small scruples as to methods, and were very ready to. exploit the rich opportunities of corruption that both South and North ofi'ered them, and live by the little arts of Parliamentary intrigue. For the most part, their big programmes of social and financial and administrative reform melted away in ofiice. The more Radical section, led by Cairoli and Zanardelli, was gradually cast adrift, and the mass of the Left HISTORY, 1 871-1887 3 appropriated the policy of the Right — itself fast de- generating — and leant on it for support. From the end of 1876 power passed for nearly eleven years, with two short intervals, into the hands of Depretis, a petty, irresolute, sceptical man, with a profound knowledge of human vice and frailty, that took the place of principle or truth in his system of government. With Minghetti's unhappy assistance, Depretis made a coali- tion with a section of the Right, and created a party without a programme, that lived from hand to mouth on Parliamentary manoeuvres, and nursed a shameless corruption, which ate out all that was wholesome in Italian politics. The Civil Service became a machine to secure a ministerial majority. Constituencies were bought with local railways and public works, with every direct or indirect form of bribery. In Parliament the Government "exploited chance," bribing members, buying the support of this or that shifting group, veer- ing sometimes to right, sometimes to left, with little other aim but to keep in office. Depretis, it is true, widened the franchise and abolished some of the more odious taxes. But it is to this period that Italy still mainly owes the worst features of her later politics, — the electoral corruption, the degradation of the Civil Service, the mad Colonial policy, the Triple Alliance, the protective tariff, the worst of the Bank scandals. Depretis died in the summer of 1887, and was succeeded by Crispi, whom he had bought from oppo- sition by a seat in the Cabinet four months before. Crispi was a much abler man than Depretis. He had, at all events, grandiose policies, a considerable 6 ITALY TO-DAY deserts that the Bank scandals came to light under his administration. Then came the troubles in Sicily and the Lunigiana,^ and Giolitti's incapacity to cope with them raised a call for Crispi. He seemed the one strong man who could restore order, and the governing classes, scared by the risings, little cared at what cost it were done. Crispi, obsessed by the phantasm of a separatist plot in Sicily, lost his head and struck wildly and blindly. It was perhaps to divert attention from home aflfairs, that he pushed on his forward policy in Erythrsea, and attacked Abys- sinia. But a great disaster saved Italy from worse things, and when the news of the defeat of Adowa came in March 1896, the common-sense of the country drove once and for all from ofl&ce the man whose wild, unscrupulous ambitions had brought the great humilia- tion on its head. Adowa opened a new chapter in Italian politics. It has sobered Italy and made her feel how she was courting ruin by her adventures abroad and her refusal to reform at home. Coming on the heels of the Bank scandals, it has produced a sense of shame and humilia- tion and national self-consciousness, which is sometimes exaggerated, but which is, at all events, the first step towards progress. It has wrecked the credit of the old and decaying elements in Italian politics, and given a stimulus to new and healthier forces. But, if the country has gained, the older parties have only sunk the faster. The Right is now, with a few exceptions, a party of pure reaction. The older ' See below, pp. 83-86. THE RIGHT 7 men with their higher ideals and more liberal prin- ciples have died or drifted away in disgust, and the Right is composed of men whose interests or fears have made them hate and dread the whole democratic and social movement. There is (or at all events there was a year ago) the Court party, quite out of touch with the country, clmging desperately to its military policy, too timid to take in hand and guide, as it might do, the new popular forces. There are the n oble families and bureaucrats, who were Bour- boniste and Grandducalists, tUl they saw that the House of Savoy had come to stay and transferred themselves and their evil traditions to it. There are the local factions of the South, who now sell their support to the Right, as they used to sell it to the Left, on the understanding that the Government allows them rein to exploit the local councils and play the petty tyrant in their own towns. There are the great capitalist s, especially of Milan and Genoa, who want a protectionist and anti-labour Govern- ment, and behind them stands the mass "f tlilfi n'^ihp.r classes, who dread Socialism above all else. And so fEe^pblicy of the party is a purely negative one, — to oppose Socialism in all its forms and whittle down the rights of Parliament, or, as perhaps they would prefer to put it, to defend property and strengthen authority. They would use the State not only to protect them from labour legislation, but to put money in the pockets of the rich. They are strong Protectionists, and when negotiations were proceeding in 1898 for the new commercial treaty with France, 8 ITALY TO-DAY they had to be conducted in secrecy for fear that a capitalist agitation might wreck them. They main- tain a corn duty in the interest of the big landlords, who, it is estimated, have gained ;^6o,ooo,ooo from it ; they prefer to tax food rather than increase the rates, and last year they unsuccessfully attempted to make the wages of the better-paid workman legally subject to income-tax.^ They would gladly make all combinations of workmen illegal, and the notorious decreto-legge of 1 899 ^ was probably intended to be used as a weapon against trade-unions and coopera- tive societies. So great is their dread of all the newer developments of social thought, that one of their papers has asked that all university professors with unorthodox economic views should be dismissed, that the Moderate Municipal Council of Turin recently refused the use of a room for popular lectures on political economy, that even teachers of the arts are suspect if they hold advanced aesthetic views. Men with these prejudices naturally distrust popular government. Especially since the disorders of 1898, there has been a strong feeling abroad among the richer classes that authority needs strengthening to protect themselves from revolution. They eat and sleep in dread of Socialist or Clericalist plots, and scent imaginary dangers to the Crown. And to pro- tect the throne and society and their own pockets, they have two specifics. One is to increase the power of the Crown by removing the executive from Parliamentary control. No doubt the disbelief in ' See below, p. 139. 2 gee below, p. 103. THE RIGHT 9 Parliament, a feeling that every Parliamentary Cabinet has blundered, a wish to purify Government by free- ing it from dependence on the greedy factions in the Chamber, have helped to create the demand that the Crown should choose its Ministers. But the cry comes in the main from men who want to strengthen the executive as a defence against progressive forces ; and since the new king has dissociated himself from a reactionary policy, their zeal for the throne has cooled. Their other specific is " a preventive system of repression," by law, if Parliament will do their bidding ; by royal decree, if it will not. This was the spirit that called in 1898 for a coup d'etat, for permanent martial law and the suppression of Socialist and Clericalist societies, and which afterwards took shape in the decreto-legge. It is almost certain that if General Pelloux had remained in office last year, he would have brought in a Bill to narrow the franchise ; and ever since^his fall his party have been crying for it. A policy, which wishes to revoke liberties, some of which have had at least a tacit recognition for forty years, is sufficient proof of the utter lack of capa- city that marks all the recent action of the Eight. They have no glimmer of statesmanship, no wisdom, no dignity. They have totally misconceived the spirit of the country, its determination to have social and finan- cial reform. " The people have public works to give employment, what more do the Socialists want ? " they ask. They will have nothing to do with even the mildest reforms, if they figure on the Socialist pro- gramme, and thus they let the Socialists have the lo ITALY TO-DAY credit of advocating changes that a wise Conservatism would hasten to take for its own. They put off the amnesty in 1898, till its concession had lost all grace, rather than seem to yield to popular pressure. They rely on their wealth and the electoral power it gives them, on the support of the Court (at all events, in the late reign), above all, on the army ; and if they had a strong leader, they would drive Italy to revolution. But they have no capable man. The Marquis Vis- conti-Venosta is old, and absorbed in foreign politics. General Pelloux has been described as a glorified peasant, and his ministry was one long series of in- consistencies and blunders. The ablest man among them is Baron Sidney Sonnino, one of the few leading statesmen among the constitutional parties with clean hands, a rigid financier, fearless and disinterested, but narrow, timid in his policy, quite ignorant of the strength of the new movement, which he would like to stamp out with a heavy heel. It was his influence that controlled and held together Pelloux' majority, that more than anything else drove the late Premier to the follies of the decreto-legge and the struggle with the Extreme Left. There is still a saner section of the Right, which has not forgotten the Cavourian tradition, which, though it regrets the extension of the franchise, would not attempt to narrow it, and would like to see a reform of taxation, the abolition of the duties on corn, economies in the army, and legislation in the interests of the poor. Their best exponent is Professor Villari, the historian, who says that there is little in the " mini- THE CONSTITUTIONAL LEFT ii mum programme" of the Socialists that any sensible man would not accept. But they have small influence, and are feebly represented in the Chamber by the little group that follows Di Eudini. Di Eudini is a wealthy Sicilian noble, who has been in politics since 1866, personally honest, one of the very few leading men who came unscathed out of the Bank scandals, in theory a Liberal and an enemy of corruption, but irresolute and weak, partly because he does not take the trouble to master details and commits himself to courses that he is afterwards obliged to give up, partly because he has no vigour to drive through opposition. When in ofiice, he sinned against light, and his condescendence to the baser arts of Government did more to shake confidence in public honesty than all the effrontery of men of lower ideals. Last year, his group sided with the Left in opposing Pelloux' reactionary measures. The " Constitutional Left," long divided into the Giolitti and Zanardelli groups, are now a fairly homo- geneous party, keeping pretty steadily some 1 20 votes in the Chamber. Up to 1898 there was little to dif- ferentiate their policy from that of the Eight ; they had the same foreign programme, the same practical indifi'erence to social reform, the same use of corrup- tion. And though many of them were always Liberals at heart, they never had the courage or consistency to carry out their policy in office. The most smirched of Italian Premiers — Depretis, Crispi, Giolitti — all came from their ranks. Giolitti's relations to the Bank scandals ought to have driven him from public life. Though he is personally disinterested, he has been an 12 ITALY TO-DAY adept in political corruption, and even among Italian statesmen he bears no high name for scrupulousness. But he is a clever Parliamentarian, and has a certain bottom of democratic sympathy. There is no longer the same temptation to corrupt that there was in the days of his earlier ministry. At all events, he recog- nizes that only a policy of popular finance and social legislation can succeed in Italy to-day, and, as their most prominent champion, he will probably play a big part in the next few years. Zanardelli, whose following is mainly in the South, is one of the cleanest of Italian politicians and a consistent Liberal, but he is old and exhausted. Individually, the party is a strong one. Men like Signors Fortunato and Guicciardini, Alessio and Ferraris, are capable and high-principled men of true Liberal stuff. But though the party has recently been braced up by its defence of constitutional liberty, the majority are painfully anxious to dissociate themselves from the democratic successes at the last elections. Taking it in the lump, it is a timid, pessimistic group, which whines that, between revolution on the one side and reaction on the other, the country is doomed, and is inclined to despair of itself and Parliament and State. Its mis- trust of itself is largely justified. The Eight has still elements of strength in its wealth, its power over a corrupt electorate, its insistence on authority, perhaps in its hold on the army. But however useful may be the function of the Left at the present moment,^ there is probably no permanent room for it ; it is fated ' See below, pp. 108-110. THE FRANCHISE 13 ultimately to drift to the Extreme Left or disappear. Italian politics are changing radically and swiftly. The struggle of the future will be between the lower- middle and working classes — the men with less than ;^200 a year — on the one hand, and the richer classes on the other. Hardier parties are springing up, with definite policies and the resolution to carry them through. Two great coalitions — the alliance of Socialists, Eepub- licans, Radicals, and advanced Liberals, — and the party of authority — the capitalists, the army, the bulk of the Clericalists — will contest the future of Italy. The present electoral law dates from 1882. Up to its passing the Italian franchise was in the main that of Charles Albert's Statute, and was limited to literates, who paid £1. 12 s. od. in direct taxation, and to trades- men and manufacturers possessing property of a certain value. The law of 1882 preserved the disqualification of illiteracy, but, subject to this, extended the vote to all who paid 15s. lod. in direct taxes, to farmers pay- ing a rent of ^20, and to householders paying a rent graduating from /^6 in villages to ^ 1 6 in large towns. There are also fancy franchises in variety. A more recent law of 1895 has altered the rules for making the voting-lists, and has materially curtailed the number of electors. There have been single-member constituencies, except between 1882 and 1891, when the scrutin de lists was introduced in the vain hope of checking corruption. A candidate is not returned unless he has an absolute majority of votes; if no candidate obtains this, a second ballot takes place a 14 ITALY TO-DAY week later. At an election the presiding officer and scrutineers are chosen by the voters present. A polling- booth contains two square glass boxes on a table, one containing the voting papers, the other empty. A list of voters is read in alphabetical order ; the voter comes forward when his name is called, and has a paper given him from the first box. He takes it to a table, writes the name of the candidate whom he votes for, folds it, and places it in the second box. When the list has been read through, any voter, who was not present when his name was called, may give his vote. The poll is normally open from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Any elector or unsuccessful candidate can petition against a return ; all petitions are decided by the Chamber on the report of a special Committee, sometimes with the grossest subordination of facts to partisanship. The proportion of the population which has the vote is very small. Before 1882 it was only 2 per cent. ; now it is a little over 7 per cent. , as against 1 6 in Great Britain, 20 in Germany, 27 in France. The disqualification of illiteracy disfranchises a very large number, especially in the South and parts of the Centre. Indifiierence and the Papal non expedit^ keep many from claiming a vote, and the Socialists are the only party that have any machinery to attend to registra- tion. Even among the registered electors the pro- portion that goes to the poll is small, especially in the North ; on the average of the whole country it ranges between 58 and 60 per cent. That compara- tively so few should take the trouble to use their votes ' See below, p. 47. THE FRANCHISE 15 is hardly to be wondered at. There was no strong popular demand for the extension of the franchise ; and in spite of the recent revival, the mass of the people are still disillusioned, and well-nigh hopeless of reform. No party, except the Socialists, has a clear programme, or attempts to stir the voters at election times,'^ and it was regarded as phenomenal that at Alessandria in 1900 twenty meetings were held in one evening. The hard struggle for life, the absence of political education, makes the mass of the peasants indifferent whether they vote or not. Of those who go to the poll, a more than normal proportion vote from irrelevant motives. It is true that the Socialists and Radicals have created a different spirit in the towns of the North, in a few places here and there in the Centre and South, and even in some country districts. It is probable, too, that last year the Left polled many votes from men who really cared about the constitutional struggle. The richer and middle classes as a whole have their party ties, and vote in obedience to them. But influence and bribery govern the rest. Peasants vote at their landlord's or employer's orders. The mortgaged small proprietors of the South obey the bidding of the bank that has their title-deeds. The elections at Naples are managed by a hundred or two of " influential electors," who use the camorra to carry their nominees. A candidate gets votes, as he would in any country, because he is an old man, or because he is a young man, or because he is 1 Since tte last elections, the Moderates of Milan have been projecting a popular organization with the familiar mixture of politics and philan- thropy. 1 6 ITALY TO-DAY simpatico. And besides, and worse than this personal influence, governmental pressure and private bribery reach to monstrous proportions. The former is worst in the South, the latter in the North. But everywhere more or less the Prefects are used to "prepare" the elections, and if a Prefect refuses to work for the ministerial candidate, he is summarily removed, or, after the most decent custom of to-day, is tempo- rarily suspended till the election is over. All his enormous power is exerted to return the Government's candidate. A Prefect once boasted that he could con- trol all the elections in his province, as he could send all his Syndics to prison if necessary. In Crispi's day they would arrest electors on false charges on the eve of the elections and keep them in custody till the poll was over. In Sicily they have employed the Mafia gangs to terrorize the electors.^ Newspapers are subsidized from the secret funds ; school teachers are impressed to assist in canvassing; rail- way employees are warned, or, if influential Socialists, are removed to a distant post during the election ; Syndics send round circulars officially recommending the minis- terialist candidate ; policemen are stationed at the polling-booth to shut out opposition voters. In the recent Codronchi-De Felice libel case, an ex-Minister of Justice owned that the Sicilian police were a true " elec- tioneering agency." Eegisters are tampered with in the revision courts. A teacher of literature has been known to be struck ofi" as illiterate, and at Catania 5000 electors out of 9000, with university professors and lawyers 1 See below, p. 122. INFLUENCE AND COERUPTION 17 among them, were once removed at a single swoop. Two notorious instances, which almost parallel Galician elections, will illustrate how the system is worked in Sicily. In 1895, while Crispi was in office, an election was pending at Alcamo, and, in spite of tampering with the register, Damiani, the Ministerialist candidate, had small prospect of success. But a certain Saladino, an inhabitant of the town, was in prison on a charge of murder and forgery ; and Saladino's many friends and connections were sufficiently numerous to turn the election. General Mirri, the chief official in the island, acting probably on Crispi's direct orders, went to Alcamo and struck the bargain. Saladino was to be released, and he was to secure Damiani's return. " Damiani," wrote the General, " must win at any cost, because Damiani means Crispi." The scandal of Alcamo had a worthy complement last year. The constituency of Corleone had the special attention of the Prefect. The police were sent round the villages to threaten the timid peasants that, if the Ministerialist candidate were defeated, they would be arrested in mass. A Mafia gang of notorious criminals were given a batch of licenses to carry firearms, that they and their friends might terrorize the electors. Syndics, schoolmasters, civil servants, municipal employees were warned to support the Prefect's candidate. Manoeuvres like these were reported from all parts of Italy at the recent elections, and the climax of scandal was reached, when a secret circular ordered the telegraph officials to transmit no message relating to the elections until it had been seen by the Prefect. It is no wonder that B 1 8 ITALY TO-DAY any Cabinet in a difficulty appeals to the country, knowing that the election will be a sufficient farce in enough constituencies to give it a majority. Bribery completes the work. It is not merely the abundant use of promises that the Government will show some special favour to the locality — a local railway, a water supply at its own expense, new barracks in the chief town, a ribbon or two for prominent supporters. Besides all this, there is hardy, unblushing corruption by Government and private persons. The electoral law, which punishes with fine and imprison- ment any attempt at direct or indirect bribery, is a dead letter ; and under Di Eudini in 1892 a magistrate in Venetia, who wanted to prosecute in a case of notorious corruption, found his suit stopped and him- self transferred to another post. The secret service funds of the Government go largely to this purpose. One of the causes that brought the Banca Eomana low was the demand for loans made by successive Premiers, who wanted to swell their election funds. It is believed that Pelloux saved up ;£'4oo,ooo for elec- toral contingencies. In 1892, ^8000 are said to have been spent in one constituency. At the elections of 1900 bribery seems to have been rampant both in North and South. At Catania i6s. are known to have been paid for a vote ; at Corteolona in Piedmont 4s. to 20s. were paid ; at Intra the price went down to sixpence. Occasionally a deputy is unseated for " ex- tensive philanthropy " on the eve of an election, or for "corrupting nearly a whole constituency." But, as a rule, it can be done with impunity, and even THE CHAMBER OF DEPUTIES 19 when a Parliamentary Committee has recommended that a seat be voided for bribery, the Chamber has sometimes refused to take action. It is this sheer power of unscrupulous wealth that the advanced parties have to fight against more than anything else. A Chamber elected by such methods is not likely to have a high character. Nothing strikes an ob- server more than the unimposing and undignified bearing of the Deputies. And though the thoroughly dishonest men are perhaps only a handful, a large number are, as we shall see, more or less in the pay of Government. The scandals of the Banca Eomana are past history, but the country still thinks that there is an essential connection between politicians and speculators ; and when Di Rudini with his high pro- fessions did little to correct the disease, the suspicion grew, till an Italian to-day finds it difl&cult to believe that a politician can be disinterested. At all events, Parliament, outside the Extreme Left and to a certain extent the Left, represents the wealthier classes only. It is true that the great landlords, still more the capitalists, are less numerous than in the British Parliament. But the lawyers and other professional men, who constitute nearly two-thirds of the Chamber, mainly represent wealth, and even the Socialists have only returned two working-men.^ " The Italian Par- liament," says the Giornale degli economisti, "is an assembly of proprietors," with all such an assembly's 1 Signer Rigola of Biella and Signer Chiesa of Sampierdarena. The first working-man deputy was Signer Antonio Maffi of Milan, now editor of the Cooperazione Italiana. 20 ITALY TO-DAY indifference to social legislation and insistence on the rights of property. "The organization of the Italian State," says Signor Franchetti, "is one great clienUle, and the peasants get no help, because they are not part of the clientUe." The impotence of Parliament is increased by the absence of party organization. Owing to the non-repre- sentation of the Clericalists, there has been, outside the Extreme Left, no very vital diflference of principle among the great majority of the Chamber. As a consequence, Parliament has been divided into groups, united by personal ties, and each fighting for its own hand. It has rarely been possible for a Ministry to keep in office by the support of one group, and ever since Depretis introduced the system of trasformismo, each one has copied his evil model of coalition Govern- ments with weak and inconsistent programmes, propped by the bought support of groups. The result has been that " the Government has never governed Italy, for it has always confined itself to governing Parliament." It is an ill nursery for statesmen, for in the vicious circle of Italian politics there are no great parties to breed great statesmen or great statesmen to make great parties ; and Italian statesmanship is a dreary waste of small intrigue and damaged character and narrow vision. But here, as in much else, the cure is coming from the Extreme Left. As the latter gains in strength, and the Right becomes more reactionary, deep difi'erences of policy, constitutional and social, are dividing men, and the soil grows kinder for great parties. THE CHAMBEE OF DEPUTIES 21 At present, however, though perhaps not so much as a few years ago, these two primary defects — the poor personality of the Deputies and the absence of strong parties — make the Chamber a fair seed-plot of corruption. Parliamentary life is expensive. Not that elections cost a great deal ; no estimate puts the average cost to a candidate above ;^200, and it is probably much less. An election at Aosta in the seventies cost a little over ^3. But General Elections are numerous (there have been five since 1889), second ballots add to the cost, and there are few opportu- nities to make a living at Eome. There is a troop of " telegraphic Deputies," who only come when sum- moned to take part in an important division. The ordinary Deputy, who shares the low level of Italian wealth, cannot attend to his Parliamentary duties without pecuniary help. The Italian Chamber is almost the only one on the Continent which has no payment of members, beyond their right to free passes on railways.^ The lawyers and civil engineers who crowd into Parliament expect some help from Govern- ment in return for clean or dirty work. In the days of Depretis or Giolitti the Ministerialist Deputy was paid by an introduction to the Banca Eomana, which advanced him money without interest or security or much hope of repayment. Now he is given some minor office, or sent on a commission abroad, or, if a lawyer or civil engineer, gets well-paid Govern- • There is no payment of members in Spain and the German Imperial Reichstag. It is permissive in Portugal. In Germany and Portugal members are allowed free passes on railways. 22 ITALY TO-DAY ment work. An ex-President of the Chamber is freely reported to have received ^2000 a year for expert opinions and arbitrations in which the Government was concerned. A prominent Deputy informed us last year that more than half the Chamber were directly or indirectly in the pay of the Government. A yet more unsavoury relation exists between the Government and certain financial and commercial interests in the Chamber. In Depretis' time the evil was gigantic. " The Deputy and the man of business were two sides of the same person ; politics made business and business made politics." As late as 1896 the then Minister of Public Works told the Chamber that "the skill with which contractors had marched to the conquest of public money was only matched by the laxity of the defence." At that time railway contractors were claiming from the Treasury nearly ^6,000,000 for extras, where ^1,400,000 were found to be fair payment. Probably there is much less of the evil now ; the cutting down of public works afibrds fewer opportunities of advantageous contracts, and it is illegal now, as then, for a Deputy to take a contract from Government ; the reaction against protec- tion makes it difficult to get new bounties or protective duties in favour of particular interests. But still de- frauding bank directors go unpunished, and the long immunity of Notarbartolo's murderers^ was due to the anxiety of men in high places not to lift any corner of the veil that hangs over the Bank scandals. Only last year a notorious job was perpetrated in the in- ' See below, p. 123. THE CHAMBER OF DEPUTIES 23 terest of the big shipping companies. In November 1899 it was decided to reduce from the 14th of the month the bounties to the mercantile marine. As soon as this was decided, impossible schedules of newly laid down ships were declared for the six weeks pre- ceding that date. It was obvious that fraudulent returns had been made to obtain the higher bounties given under the expiring Act, and the new Bill was made retrospective so as to come into operation at the beginning of October. But a few months later, when the Pelloux Government was at the point of going out, they threw over the Bill, and by royal decree struck out the retrospective clause, putting, it is calculated, over ;^ 1, 600,000 into the pockets of the shipowners at the expense of the Treasury. The Saracco Ministry, however, referred the whole question back to the Chamber. There is another form of corruption which strikes at the root of good government. The executive often allows Southern Deputies and their cliques immunity in their petty local tyrannies and peculations, on con- dition that they keep the seats safe and vote for Government.' A recent libel action has shown how a Deputy of Naples, by grace of the Government and the Camorra, lived luxuriously by the systematic jobbery of public offices and favours, how the authorities con- nived, how, though his conduct was notorious, no one dared to stand in his way, till the Socialists exposed him and drove him to resign. Charities are manipulated for party purposes. Communal property is jobbed in the interest of the local magnate, and there is no 24 ITALY TO-DAY remedy. Criminal actions for embezzlement of com- munal funds are suppressed. Under Crispi the dom icilio coatto ^ was used to imprison the political opponents of the "provincial Don Rodrigos." A Prefect sends the list of retiring Syndics to his Deputy, to ask whom he shall reappoint. Prefects themselves are removed or have their work upset at the demand of Senators and Deputies. For much of this, no doubt, the public is responsible. "A Deputy," wrote one of them in 1886, "has to find posts for people, secure verdicts for his supporters alike in civil and criminal cases, help others to pass their examinations or get pensions, promote or oppose public and private contracts. He has to get convicts released, civil servants punished or removed, obtain roads and bridges for his constituency."' The great mass of the educated unemployed are hungry for posts in the Civil Service, and expect the Deputy to procure them. Every small local magnate wants to be a commendatore or a cavaliere, and even a Socialist Deputy has been known to beg a ribbon for a supporter. " Italy," said an ex-Premier, " is governed by decorations." But an honest Government could, if it liked, check a disease which makes good administra- tion impossible, and the Chamber should have done more than applaud, when a Deputy told it in 1896 that the Government was the great spring of the corruption in the provinces. It is easy, however, to exaggerate the extent of the corruption. No Parliament is free from it. At all events, the Italian Chamber has fewer Parliamentary ' See below, p. 86. THE CHAMBER OF DEPUTIES 25 guinea-pigs than the House of Commons, perhaps be- cause there are fewer opportunities for company pro- motion ; there is far less manipulation of tariffs for private ends than in the United States, no more bribery of localities than in Canada. Things are better already than they were in the days of Depretis and Crispi ; public opinion, at all events in the North, is making steadily for political purity; the Socialists are doing a fine work in exposing the worst scandals, and if the Extreme Left become strong enough to carry payment of members, they will raise the morality of the Deputies all round. The Chamber has its virtues; each new Parliament has started with excellent intentions, which have failed for want of cohesiveness and leading. It has sometimes been more liberal than the country ; it is generally more liberal than the Government. It stopped the San-Mun blunder ; ^ it might have stopped the Tigr^ expedition,' if Crispi had not prorogued it to give himself a free hand. It has erred rather from timidity and self-effacement. It has only since the last elections dared to make any thorough and effective criticism of the budget; it has allowed the Govern- ment, through its royal decrees, an extra-parliamentary power of legislation, of which our departmental orders and " opinions of the law-ofiicers of the Crown " are but a pale reflection. From 1892 onwards to last year almost every ministerial crisis has come from influences outside its walls. It is learning its power now. The cry against Parliamentary institutions — so much in vogue in Italy of late — is a foolish one. If the governing 1 See below, p. 309. ' See below, p. 306. 26 ITALY TO-DAY classes, instead of railing at tlie Chamber, tried to purify it, they would serve their country better. They are powerless to weaken it. Italy will in the future be governed by its Parliament more and not less than in the past. Of the Senate it is unnecessary to say much. It is a piece of almost unused machinery, neglected by everybody, and quite without influence on the national life. It will probably linger on for a time, but as a political factor, it counts and will count for very little. Will the same fate befall the monarchy ? Here we have a double set of phenomena. On the one hand the old enthusiasm for the House of Savoy is waning fast ; on the other, the republican movement, handed down from Mazzini, has spent its force. The prestige and popularity of the throne, so great under Victor Emmanuel II., fell low under Humbert. The late king had none of his father's force of character or knowledge of men. He moved in a narrow Court circle, and listened to men and women who were quite out of touch with the country. He loved to mancBuvre with parties and form little cabals, always more in- terested in small Parliamentary tactics than in broad views of policy. The only point on which he took a strong line was the maintenance of the Triple Alli- ance and a large army, partly because he wanted Italy to play the part of a Great Power, partly because he dreaded an attack from France and an Italian Sedan, which would be fatal to his dynasty. His personal character did not strengthen his position. He was physically fearless, like all his House ; he fought THE MONARCHY 27 bravely at Custozza and faced danger in the cholera epidemic at Naples. He was always genial and good- natured. But palace scandals tainted his repute as they did his father's ; and even the Conservatives had small respect for him. " Monarchy is an excellent institution when there is a monarch," a Conservative Count is reported to have said. To the Democrats he was the head of a faction, the centre of all the reactionary interests, of the army, of the big landlords and capitalists. Whatever truth there may have been in this, he certainly had no sympathy with the new social movement. Though in a way he was true to the nationalist and constitutional policy of his House, and could talk like a Democrat at times, he was thoroughly alarmed at the progress of the Extreme Left. The African disaster, the discredit of Govern- ment, the movement against a large army, the uneasi- ness of the whole country, all reacted on his popularity. And though up to the last he was received with wild demonstrations of loyalty at Naples and elsewhere, it was largely from love of a brave show, and even in Piedmont, the home of his dynasty, there was no real enthusiasm for him. On the other hand, for some years past there has been little or no active disloyalty to the Crown. The social movement has thrown all questions of the form of government into the back- ground, and even the Socialists are prepared to accept the monarchy, if they can have a fair field for their policy under it. Of the present king, Victor Emmanuel III., it is too early yet to say much, but what little is known of 28 ITALY TO-DAY him, is mostly to his good. He has been carefully, too carefully educated, and at one time he suffered from over-study. He has the tastes of an old man or a bookworm, but he is a keen student of history and economics. His politics, so far as he has declared them, are thoroughly Liberal, and he seems to have kept surprisingly clear of the prejudices of his father's Court. He was no friend of Crispi, and it is rumoured that he wanted him to be prosecuted after the Bank revelations. He was opposed to the recent policy of coercion, and since his accession he has bravely refused to have any reaction, in spite, no doubt, of considerable pressure. He probably favours a compre- hensive social programme. He is a hard and con- scientious worker, with a high ideal of his kingly office, and demanding the same thoroughness and diligence in his Ministers. It is said that he is firm, and if he has sufficient physical strength and force of character, his Liberal sympathies may allow him to recover the ground that his father lost. At all events, the fate of the Italian monarchy is in its own keeping. If it takes in hand the social movement, as it took in hand the national movement, it has one of the safest thrones in Europe. If it sets itself against progress, if it stands for reaction, for a heavy military expenditure and an adventurous foreign policy, it is doomed, and perhaps at no distant date. CHAPTER II THE CATHOLICS A. Catholic Politics.— Strength of the Catholics. The Catholic re- vival. Leo XIII. The Temporal Power. The Law of Guarantees. Chances of compromise. The Papacy and France. The non expedit. Growth of conciliatory feeling. Catholic-Moderate alliance. B. The Social Work of the Catholics. — Catholic Socialism. The Congresses. The Christian Democrats. We turn from the old parties, with their policies of despair, to the two that, at all events, have faith and principle and enthusiasm — the Catholics and the Socialists. It is extremely difficult to estimate the strength of the Catholics with any approach to accu- racy. Italian estimates on both sides are so obscured by party feeling that it is unsafe to give much credence to them. " Catholic " itself needs defining. There is a sense, of course, in which the immense majority of Italians are Catholics, as being neither Protestants nor Greeks nor Jews. Or the term may be limited to the praticanti, who regularly observe Catholic precepts of worship. A still narrower use of the word (its common sense in Italian politics) includes those only who obey the Pope in all matters, spiritual or civil, in which he prescribes the rule of Catholic conduct. Any estimate of Catholic strength must try to answer the question how far the two latter cate- gories are conterminous. Both, no doubt, have very sensibly declined during the past half-century. The 30 ITALY TO-DAY Vatican's hostility to Italian Unity, the difficulty of being good Italians and good Catholics at once, the strides of indifferentism, the general secularization of life — all these have driven large numbers from the Church. In an old conventual building at Turin some students have established a " laboratory of poli- tical economy." Outside the room is still a fresco of the Crucifixion ; inside are fresco portraits of Adam Smith and Karl Marx. The transition is typical of many things in Italian life. These influences have naturally affected the educated classes most of all, and there can be hardly any doubt, from the confession of the Catholics themselves, that Catholicism has small hold on them. The professional classes and the great majority of university students are, and have been for many years, either indifferent or anticlerical. So strong is the set of opinion among them, that Deputies, who go to mass at home and send their children to the Catholic schools, dare not do so at Eome. The artisans of the North are more divided ; here and there, at Bergamo, in particu- lar, the Catholics have a large following, but in those towns where Socialism is strong they are fast losing ground. " Where the Socialist halls fill, the churches empty," said a priest from Biella at a recent Catholic Congress. At Milan, once a Catholic stronghold, their voting strength at the local elections declines rapidly, and is now less than one-third of the Socialist poll. At Rome the Liberals, when they are united, can always defeat them. Even at Bergamo, " while the Catholics make no effort," says the organ of the Catholic Social Union there, "the Socialists are gaining ground and THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL 31 take the working men and women from us." Among the peasants their forces are more considerable, but even here they are weakening in many parts. The reports of the Inchiesta agraria in 1883 are about equally divided on the point whether religion is declin- ing in the country districts. The influence of the village schoolmaster and doctor, the freer ideas of the returned conscripts, sometimes sap the priest's influence. In the villages of Emilia and Romagna the Socialists are fighting the ground inch by inch, and many a little town is distracted by the clubs and societies and bands of the rival forces. But generally, though the peasant has small regard for the priest, he is a devout Catholic none the less. In many parts of the North and Centre, and sometimes, as near Bari, in the South, the peasant's faith is a sincere and manly piety. There are large districts where the priest's authority is still un- challenged. Often he is the peasant's only friend, who does his business for him, helps him in time of sickness, and has that intimate social tie with him that he has in Ireland. In the South there is a good deal of gross superstition, and everywhere there is many a farmer who thinks "that a priest's blessing does the crops more good than a hundred manurings." Probably the great majority of peasants should still be counted as Catholics. Of 250,000 who petitioned last year against the Civil Marriage Bill, 85 per cent, belonged to them. And side by side with the indifi"erentism or hostility of the educated classes and the towns, there is a re- markable outburst of Catholic activity. In outward 32 ITALY TO-DAY appearance Catholicism has never been stronger. New churches spring up. Monasteries, evading the Dissolu- tion Law by vesting their property in trustees, perhaps are as numerous and wealthy, certainly are more active than in pre-dissolution days. The younger clergy, at all events in the towns of the North, are busy, pro- selytizing, full of good works. Their humanitarian zeal, that has scattered broadcast cooperative banks and other agencies, has strengthened their hold on the peasants, even to some extent on the artisans. " One can go into a workman's shop now without being insulted," says the priest of Murano. Mean- while the monastic orders have grown at the expense of the secular clergy, thanks to their wealth and grip of business methods and advertisement ; the Vatican has done its best to stamp out any sign of liberal thought among the clergy ; and both tendencies increase, at all events for the moment, the efficacy of the Church as a fighting instrument, though below the surface there are many heart-burnings between the nationalist and intransigent clerics. The endowments of the new monasteries prove how much money is coming in to it from private gifts and bequests. There is an active and bitter Catholic press. Catholic schools attract the children of the upper and middle classes, probably with good reason, more than the Government's lyceums and gymnasiums. Imposing crowds of pilgrims go to Rome in the Holy Year of 1 900. Among these contradictory marks of strength and weakness, it is natural that both clericalists and freethinkers should claim to have gained ground. It is more and more difficult to stand aside LEO XIII. ss or take a middle ground. The Eeformed Catholic movement, so promising in the early sixties, has almost entirely disappeared ; Protestantism, in spite of zeal and devotion, makes little headway. And so probably both clericals and freethinkers have gained. Which- ever side has gained most, at all events the Catholic Church in Italy still gives the impression of a mighty force, strong in its discipline, strong in its able leading, strong often in its good works, strong above all in the weakness of the existing system of government. At its head stands that very remarkable man, to whom it largely owes its recent development in Italy, its yet more marked advance in other Catholic countries. When Leo XIII. succeeded Pio Nono in 1878, he found almost every Government in Europe alienated by his predecessor's want of tact and states- manship. In Germany the Kulturkampf was at its worst ; in France Macmahon's power was shaken, and the anti-clericals were in the ascendant ; in Bavaria the Government was encouraging the Old Catholics ; there had been a diplomatic rupture with Eussia in protest against the persecution of the Catholic Poles. The Papacy stood hardly stronger with the peoples. There had been a good deal of Catholic enthusiasm for " the prisoner of the Vatican," but Pius' dislike of every progressive movement kept the masses aloof and suspicious. Leo probably owed his election to a small group of high ecclesiastics, who dreaded a con- tinuance of the obscurantism of the last pontificate, and who skilfully enlisted the European press on Leo's behalf, and won for him the vote of the non-Italian 34 ITALY TO-DAY Cardinals. The latter wanted to see Pius' hostility to Italy maintained, though with more skill and suavity, but they saw that it was essential to conciliate the otier Governments of Europe. To this policy the Pope has been faithful. Leo XIIL's acts and words give the impression of one who, at all events till lately, has been a strong but not a very strong man, with very fixed ideas, with great industry and command of details, a good man, but more statesman than saint, without any deep afi"ection or spirituality. In his doctrine and in his general view of society he is a reactionary, but with a real sympathy for the poor, and a con- siderable understanding of economic cou'iitious. His breadth of social views is marred by a mastering dread of Socialism, whose economic side he entirely fails to understand, and which, with more justice, he regards as a very dangerous enemy of Catholicism. He believes with all sincerity that there is a great secret conspiracy against the Catholic Church and all religion, which centres in the Freemasons ; and his encyclicals have a common note of pessimism, which teaches that all authority is in peril, and that men can be saved only by coercion from error and license. Society must be safeguarded from impending ruin by restoring to the Papacy something of its medieval plenitude of power. His great belief, says Padre Brandi, is that it is the mission of the Church not only to re- deem souls, but to save human society. The gist of the encyclical Immortale Dei is that truth is one and all-embracing, that the Church teaches the onlv truth. LEO XIII. 35 that if it is excluded from authority over domestic life, from the schools, from a voice in legislation, false doctrines will imperil the welfare of the race. He calls for a union of Church and State, that men may not be distracted between their duties to the two authorities ; but the Catholic Church is to be the chief gainer from the alliance. Not only ife it and its property to be free from State control, not only is it to have power to enforce its own laws, but he claims for it a voice in the making of the civil law, a legal pre-eminence over other religious bodies, a right to the State's help in suppressing the propagation of false opinions.^ The Church will repay the State by its alliance in combating Democracy and Socialism. Leo finds himself in a dilemma when he preaches obedience to authority, while himself attacking the Italian State ; but none the less he not only condemns any movement which may disturb the public tranquillity, but he attacks the whole structure of popular govern- ment. Laws, he says, must not be made " according to the erring judgment of the masses." He admits indeed, inconsistently, that the republic is a legitimate form of government, but he believes firmly in coercion, and the whole bias of his argument is in favour of the powers that be. And he is insistent that Church and State must fight together against Socialism. While the State is to suppress all Socialist propaganda, the Church, through -its power over the minds of men, cuts Socialism at its roots ; and Leo appeals to the State to make the Church free and strong to oppose the common enemy. ^ Encyclicals Immmiale Dei, Libertas, Humanum genus, passim. 36 ITALY TO-DAY Leo has probably seen from the first that to strengthen the Church it was necessary to gain the confidence alike of Governments and peoples. But during the first years of his pontificate he directed his energies almost exclusively to winning the former. To get the good-will of European statesmen, he was prepared to make very large and, from the Catholic point of view, dangerous concessions. In France he recognized the Republic, and again and again turned his cheek to the anti-clerical smiter. In Germany he closed the Kulturkampf, and forced the Centre to sup- port Bismarck as the price of the repeal of the May Laws. In Bavaria he made his peace with the Govern- ment over the grave of the Old Catholics. To win the good-will of Eussia, he sacrificed the Catholic Poles ; to win that of England, he condemned the National League. The policy, carried through with supreme skill, succeeded in its immediate object. But it had its draw- backs. The militant Catholics of France and Germany were indignant at the forced surrender to the enemy. The masses looked with suspicion at the alliance with the Governments. Leo saw that his work was too one- sided, and made it his business to win the peoples. " Catholic Socialism " was already strong in France and Germany and Belgium, in Austria and Switzerland. There was little of Socialism in it beyond its name, but it had a very earnest and thorough social policy, that appealed strongly to Leo, all the more because on its political side it was reactionary. He had already, before he became Pope, attacked the orthodox economy and advocated legislation to protect women and children. THE TEMPOEAL POWER 2,7 But the first unequivocal sign of his social programme was in 1888, when, at the earnest prayer of the Ameri- can bishops, he gave his sanction to the Knights of Labour. Three years later he published his encyclical Rerum Novarum, which analyses with great acuteness the inhumanities of capitalism, but lacks precision in its economic programme, and hardly proposes more than what has long been law in England. But it is gentler in its tone, less critical and negative than the earlier denunciations of Socialism ; and all Europe recognized how great a fact it was that a Pope had ranged himself on the side of social reform. Admirers, Catholic and Protestant, raised his pronouncement to an evangel that went far beyond its intentions, and Leo was saluted as " the working man's Pope." And though the encyclical has entirely failed to stem the advance of Socialism, though it has not even united the progres- sive Catholics, while it has angered the Conservatives, and of late years the Pope himself has seemed afraid of his own boldness,^ yet none the less it has helped to make his position a very powerful one in Europe. There can be little doubt that all through his bold and clever policy Leo XIII. has had in mind the recovery of the Temporal Power. The view that in his earlier years of rule he was willing to abandon it has little evidence ; and, at all events, since the insults to Pio Nono's corpse in 1 881, he has kept it ever in 1 The recent encyclical (January i8, 1901) is practically a condemna- tion of the " Christian Democrats." It expressly attacks any policy which, " in seeking the advantage of the lower classes, . . . neglects the upper classes, which are equally important for the preservation and perfection of society ; " and it insists that the social work of Catholics must be " abso- lutely under episcopal guidance." 38 ITALY TO-DAY sight. His environment at the Vatican would hardly allow him to do otherwise. The few comparatively Liberal Cardinals, like Capecelatro and some of the Anglo-Saxons and Irish, have little influence at Eome ; those who, like the late Padre Tosti of Monteeassino or Bishop Bonomelli of Cremona, preached the abandonment of the temporal claim, have been compelled to retract ; the Jesuit influence is every year more strong, and the Jesuits put the recovery of the Temporal Power in the front of their programme. Again and again Leo has protested that there can be no peace with Italy till his territorial independence is restored ; he still refuses to recognize a king of Italy, and does his best to weaken the Italian State ; he has intrigued at one time with Bismarck, at another time with France, to apply foreign pressure in the interest of the Temporal Power ; ^ he has successfully prevented the visit of any Catholic sovereign to Rome ; he has allowed Cardinal Parocchi, as lately as 1898, to talk of a popular crusade, which should "break the chains of Peter"; he has marshalled, so far as he has been able, the whole Catholic Church in Italy to the same end. But he and the Vatican have modified their earlier views. Time has softened the unholy bitterness, the passion for revenge, that dominated the Curia in Pio Nono's day. There is no longer the talk, so common in the seventies and eighties, that Italy is on the eve of disruption, that qni mange dii Pape en meurt. The Vatican has nearly, or quite abandoned the schemes ' See below, p. 290. THE TEMPOEAL POWER 39 of federation, which were intended to break up or impair Italian Unity. They have, except perhaps for a few obstinate intransigenti, abandoned all thought of returning to the status quo ante 1870, or even of recovering the whole of Eome. We have reason to believe, on excellent authority, that the Vatican is U '-'-'\ Quirinal s — -'~=^ — N \ \ N \ 1 ^SrUeS.Angelo ?i» '''l\ W,/^ ^ii^Jonte Sisto ,' W^ — r^rs ^N 0% ^ tbrtaSAncmzid-fi^ jl \. ■-' Trastevere // .''-" f t Map of Leonitve City. Bourvdary of Modern Puome. prepared to acquiesce in the possession of most of Rome by the Italian Government, but claims the Leonine City ^ in full sovereignty, under the guarantee of the European Powers, and asks that, to avoid the juxtaposition of two capitals in one city, the Italian 1 The Leonine City embraces the Vatican, St. Peter's, and part of the Janiculum. It is bounded on the north by the Borgo Angelico and the walls of the Vatican ; on the west by the city boundary ; on the south by the Via di Porta San Pancrazio, and the Via Garibaldi ; on the east by the Tiber. 40 ITALY TO-DAY Government shall make Florence or some other city its official seat and capital. On these terms, it is prepared to make peace. Compared with the claims of twenty years ago, the demand is a modest one. But the Catholic posi- tion remains in substance the same. It is essential, the Catholics urge, that the spiritual father of a universal Church should be absolutely and ostenta- tiously free in the exercise of his spiritual acts ; that not only there should be no possibility of pressure from the Italian Government, but not even the suspicion of its possibility, that no foreigner may say that the Pope is " a chaplain of the House of Savoy. " Therefore he must have some obvious, material token of independence, some territorial franchise, however small. The Italians answer that the Pope's liberty and independence are secured by the Law of Guarantees. That part of the Law, which treats of the Pope's position, confirms him in the prerogatives of sovereignty, declares his person to be inviolable, punishes attacks and libels on it as attacks on the king, guarantees him the enjoyment of the Vatican and Lateran palaces, with the suburban retreat of Castel Gandolfo and an annual dotation of ;^ 1 2 5,000,1 allows no officer of justice to enter their precincts, and gives the Pope special postal and tele- graphic facilities, that his correspondence with the Catholic world may be free. The Catholics object, in the first place, that the Law has not been observed. ' This is annually credited to the Pope, but any unclaimed arrears revert to the State at each Pope's death. In 1890, ^2,560,000 were credited to Leo XIII. THE LAW OF GUAEANTEES 41 They base the charge in the main on the insults to Pius IX.'s corpse, when it was translated from the Vatican in 1881, and on the Martinucci case in the following year. The first was more a matter of mis- management than of deliberate neglect. The autho- rities promised to keep order on condition that the body was translated quietly, but their precautions were inadequate, and when a procession of several thousands followed and shouted for the Pope-king, some bystanders, stung by the Clericalist defiance, hissed and insulted the procession. The Martinucci case defined the nature of the Pope's sovereignty. The courts decided that, apart from the Pope, every inmate of the Vatican is subject to the Italian law and is liable to be cited before the Italian courts, and that the Papal sovereignty is purely honorary and concerns only the spiritual side of his olfice. Whatever may be the facts as to the second part of the Law of Guarantees, which defines the relations of Church and State,^ the Catholic contention as to the non-observance of that part which afiects the Pope is singularly weak. The Conclave of 1878 was by general con- fession absolutely free, thanks to Crispi's energetic measures. Year after year demonstrations against the Italian Kingdom have been allowed with im- punity at St. Peter's. Lately, during the celebration of the Holy Year, the Government outstepped the law to suppress anti-clerical demonstrations at Rome. If the Pope does not drive through the streets of the city, it is more because he shrinks from what might See below, p. 252. 42 ITALY TO-DAY seem to be a recognition of the Government than because he fears the attacks or hisses of anti-clericals. Never has the Pope been more free from outward pressure or interference than have been Pius IX. and Leo XIII. since 1870. But, the Catholics urge, even granted that the Law of Guarantees has been observed in the past, what security is there that it will be observed in the future ? A Govern- ment, which is not loyal to its own fundamental Sta- tute, cannot, they say, be trusted to keep faith with a power that it has no love for. And if it falls, the Revolu- tion would have small scruple in breaking the pledges of the monarchy. But it is fair to reply that, so far as human prevision can go, no other system promises greater security ; that the Law of Guarantees has been pronounced by the Council of State to be a funda- mental law ; that from fear of foreign complications the Italian Government is, and probably always will be, anxious to prove that the Pope's liberty is secure under its rule. Even if the Pope possessed the Leonine City in full sovereignty, the Italian Government would still have the prerogatives of neighbourhood, and perhaps exercise through the Italian Cardinals that real controlling influence, which the Papalists profess to be the danger of the present system. An international guarantee would go to pieces in the first great European war. A revolution might take as little heed of territorial rights or threats of foreign inter- ference as of the Law of Guarantees. At bottom the question is one of sentiment more than of practical grievance. To many Catholics it CHANCES OF COMPROMISE 43 seems a humiliation that the Pope should no longer be master of Rome ; that he should be subject to petty rebuffs from an unfriendly Government ; that a Pro- testant propaganda should be tolerated in his neigh- bourhood ; that no religious processions should be allowed in the streets ; that a Pope cannot be crowned at St. Peter's, or go to any celebration there, till he has asked the Government, as a favour, to send soldiers to police the approaches. And it is a sentiment that is felt more by foreign than by Italian Catholics. It is true that in Austria and Hungary there is a reaction of the native episco- pacy against the political policy of the Vatican, and this tends to relax foreign interest in the Temporal Power. But to many of the French Catholics, at all events, it is still intolerable that the Pope should be in any degree subordinate to Italy ; the foreign car- dinals perhaps fear that a reconciliation with Italy would increase the power of their Italian brothers at their own expense ; there are Governments that gladly foment a quarrel which weakens Italy. To this foreign sentiment the Vatican is bound to make a show of deference, not only because of its Catholic position, but because its funds come largely from France, and peace with Italy or any acceptance of the Italian dotation would stop the stream of French liberality. "A Pope," said !fimile OUivier, "who was reconciled to Italy, would lose the rest of the world." And so the Pope still calls on the Catholic Governments to relieve him from an intolerable position ; and the solemn comedy is played for the benefit of foreign 44 ITALY TO-DAY Catholics. But his claim, half unreal though it is, has its serious side, and the Italians are bound to take it into account. Any likelihood, however, that they will accept the Papal terms, except under compulsion, may be dismissed. Italy has its sentiment too ; and if the monarchy ignored it, it would be wrecked at once. The great mass of Italian opinion. Conservative and Democratic alike, would accept no solution that implied the humiliation of abandoning Rome, or sacri- ficed it to the commercial disaster, the poverty and depopulation, which, as the Clericalists themselves re- cognize, would follow the departure of Court and Government. Even if the Vatican waived the trans- ference of the capital, it would be difl&cult for either Monarchy or Parliament to tolerate an independent sovereign power sitting at its elbow, one who, as such, might ask for a French garrison and make a conflict with France almost inevitable. The close neighbour- hood of an area, where liberty of worship and the press were forbidden, or which might become an asylum for political refugees, would be a cause of ever-recurring friction. The Vatican recognizes that any compromise is barely within the range of possibility. How then do those, who really want the Temporal Power, propose to compel the State to surrender it ? At one time, at all events, when it hoped to regain the whole Papal States, as they stood before 1870, it looked to reach its end by foreign pressure, and, if needful, by foreign arms. There was a period when Leo no doubt hoped that Bismarck would repay him for his concessions by THE PAPACY AND FRANCE 45 threatening Italy .^ It has, however, been chiefly on France that the intransigents have based their hopes. Ever since 1 871, when Thiers threatened that it was only France's weakness that kept her from interfering, there has been a party there for restoring the Tem- poral Power by force of arms. And at one time there were men at the Vatican, who would have welcomed a Franco-Italian war with all its horrors, oblivious or careless that it would have meant the irreparable ruin of Catholicism in Italy. Padre Zocchi, a Jesuit, in a book regarded by Catholics as more or less authoritative, wrote in 1884 that he " who entered Eome with gunshot will never leave except for gun- shot," and that the Pope's independence would probably be secured only by war, " which, after all, is the means which Providence has always chosen hitherto." The still more authoritative La verita intorno alia questione romana, whose first edition was published at the Vatican Press, hints with equal confidence at war in the interest of the Papacy.^ Leo himself expressly repudiated the militant ambitions of the latter book ; but he, too, has evidently counted on French pressure. There is no other possible explanation of his persistent attempts to wreck the Triple Alliance, which, as he told Monsignor d'Hulst in 1893, he considered the chief obstacle to the restoration of the Temporal Power. It is difficult to say how far the policy prevails now. The Pope's Secretary of State, Cardinal RampoUa, still * Chiala, La triplice e la dupUce alleanza, 492-93, 730-36. 2 Zocchi, Pa/pa e re (ed. 2), 190, 207 ; B. 0. S., La veritd itUorno alia questione romana (ed. 9), 37, 46. 46 ITALY TO-DAY assiduously courts the French Government ; but there is an increasing restiveness inside the Vatican at a policy, which concedes everything to French anti- clericalism for the sake of a problematical return. EampoUa himself is now charged with feeding the French with promises and shadows. The Oriental missions are less exclusively in French hands since the appointment of a German as head of the Fran- ciscan orders. Cardinal Ledochowski, who as Prefect of the Propaganda is very powerful, strongly opposes a pro-French policy, and even if the Vatican still desires it, the force of events tells fatally against French intervention. The relations between France and Italy have much improved during the last three years. In the contest for colonial expansion, diplo- matists have no ears for the Pope's griefs, and the day for a third French expedition to Kome is past. There remains the alternative of pressure from within. It is a passive hostility, for the theory of a Clericalist plot three years ago, with or without the alliance of Republicans and Socialists, has no tittle of evidence to support it. The policy shapes itself in an attempt to weaken and discredit the State by the disciplined abstention of Catholics from Parliamentary life. In the words of the Catholic apologists, it is a standing protest against a state of things which denies the Pope his liberty. Besides, it helps to satisfy foreign Catholics, and the Vatican knows well that if Italian Catholics took their part in politics, they would soon cease to care for the Temporal Power, The veto was formulated in 1883 by the Sacred THE NON EXPEDIT 47 Penitentiary, whicli pronounced that it was inex- pedient that Catholics should vote at Parliamentary elections, though it added that all the circumstances should be considered before voting necessarily became a sin. In 1895 the Pope expressly forbade Catholics to vote, and the inexpedient [non expedit) became unlawful. If the rule had been generally obeyed, it would have been a serious danger to the State. But it attempted the impossible. Wiser men, like Manning, always protested against it. The mass of thinking Catholic Italians, who care for their country and have no wish to see the work of Unity undone, resent it more and more. It seems to them mere pique to sulk in their tents, while there are questions of more pressing moment to fight for in Parliament — religious education, the marriage law, the struggle against Socialism, perhaps some modification of the Law of Guarantees. Some of the more democratic accept with ill-grace what seems a slight to representative institutions. The priests, especially in the South, often have close ties with the authorities, and look to the Deputy for favour or promotion.^ Catholic nobles sigh for in- vitations to Court, middle-class Catholics want their share of public office. Bribery and landlord influence often have more weight than the veto of the priest. And so the policy of abstention has very largely broken down. The almost unanimous evidence of men of all parties goes to show that, always excepting the Catholic stronghold in the province of Bergamo, the non expedit is little observed, especially in the 1 See below, p. 261. 48 ITALY TO-DAY South. There is no Papal veto on voting at municipal elections, and yet the proportion that goes to the poll does not greatly differ in the two cases. In 1895, 63 per cent, of the registered electors voted in the local elections ; in the last three Parliamentary elections 58 to 59 per cent, voted, and in the greater part of the Centre and South the proportion was higher in the latter than in the former. It is true that in a few cases, as at Novara and Eovigo, where the Extreme Left carried their candidates at the last Parliamentary elections, the Clericalist vote enabled the Moderates to carry the local elections shortly afterwards. It is said that many Catholics abstain on principle from claiming a Parliamentary vote ; but it is impossible to test the statement, and at Bergamo, at all events, the Catholics have been careful to be placed on the register. On the whole, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that both abstention and non-registration are due much more to indifference than to obedience to the Pope's veto.^ At the recent elections the non expedit seems to have been less than ever observed. There is little doubt that the Pope was asked to waive it, and refused. Strenuous appeals were made to the Catholics not to vote, but the anxiety to defeat the Socialists was too strong. Many felt with the Turin Clerical, who said that no Papal veto could prevent him from carrying water when the house was on fire. A priest in the diocese of Cremona, Don Boldori, worked 1 Probably sometimes to temporary migration ; at Zogno, where the proportion of voters was lowest at the last election, four-fifths of the male population are said to migrate in search of work every year. THE NON EXPEDIT 49 hard and openly to defeat the Socialist candidate, in order " to check the irreligion and immorality " which fol- lowed the spread of Socialism. Though the democratic Catholic press attacked the Conservatives, many other Catholic papers urged their readers to vote for them. At Palermo a church was lent for the Conservative committee-room ; at Turin, at Lecco, in Liguria, pro- bably in a large number of Northern constituencies, in a stUl larger number in the South, the Catholics, often their priests, worked and voted for the Ministerialist candidates. Don E. Murri has estimated that the Catholic vote turned the scale against the Extreme Left candidates in twenty constituencies. Even in the province of Bergamo the abstentions went down from 71 to 65 per cent. The non expedit has failed to bring the State to its knees. All this tends to peace. No doubt there are still many irreconcilables on both sides. There are men in the Curia, mostly Spanish and South Italians, who, like Zola's Cardinal Boccanera,^ rather than yield, would have the Church " die standing in its glorious integrity, conceding nothing, abandoning nothing, fearing nothing ; " who, in the words of the Civilta Cattolica, boast that the " spirit of Catholicism " is " the spirit of the middle ages," and still regard the Government as an agent of Freemasonry, bent on the extirpation of religion. There is the almost intolerable ' Cardinal Boccaaera is the only character in Zola's Bome which at all corresponds to any original. Critics^of all schools are agreed in regarding the bulk of the book as quite untrustworthy. M. Zola spent fifteen days in Rome to get up his local colour, and most of the book was written before his visit. D 50 ITALY TO-DAY provocation of men, who challenge the State by stencil- ling the walls at election time with " Long live Leo XIII.; Catholic electors, do not vote to-day." There is the childish temper of bishops, who won themselves a gratuitous unpopularity by ostentatiously absenting themselves from the funeral services for King Humbert. There are anti-clericals at the other extreme, who call for fresh legislation against the Church, and wreck each approach of the Government towards conciliation. There is still much local bitterness between the ex- tremists of both sides. In a Romagnuol village a "Society of the 20th of September"^ imports a Protestant pastor to preach in opposition to the priest ; at Barletta a new Catholic club is at once confronted by a Masonic lodge. But among the moderate men of both parties there is a growing desire for peace. " Two hundred thousand people in this city," said an eminent cleric of Genoa to us, "would illuminate their houses to celebrate a reconciliation between Pope and King." In Parliament ministers can talk of compromise with- out the old cries of disapproval. The opposition to religious teaching in the schools is dying down. The common persecution of 1898 has engendered a cer- tain fellow-feeling between Socialists and progressive Catholics. At the Vatican every one, from the Pope downwards, feels how much the Church is suffering from the present tension. The irreconcilables were dismayed by the issue of the Cuban war and the possible portent of an American war-fleet in European ' The anniversary of the day when the Italians entered Eome in 1870, and now a national holiday. GROWTH OF CONCILIATORY FEELING 51 waters. Religious bodies have large sums invested in the Italian funds and house property at Rome, and are therefore concerned in the stability of the State. Ardent Catholics like Count Paganuzzi, the President of the Catholic Congress, talk of " our common country," and ostentatiously profess their zeal for Unity. The Christian Democrats " ask that the present antagonism between the institutions of the country and the Church and Pope may cease." Communal Councils are schools of patriotism, and the Catholic councillors at Milan attend the unveiling of a monu- ment to Victor Emmanuel. Catholics and Moderates, occasionally Catholics and Democrats, work harmoni- ously together on local bodies. Here and there a broad-minded man like Padre Semeria preaches the union of men of all creeds in social work. And already there is a good deal of mutual understanding between the Government and the Vatican. The Italian and Vatican police work harmoniously together at the Papal celebrations in St. Peter's. It was arranged through the now Queen-Dowager that the Court should have a quiet season during the Holy Year. The Government reinstates chaplaincies in the fleet. The Sacred Penitentiary allows Communal Councils to accept from the State grants of expropriated Church property, and in exchange to cancel from their budgets grants to the church or priest. Emigration is a neutral ground, on which the civil authorities and the priests work together. The Vatican, at the request of the Government, withdraws the French missionaries from Erythraea, and sends Italians in their place. The pre- 52 ITALY TO-DAY feet at Udine officially organizes the Catholic pil- grimages to Rome. There is thus an increasing good feeling growing up, and, at all events in practical and non-essential matters, the fight is largely with blank cartridge. But that either side will formally renounce its hostility seems impossible. Crispi probably tried his best in 1887 and failed. The Papacy never ex- plicitly abandons a position or owns itself in the wrong. Italy perhaps might gain temporarily, if she made her peace with the Pope by the cession of a little piece of Rome, and with good-will on both sides its minor inconveniences might be avoided. But she cannot abate her dignity by surrender, and she knows that her strength is to sit still, till the Temporal Power has lost its interest for all the world and passes into the limbo of the forgotten and impossible. It is, however, not improbable that the next Pope will remove the non expedit. Leo himself is pledged to it and cannot abandon it ; but Don Boldori's argu- ments seem to have impressed even him. " As long as I live," he is reported to have told the obstinate priest, " the non expedit will be maintained ; my successor will see what is best to do afterwards." It has been rumoured since, that orders have been sent from Rome that all Catholics are to claim their votes. If this be so, it must mean that a change of policy after the present pontificate has already been decided on. The Vatican is too sagacious to persist in a plan of secon- dary importance, which it is powerless to enforce. The " Christian Democrats " want to see a demo- cratic Catholic party in Parliament ; the conservative CATHOLIC-MODERATE ALLIANCE 53 Catholics already, as a whole, vote with the Moderates. And with the removal of the non expedit will disappear the last barrier to a definite alliance of the great body of Catholics and Conservatives. It is true that hitherto the Catholics have repudiated any formal alliance, and their democratic wing strenuously opposes it, but the desire for union is patent on both sides, however much fusion may be deferred by such incidents as the fric- tion at King Humbert's funeral. The two parties are already allied for municipal aflfairs in many places. At the late election the Pelloux Government bid openly for Catholic support. The social ties between the two sides are very strong, and a common dread of Socialism draws them together. Catholics realize very acutely that the struggle of the future is between themselves and the Socialists. It is true that there has been a slight approximation between Socialists and Christian Democrats. They suflFered together in 1 898 ; Chris- tian Democrats persecuted by the bishops and Socialists harried by the Government make common cause ; some, at all events, of the Christian Democrats warmly backed the Extreme Left in their obstructionist tactics last year, and rejoiced in their electoral successes. But they recognize as clearly as do the other Catholic sections that Socialism is the enemy. "We must be beforehand with the Socialists, or we shall be annihilated," said a speaker at the Catholic Congress of Ferrara. " We have beaten Liberalism, we shall beat Socialism, the generous enemy that is now ad- vancing to fight us," said Don Albertario, the semi- republican priest of Milan, whom the Government 54 ITALY TO-DAY imprisoned in 1898. Men who want to secure reli- gious education, to win State recognition for the reli- gious rite of marriage, to give the priests a partial control of the charities, to raise the position of the poorer clergy ; others, who think more of forming " a wise and great party of the men of order, a phalanx of true Conservatives," which will defend property from Socialist 'attacks ; a great mass of Catholics of all classes, who long for some visible sign of reconciliation between Church and Government — all these would welcome the alliance of Catholics and Conservatives. B. The Social Work of the Catholics Of late years there has been a very considerable advance in the social activity of the Church. It is true that the great mass of the clergy, at all events in the South, are still untouched by the new spirit. Their sympathies are with the middle and upper classes. Indifferentism is an impalpable enemy, and they have no sectarian spur as in a Protestant country. The inferior teaching, the benumbing atmosphere of most of the seminaries, is a bad training for a progressive clergy. " The style of teaching," says a Catholic writer, " the ordinary conversation, the means adopted to train the minds of our priests, are all charged with the heavy, enervating superficiality, which is so apparent in Italian clerical life." In the Centre and South the average priest is pious, kind, hardworking, often the friend and comforter of his flock, but he is ignorant and superstitious, and dreads any novelty in science or politics ; just where the CATHOLIC SOCIALISM 55 Church seems strongest in pomp and popularity, the new spirit is felt least. The bishops, as a rule, are too puzzled to give guidance in social questions, and sometimes harass any priest who is democratic in his sympathies. But hostile or indifferent as the majority of the clergy are to social reform, a consider- able number of the younger priests, especially in the towns of the North, have a high conception of their work. They visit the poor, hunt up parents who do not send their children to school and catechism, busy themselves with various kinds of social activity. A few here and there in the villages are the apostles of agricultural improvement. It is part of the great wave of " Catholic Socialism," which has rolled in from Germany and France. " Socialism " is a misnomer, for there is little that is socialistic in its policy. It is in the main (apart from the more advanced section in Germany) an attempt to moralize the rights of pro- perty, together with a curious, half-true, half-false criticism of modern liberalism and modern economics. Its prophet is Thomas Aquinas ; it holds with him that there is no absolute right of possession, no jus utendi abutendique,^ and that those who have must give their superfluity to those who need. They see how the destruction of the old guilds and the rise of great industries tends to leave the worker an isolated unit, powerless to hold his own against the capitalist. Their demands of the State are generally mild — factory legislation for women and children, compulsory Sunday 1 The Italian law, being based on the Roman, is more than usually tender to the rights of property. See Signer Salvioli's admirable study, / difetti sociali del codice civile (Palermo, 1 891). 56 ITALY TO-DAY rest, land law reform ; some of them add a minimum wage. Their economic panacea is a system of "cor- porations," which sometimes means not much more than Catholic trade-unions of workmen and Catholic associations of employers, with a common machinery for the settlement of disputes, but more often takes the fantastic form of a compulsory grouping into a close organization of all employers and workers in a trade, always with the ulterior aim of a Catholic propa- gandism, and sometimes with the strange political con- ception of parliaments representative not of localities but of trades and professions. In politics the Catholic Socialists are reactionaries, looking back to medieval precedents, as a rule bitterly hostile to Liberalism, often the ally, perhaps the tool, of aristocratic Con- servatism. But ideas, when they cross the Alps, have a way of losing their patrician colour, and in Italy the movement has no sinister relations with great landlords. It keeps its humanitarian zeal, its sectarian ends, its fantastic economies, its practical good works. It had its precursors in the eighties in Curci and Libe- ratore the Jesuit, but before the appearance of the encyclical Rerum Novarum, it had only touched a few isolated thinkers. Since then it has become a big fact in Italian life and thought. It runs in two channels. Its more Conservative wing is represented by the Catholic Congresses. The Congresses practi- cally began in 1875, but it is only since 1891 that they have met regularly or set their hand seriously to social work. Their social programme, as drafted at the Congress of Rome in 1894, aims at the build- THE CATHOLIC CONGRESSES 57 ing up of the "Christian Catholic social order." It wishes to protect and develop the property of chari- ties and religious corporations as " a reserve treasure for the people " ; to protect national and municipal estates, which are to be used for the public good or leased to the poor ; to encourage and protect small properties ; to promote tenancy reform by long leases and compensation for improvements ; to en- courage profit-sharing ; to make usury illegal and regulate the operations of the Stock Exchange ; above all, to promote "corporations" both of employers and workmen if possible, of workmen alone if the employers stand aloof. Their municipal programme includes a wages clause in public contracts, a fair wage for employees, fair rents for tenants on muni- cipal or charitable estates, a reduction of local duties on articles of necessity, and a vigorous administration of sanitary and factory laws. But its most important work is independent of State action. It has done little in the towns, but in parts of North Italy it is carrying on a very valuable work among the peasants. It has almost monopolized the Village Bank move- ment, and in 1899 could count 800 affiliated banks.^ It has started " Catholic Agricultural Unions " to supply implements and seed and manures to members at wholesale prices. It has at least three " Rural Unions " "to defend the interests of all agricultural classes," a large number of small friendly societies, a few cooperative stores and cooperative dairies, a HaU Insurance Society, besides some thirty People's Banks ' See below, p. 183. 58 ITALY TO-DAY in towns to make credit easy to the small tradesman and artisan, and a central bank at Parma. In the diocese of Bergamo it has carried cooperation among the peasants to a high state of development.^ All through the work of the Congresses the vein of Catholic propagandism runs strong. Sincerely patriotic as is their tone, their submissiveness to the Pope is still more marked. " Help in this work of redemp- tion," says Don Luigi Cerutti, the apostle of Village Banks, " and from the Bank you will bring the work- man to the Church." The rules of their Catholic working-men's banks make practising Catholicism a condition of membership. The members of their Casse rurali are bound not to act in opposition to the Church, and in practice are exclusively Catholic. They defend this policy on the plea that Catholicism is a guarantee of honesty, that in a small village the bond of a common faith is necessary to give mutual confidence. But the Catholics themselves are not agreed as to the wisdom of the sectarian test, and its franker advocates confess that its main object is to discipline the Catholic forces in town and country for political ends. It is doubtful, however, whether, outside cer- tain districts of Lombardy and Venetia, the Congresses represent any very strong or active force. They claim 4000 Parish Committees and 8000 affiliated societies of different kinds, a membership of 15,000 in the diocese of Milan, and considerable numbers in Lom- bardy, Venetia, Emilia, and parts of Tuscany. But many of the Parish Committees exist only on paper, ' See below, p. 1 89. THE CHRISTIAN DEMOCRATS 59 and they have little footing in Piedmont or in the Centre and South. Their work has been severely criticized by the "Christian Democrats" for its lack of initiative, its indifference to its own municipal programme, its sub- servience to the priests, its tendency to be wire-pulled by a few individuals.^ The " Christian Democrats " disclaim any hostility to the Congresses, but they represent a far more advanced line of social thought, which approximates more nearly to the Catholic Socialism of Germany.' The movement owes itself to a small band of younger men, foremost among whom are Don R. Murri of Rome and Signor Med a of Milan, zealous Catholics with an almost strained profession of devotion to the Pope, but finding in the encyclical Rerum Novarum and in the work of the German Catholic Socialists the inspiration for a thoroughgoing social programme. Catholics, they urge, must sever themselves from all association with Conservatism and capitalism, and fight the Socialists with a policy that meets the real needs of modern industrial life. They support the non expedit in a hope that Catholics will hold back from political life till they have learned to be Democrats, but they plead earnestly that there may be no hostility to popular institutions or Italian Unity. Far outstripping the political programme of the Congresses, they ask for a minimum wage and. a maximum day's work, for a large reduction in the army budget, and wide financial reforms in the inte- 1 The Congress at Kome last year seems to have been more demo- cratic in tone than the earlier Congresses. 6o ITALY TO-DAY rest of the poor. The strength of the Christian Democrats lies among the younger priests of the North, especially in Piedmont. The Diocesan Committee of Milan, though affiliated to the Congresses, appears to be mainly under their influence ; and despite the oppo- sition of the majority of the bishops, who have some- times even prohibited their Committees, they have no doubt a certain strength. They are doing a very noble piece of work in training the clergy to a high conception of social duty, and they are leavening Italian Catholicism with a spirit that in many respects is genuinely democratic. But, much as all men of good-will must admire their work, it may be doubted whether, as a party, they have a future. It seems well-nigh impossible that they can contest with Social- ism the leadership of the working classes ; however democratic their views, they cannot content them with mere programmes, or compete with men who are fight- ing the battle of the proletariat in Parliament. It is still less likely that they will, especially since the last encyclical, win the mass of the Catholics to their side. They will do not a little to leaven Italian life with a high ideal, and theirs will be the highest meed that can come to any religious party, that it has forwarded the general deed of man and died in doing it. CHAPTER III THE SOCIALISTS History of Italian Socialism. The Mariite School. Attitude towards (i) the peasants and cooperation ; (2) other Democratic parties. The "minimum programme." Socialist strength in (i) the middle classes ; (2) the artisans and peasants. The Republicans. The Radicals. The Extreme Left. The very rapid growth of Socialism, its appearance as a Parliamentary party, its absorption of much of what is best in national life and thought, is the master-fact of Italian politics to-day. A movement, that barely existed ten years ago, is now their most living force ; and its enthusiasm, its ability, its capacity of adapta- tion, are proofs of the political genius that is potent still in Italy. Socialism made a late appearance there. The ab- sorbing interest of the national movement, Mazzini's influence, above all the absence of great industries, made Italy before 1870 an unkind soil for any growth of Socialism. In the sixties such little extreme thought as there was, was anarchist. Bakounine gave con- siderable attention to Italy, and in 1870 the Anarchists had won a certain amount of ground, at all events in Eomagna. But already in the seventies their clubs were wavering towards Socialism. The extension of the franchise in 1882 converted many, like Andrea Costa, to the milder creed; and down to 1885 it is probable 62 ITALY TO-DAY that Socialism was gradually gaining on Anarchism, though neither made much headway. Meanwhile, the environment was changing fast in Northern Italy. Capitalist industry was spreading ; the Nationalist movement had long since done its work ; the old Radical and Republican parties, though still strong, had little programme to attract the industrial masses, who were beginning to feel their strength in the towns of Piedmont and Lombardy. About 1885 a " working - men's party " was formed at Milan, and soon counted 40,000 members. It was a mixture of Anarchist and Socialist elements, that admitted only working men, and attacked the Radicals more bitterly than any other party ; and the common hostility of the progressive middle classes and the Government soon wrecked it. The ground was clear for a purely Socialist party, and in 1891 the publication of the Critica Sociale by Signor Turati, a wealthy Milanese barrister, and Dr. Anna Kuliscioff, a Russian exile, marks the rise of the CoUectivists in Italy. They were convinced Marxites, and took Das Kapital for their Bible. According to the doctrine they had sworn to, irresistible economic forces make for the gradual absorption of industry into ever fewer hands, till every trade becomes a gigantic monopoly. "With this the middle classes disappear, and society is parted into a few men of immense wealth on the one hand, on the other a great proletariat, economically at the mercy of the monopolists. But this proletariat in all Western countries has the vote, and as all classes, except the very rich, sink to a common level of THE MARXITE SCHOOL 63 economic subjection, they organize themselves politi- cally for a " struggle of classes," which must end in the victory of the proletariat and the expropriation by the State, in the interest of the masses, of the whole wealth and industrial organization of the country. Marx' doctrine has about as much truth as other economic theories, but it has radically changed the whole moral atmosphere of Socialism. It is no longer revolutionary ; processes, that ex hypothesi owe themselves to an inevitable evolution, have no need of plot or insurrection to assist them ; a theory, that confounds middle class and working men in a common lot, destroys the old antagonism between them ; and the man who believes that the forces of nature are fighting irresistibly on his side gets the same kind of strength that the Puritan had when he prayed to the God of Battles. If the greatness of a book is measured by its influence. Das Kapital is in the sphere of social politics the greatest book of the past half-century. The Critica Sociale, a little fortnightly review, written with much skill and knowledge of economic facts, at once made a school. Its first result was to draw in a number of brilliant young men of university education — lawyers and doctors for the most part, — who threw themselves into the propaganda with the enthusiasm that Socialism evokes in every country on the Continent. Socialist clubs were founded, and in the same year of 1891, 150 working-men's societies were represented at the first Socialist Congress. Next year came the final rupture with the Anarchists, and 64 ITALY TO-DAY henceforward Socialism has been free from their dan- gerous association. The Socialists had now become a serious party, claiming nearly a quarter of a million well-organized adherents, with a new element of culture superadded, and all the strength of the Marxite doc- trine behind it. But it was rigid and exclusive, with no desire to compromise with any party or abate one tittle of its gospel. It would have no dealings with Radicals or Eepublicans, and from 1891 to 1893 it was welcomed by the Conservatives as a valuable ally against their old opponents. In the province of Forli so bitter was the feud between Socialists and Eepublicans, that, true to the savage traditions of the Romagnuol sects, each side assassinated men of the rival party. It was in vain that the more moderate leaders, as Ferri and Costa, urged at the Congress of 1893 a working alliance with the Republicans; Turati and the Milanese carried the Congress with them in a policy of isolation. The same exclusiveness marked their attitude to the peasants. The Marxite doctrine, shutting its eyes to inconvenient facts, preached the rapid disappearance of the small farmer and peasant proprietor, and the purists of the creed, as in Germany, deprecated any attempt to postpone their doom by pro- moting agrarian legislation or helping Village Banks. They would have left the peasants alone, or confined their rural propaganda to the agricultural labourers in the large-farm districts. But the heartlessness of a creed, that would sacrifice a great class to give Marx' theories a chance of coming true, was too callous for the more generous of them. The wiser section saw SOCIALISTS AND THE PEASANTS 65 that the Socialists could never be a majority in Italy unless they won the peasants ; they pointed out that here and there the small proprietors and farmers had already been attached to the party by a more sympa- thetic programme ; that the Village Bank, at all events, taught the value of union, just as the cooperative and friendly societies were often nurseries of Socialism ; that the Socialists had been most successful where, as in Emilia and the Mantovano, they had promoted cooperation and developed the ideal and sentimental side of the movement. It was slowly that their arguments convinced the majority of the party. It was the practical evidence of the value of cooperation, the personal pressure of Socialist peasant-proprietors, especially in Piedmont, that made the earlier policy of hostility or indifference an impossible one. Already in 1893 ^^^ Socialists of some districts were actively promoting cooperation. In 1896 the Socialist Congress decided to assist all forms of cooperation other than Village Banks, and take up the cause of the mezzaiuolo and small tenant ; but it still prophesied the speedy decay of peasant- proprietorship, and deprecated any legislation which aimed at arresting the decay. Next year even this remnant of the old gospel went overboard. It was discovered that Karl Marx' agrarian theories applied to England only, that small properties showed small tendency to disappear, and that there was room for small farms even in a Socialist society. It was decided to organize a vigorous propaganda among all classes of peasants. The ban was taken off even 66 ITALY TO-DAY the Village Banks, and the cold approval of co- operation changed to a strong appeal to forward its advance. About the same time the exclusiveness, that refused the alliance of other Democratic parties, began to break down. Crispi's savage repression in 1894 drew his victims together in common opposition to a policy, that struck at Eepublicans and Eadicals as much as at Socialists. Here and there, especially at Milan and Cremona, the Socialists refused to wait for the permission of their party, and openly allied themselves with the Eadicals at the local elections. In 1895 ^^^ Congress, with apparently a good deal of hesitation, decided that Socialists might vote for non-Socialist candidates at the second ballots. Two years later it found its hand forced by the action of the Lombards, and sanctioned a working alliance with other Democratic parties in special cases. Still, however, the movement towards compromise was a faltering one, and there was a strong minority in the party that disliked even the small con- cessions that had been made. On the whole, the period from 1 89 1 to 1897 is one of adhesion to the whole Marxite creed, of a dislike to unite with other popular parties, and of a policy of suspicion towards the peasants and cooperation. It needed the stimulus of persecution to change the Socialists into a practical political party. The early days, when the Government smiled on them, soon drew to a close. At the end of 1893 came the troubles in Sicily, and the blame of them was very unjustly set to their account. As long as Crispi remained in power, THE "MINIMUM PROGRAMME" 67 they were harassed and persecuted, but alike under his dragooning and Di Rudini's milder repression,^ they made steady growth. In 1895 they polled 60,000 votes and returned 1 2 Deputies ; in 1 897 they polled 108,000 votes and returned 16 Deputies.'' Next year came the Milan disturbances,* and with them and the violent reaction that followed, the character of Italian Socialism has radically changed. The tendencies that had already been at work before 1898 rapidly matured. Radical and Republican and Socialist leaders met in prison, and the "union of popular parties" became a project soon to be realized. The exclusiveness, the economic purism, the dislike of compromise begin to disappear ; Karl Marx is relegated to the background ; the Socialists become the advanced wing of a great Parliamentary party, and stand out as the champions of constitutional right and of a very practical political and social programme. The famous " minimum pro- gramme," though it dates from about 1895, comes into prominence now and marks the advent of a Parliamen- tary policy. It was revised and improved last year, and it would be difficult to formulate a better groundwork for the political and social legislation that Italy needs so urgently. It is a programme, says Professor Villari even of the earlier edition, that every sensible man could endorse almost in its entirety. Its political » See below, p. 88. * Owing to the difficulty of classifying a certain number of members, figures vary considerably in different estimates. We have taken for 1897 and 1900 those given by Signor Torresin in the Biforma Sociale for August 15, 1900. ^ See below, p. 92. 68 ITALY TO-DAY demands are universal suffrage for adults of both sexes, payment of Deputies and members of local councils, liberty of press and speech, of meeting and combina- tion, the neutrality of Government in disputes be- tween capital and labour, religious equality, a national militia in place of a standing army, a humaner Penal Code. The economic programme includes improved factory legislation for women and children, the pro- hibition of night work except in cases of public neces- sity, a normal thirty-six hours' rest once a week, reform of the laws on Accidents' Insurance and Old Age Pensions,^ compulsory insurance against sickness, the encouragement of arbitration in labour disputes, ad- mission of cooperative societies^ to contract on equal terms for public works, the reform of laws between land- lord and tenant, a Ministry of labour, the nationalization of railways and mines, which are to be worked by coope- rative associations or by the State. The eight-hours' day and minimum wage, which appeared in earlier editions of the programme, have disappea,red. The educational proposals would make compulsory education a reality, and would not only extend the compulsory age to the fifth standard (instead of the third as at present), but would include a further compulsory attendance for four years at evening or holiday schools. Poor school- children are to be fed and clothed. The universities are to be freed from State control, and " University Extension" lectures on the English model are to be promoted, apparently by the State. Financial reforms are to include the abolition of State duties on food, the 1 See below, p. 218. ' See below, p. 209. SOCIALISM IN THE MIDDLE CLASSES 69 repeal of all local customs-duties, a progressive income- tax and succession duty, the taxation of unearned in- crement, economies on the military and Civil Service budgets, and a reduction of interest on the national debt. The earlier editions of the programme contained an elaborate municipal policy — the municipalization of pub- lic services, an eight-hours' day and minimum wage for municipal employees, progressive rating, the prohibition of expenditure on theatres, fireworks, &c. {spese di lusso),^ the letting of municipal contracts to associations of labourers, the subsidizing of Chambers of Labour, the provision of food and clothes and a system of scholar- ships for poor children. But in the edition of last year most of these details are replaced by a general assertion in favour of municipal freedom and decentralization. Everything seems to favour the spread of Socialism in Italy : the pessimism that sees nothing that is good in the existing order; the optimism that during the last year or two looks to a happier time dawning for the country ; the anarchy of the old Parliamentary parties ; the happy accident which has enabled the Socialists to become the champions of constitutional right ; its own high faith and enthusiasm ; the fine qualities of its leaders ; the discipline and power of self-efiacement, which allows the frankest divergence of opinion, but loyally subordinates all personal differ- ences to unity ; the organization and propagandism, which, fitful though they sometimes are and weak as compared with those of German or Austrian Socialism, are far superior to those of any other Italian party. It ' See below, p. 267. 70 ITALY TO-DAY has monopolized many practical reforms, which, but for their blindness, the Conservatives and Liberals would have taken for their own. Alone among Italian parties it stands boldly for purity of public life, and while well-meaning men of Eight and Left have touched corruption with a trembling hand, the Socialists have smitten and spared not. To the best and most thoughtful of the educated middle classes it appeals through its high idealism, its call to intellect, its pro- test against the barrenness of public life, its splendid campaign against evil in high places. "The Critica Sociale," says a Milanese journalist, " has given almost all of us the social conscience." It is remarkable how many of the leaders of Italian thought are avowed Socialists — Lombroso, the criminologist whose fame is European ; De Amicis, the most popular of Italian novelists ; Ferrero, the best read of Italian social writers ; the poets Graf, Guerrini, and Giovanni Pascoli, the latter the best of the younger poets.^ Others — Sanarelli, the discoverer of the yellow-fever germ ; Chiaruggi, the leading embryologist of Italy ; Battelli, one of its best-known physicists ; Fradeletto, the organizer of the Art Exhibitions at Venice ; Pantaleoni, the economist ; lawyers of high repute, as Majno and Zerboglio, though not all Socialists, are Deputies of the Extreme Left. Gabriele D'Annunzio, till of late an ultra-Conservative, stood at the last election as one of its candidates. Smaller men of the educated middle class are drawn to Socialism, partly because they are poor themselves and sympathise with the poor, partly ' See below, p. 344. SOCIALIST AETISANS AND PEASANTS 71 because discontent finds a natural home among the educated unemployed, the multitude of young uni- versity men without work — doctors, lawyers, civil engineers, would-be civil servants. In the Civil Ser- vice itself the Socialists have many adherents, who pass them on secret circulars, or, if sent by the Govern- ment at election time to work for a Ministerialist candidate, take care to help his Socialist rival. The managers and organizers of the rising industries of the North are often Socialist in sympathy. An analysis of thg professions of the thirty-three Socialist Deputies shows that among them ten are lawyers, seven are professors and teachers, three are journalists, three are men of business, and only three are small tradesmen or working-men. It is hardly necessary to say that Socialism is very strong among the artisans and railwaymen, especially in the industrial centres of the North. It is here that it has won most of its Parliamentary victories. At the Milanese Socialist Club one sees the bright, eager, intelligent artisans, who with the young professional men are the backbone of the party. They are not driven to it by poverty ; Biella, where perhaps wages are higher than anywhere else in Italy, is very Socialist. But they are keen politicians, eager for a better future for their class, sickened by the folly and corruption and misgovernment of the ruling classes. Even in the South, here and there, they are becoming Socialist. Among the mezzaiuoli tenant-farmers Socialism is hardly existent, but it has made a certain amount of headway with the peasant proprietors, especially 72 ITALY TO-DAY in parts of Piedmont. It is strong in many of the Eomagnuol villages and sometimes in those of Emilia./ In 1895 ^^^ 1897, and no doubt last year too, a gooft many small proprietors voted for the Socialist candi- dates. Their sons come back from military serviie, often with minds unprejudiced against novelties ; ind men, who are smarting under bad government, natui^Uy gravitate to the party that is making the best ight against it. Among the agricultural labourers| the Socialists have a considerable footing, chiefly iii the Po valley, but even as far south as Tuscany ; and they practically control some of the rural cooperative and friendly societies. It is probable that the army is slightly afi"ected ; at all events, the secret circulars published by the Socialist paper, the Avanii, show that the authorities are seriously afraid of a Socialist propaganda there. The bulk of^Socialism is, of course, in the North. An analysis of the recent elections shows that Piedmont returned six Socialist Deputies, Lombardy seven, Venetia two, Liguria one, Emilia and Eomagna eleven, Tuscany two, while only two came from the whole Southern mainland, and two from Sicily. It must be remembered, however, that the Socialists had a good many unsuccessful candidates who polled heavily, and that a large number of them voted for Eadical and Republican candidates ; in Piedmont and Tuscany, at all events, their strength is greater than would appear from these figures. On a low estimate their total poll was 164,000,^ or more than one in eight of the whole number of votes recorded. ' See note 2, on p. 67. PSEUDO-SOCIALISTS 73 It goes without saying that these figures do not all represent convinced Socialists. Many who vote for a Socialist candidate would not necessarily subscribe to Marxite doctrines, even if they understood them, perhaps care little even for the minimum programme. There are a good many lawyers and civil engineers and men of business who join the Socialists, because they like to stand well with the rising party, or hope to represent Socialist seats in Parliament, or secure posts under Socialist municipal councils. At Imola the Socialists have been the catspaw of a local bourgeois clique ; at Gonzaga the leaders have used their power to place themselves in coveted local offices. The university Socialist, says Professor Villari, does not try to study the condition of the poor, but is content to abuse the bourgeoisie and invoke the struggle of classes. "If things do not improve," said a discon- tented civil servant, "we want a war, or the plague, or Socialism." The less educated working-man often votes for the Socialist, because Socialism has given him a vague idea that somebody has robbed him, or because he is smarting from some act of petty tyranny. At Bari a year or two ago the cab-drivers struck against a heavy municipal license, and were arrested and tried for it ; in revenge they joined the Socialists in a body. Many in all classes are simply attracted by the higher character and intellect of the Socialist candidates, or vote for them from some of the extraneous reasons which aflfect elections in every country. On the other hand, Socialist influence reaches 74 ITALY TO-DAY widely beyond its own ranks. Many Radicals and Republicans are Socialists at heart, or at least believe in the minimum programme, though they will not label themselves as such. The Republicans are a decaying party. Very weak between 1870 and 1890, they gained ground in the struggle against Crispi, but the rise of Socialism has eclipsed them, and it is their obvious destiny to rotate round the larger body. They are fairly strong in the Chamber ; they number twentv-nine JDeputies.. and polled 79,000 votes at the late elections, gaining ground in the North, but losing in the South. But it is probable that they owed their success largely to Socialist support, and though they are still strong in Romagna and the Marches and Apulia, and more or less at Milan and Rome, they do not count as a real force in the country. They are quattro nod in un sacco (four nuts rattling in a bag), a party much in evidence, but with strength dispro- portionate to its seeming. Their policy does not touch the radical evils of the time. The question of monarchy or republic has gone into the background. Some of them retain Mazzini's hostility to Socialism without his zeal for social reform. Their social ideal is a nation of small proprietors ; their programme — a vague and weak one as compared with the Socialist — stops short at compulsory education, a progressive income-tax, heavy succession duties, and the expro- priation of uncultivated lands. They are divided among themselves. One section is Unitarian, another Federalist ; some are anti-Clericals, while at Lodi Republicans and Clericalists work in alliance. A few THE RADICALS 75 are Irredentists,^ and therefore favour a strong army. They have come out wiser from the late constitutional struggle ; there is more harmony among the different sections. Though there is still a group which, faithful to the Mazzinian tradition, would have no part in a monarchical Parliament, the majority have learnt that the fight for liberty must be made in the polling-booths and not in the streets. They have a value in their in- sistence on the moral aspect of politics, in their protest that the rights of man and sense of citizenship have their worth as well as material prosperity. But they have no future as an independent party. As the moderate wing of Socialism, they will help to swell the great movement on which their country's destinies depend. The monarchical Radicals have a bigger future. They are considerably stronger than the Republicans, and have a large following in Lombardy, Venetia, Emilia, and Tuscany. They polled 89,000 votes last year, and have thirty-four representatives in the Chamber. The Secolo, l;Ke most 'poweriin'^or^ papers, is an able and high-toned exponent of their views. The Radicals represent a large number of men, especially among the lower- middle class and artisans, who are Monarchists, who do not care to swallow the Socialist formulas, but smart as much as Socialists or Republicans under the discredit and misgovernment of the old political parties, and are as eager as they to see a large extension of political rights and a more or less thorough social programme. They draw too, though perhaps in a less degree than the Socialists, ' See below, p. 296. 76 ITALY TO-DAY from the cultured middle classes, and count among their Deputies a very capable leader in Signer Sacchi and men of such high economic talent as Signers Pantaleoni and Guerci. It is not easy to speculate as to their future. If they lose their faith in the monarchy, or if, on the other hand, the Socialists frankly accept the monarchy, their present alliance with the extreme party is likely to continue, and they may possibly become more or less absorbed into it. But there are strong tendencies among them, which make for an alliance with the Constitutional Left ; and a coalition Government of Radicals and Constitutional Left is a not improbable contingency in the future.^ As a link between the old Liberals and the popular parties, the Radicals are doing a work of great usefulness. But their position is one of extreme delicacy, and it will require much tact in their leaders to content their friends on either side. From the union of Socialists, Republicans, and Radicals springs the Parliamentary party of the Extreme Left. Each section retains its autonomy, and they do not always act together. For instance, the Republicans joined in the Parliamentary homage to the late king's memory, while the Socialists, though with all courtesy, abstained. It is rather more than a coalition, and rather less than a party ; the more reactionary the Government, the closer will be its union ; under a Liberal Government it is hardly likely to hold together, though, in any case, the mutual respect and confidence that the diflferent ^ See below, note on p. 109. THE EXTREME LEFT ^^ sections have gained, are likely to prevent any serious friction and will make them often work together. The party is now flushed with its recent triumphs, its dramatic resistance to the Pelloux Government, its successes at last year's elections, which have raised its Parliamentary strength from sixty to ninety-eight and put every Ministry at its mercy. They have well earned their success. They have changed the whole Parliamentary atmosphere, bringing with them a new breath of seriousness and high purpose and determination. " They have forced Parliament and the country," cqnfesses a Deputy of the old Left, " to attend to principles and forget personalities." Through all the trickery and intrigue of Italian Par- liamentary life they have taken a straight, strong line, and in the crisis of 1900 the little band of sixty made reaction impossible. Their obstructionist tactics of last year sound ill in English ears ; but it is diflBcult to condemn their action, when the fight was for bare liberty, and, at all events, it was adopted from a pro- found conviction that only by it could Parliament and the country save constitution and freedom. Once or twice in the tension of the struggle and after intoler- able provocation the Extreme Left lost its head. But where moderation has been possible, it has shown a rare moderation. There has been little or no fighting and noise for noise and fighting's sake. "We should like, said Signor Turati in the Chamber, "to respect the Conservatives and fight them with courteous and peaceful methods." This will probably be more possible now. The passion on both sides and the traditional 78 ITALY TO-DAY want of decorum in the Chamber may still lead some- times to regrettable incidents. But the crisis of the spring of 1900 is not likely to recur. The Extreme Left is entering on a new Parliamentary phase, and one that will test its statesmanship. The Socialists have yet got to sift their men, and perhaps winnow out a good many, who confound oratory and common- sense. The party can no longer be content with a negative policy. It is sufficiently strong to influence legislation, and it must be prepared with a programme. Will it produce one that will be at once strong and reasonable ? So far the omens are good. The party has practically lost any revolutionary colour. Here and there there linger a few Federalist hankerings, but they are little more than pious opinions, that at the most may promote a modest decentralization. Unless the Crown throws in its lot with the ultra- Conservatives, there will be no Republican agitation, for even those who are Republicans in theory feel that that would be mere waste of political energy, when there are a hundred social questions crying for solu- tion. They have given the new king a dignified but genuine welcome, and there are Socialists and Radicals who have been overtly appealing to the Crown against the Parliamentary majority. If a Democratic Ministry comes into power, they will necessarily be supporters of the Government, and become ipso facto Consti- tutionalists.^ And in their social and political policy of the moment the Extreme Left are moderate even to excess. In spite of themselves, owns the Critica ' See below, note on p. 109. THE EXTREME LEFT 79 Sociale, the Socialists are obliged to think at present more of political than of social remedies, and, it adds, the three great questions of military expenditure, the railway question, the modified Free Trade programme that finds its expression in treaties of commerce, are likely to absorb the time of the Chamber for several years to come. The abolition of the corn duty, the consolidation of political liberty, the reform of the magistrature, is the programme of Signor Ferrero, the Socialist writer. The abolition of the corn duty, the reduction of the price of salt, safeguards for personal liberty against police abuses, is the almost identical programme of Signor Pantaleoni, the Eadical Deputy. The Socialists are willing, up to a point, to accept legislation in the direction of " State Socialism," but they are suspicious of carrying it too far ; they feel that for a long time yet it would be a hazardous experiment to put more power into the hands of an anti-Liberal and incompetent bureaucracy, and they are more concerned to secure free play for trade-unionism and cooperation. And so, whatever its ultimate destiny may be, the policy of the Extreme Left will be for the present one of thorough-going Liberalism. Its dangers now are not that it may be extreme and doctrinaire. They lie a little in the possibility of friction between the different sections, but more in the temptation to be respectable and commonplace. The party has to meet the dangers of success — the adhesion of time-servers and men with their own game to play, the impalpable seductiveness of social influences, the risk that it may barter its single-minded democratic strength for peace 8o ITALY TO-DAY and compromise. Some kind of understanding with the Constitutional Left may be inevitable and desirable, but it implies the possibility of contagion from the bad traditions of Italian politics. These are serious dangers, but the Extreme Left, and especially its Socialist wing, has much on its side — the high character and ability of its leaders, its own honesty and discipline, the eager democratic forces behind it, the new spirit of a time when apathy and corruption seem lifting and a new patriotism dawning on the nation. If this party, on which so many hopes are resting, preserves its sincerity and cleanhandedness, it may lift the country to a new level ; if it sinks, as Right and Left have sunk before it, the last state of Italy will be worse than the first. NOTE The Italian Anarchists have come into prominence again by the murder of the late king, but, however dangerous they may be as individuals, as a political party they count for very little. There is a certain quantity of purely theoretic anarchism among the studious young university men, just as there is in Russia ; but with them it is more a phase of speculative thought than any principle of political action. There is the anarchism of the bomb and dagger, which has a very Hmited number of believers among the poor. It is remarkable that the misery of the land has not bred more, but the gentle Italian nature is repugnant to a creed whose means are cruel, and it is noteworthy that the notorious ItaUan political assassins have most or all been emigrants, and their anarchism has been imported from abroad. The Socialists have valiantly combated the Anarchists with rival arguments and organization, and have cut the ground away from them by offering a humaner creed to the men who were driven into violent courses by social injustice. CHAPTER IV THE " FATTI DI MAGGIO" AND THEIR SEQUEL Discontent. Sicilian riots of 1893-94. Coercion under Orispi and Di Rudini. The food riota of 1898. The Fatti di maggio. Coercion under Pelloux. The Decreto-legge. The Extreme Left obstruct. The elections of 1900. Saracco Ministry. The recent political history of Italy centres round tlie Milan riots of May 1898. Their immediate causes were local and accidental, but the circumstances that made them possible had been accumulating for years. Three or four years ago, even more than to-day, the whole Italian atmosphere was charged with discontent. The poverty was very great. It is true that it was no worse, perhaps it was rather less intense, than twenty years before. Bread, despite the progressive increase of the corn duty, was generally cheaper. Industry was beginning to revive in the North. ■ To some extent the South was recovering from the crisis that followed the rupture of the French Commercial Treaty in 1887. But if the poverty was actually no greater, it was felt more. Wants had risen faster than the means of satisfying them. The march of civilization, the spread of railways, the extravagance that came in with the speculations of the eighties, the better food and clothes of the conscripts, the inroads of advertisement in the couiitry districts, had all had their share in raising the standard of life. The poor 82 ITALY TO-DAY had learnt to resent their sufferings. " There is," said Professor Nitti, " a general discontent, not because things have grown worse, but because we have grown better and are less tolerant of wretchedness." And the burden was the more intolerable, because mis- government was doing so much to add to it. All the promises of their rulers — of Depretis and Crispi and the King— that the social problem should be faced, had come to nothing. The rupture of the French treaty had ruined thousands of the poorer middle class. The corn duty made bread artifi- cially dear. Italy seemed to have accumulated all the economic evils that bad government could bring — heavy taxes, high tariffs, a depreciated currency, adverse exchanges. And, worst of all, the people had learnt that the Government was as dishonest as it was incapable. The Bank scandals, the alliance with Mafia and Camorra,^ the manipulation of tariffs and bounties in the interest of a few manufacturers and speculators, had destroyed all confidence in the morality of statesmen. There were many who thought with the peasants of Partinico that "the Government was a tyrant who swallowed everything, robbed at his will, and disposed of property and persons for the benefit of a few." It was a Government that courted revolution, and but for the bottom of common-sense and moderation and long-suffering in the Italian nature, revolution would have been almost inevitable. The sequel will show that if the discontent ever went beyond a casual ^ See below, pp. 119, 121. SICILIAN EIOTS OF 1893-94 83 riot, it was due to the mismanagement or violence of the Government. The first troubles came in Sicily. The island was sufi"ering from a depression in all its chief productions — wine, lemons, sulphur — and though it was not quite the most miserable part of Italy, there were special circumstances that made it the most uneasy. The proud impatience of the people, the old antagonism to the mainland, an absentee landlordism forgetful of its duties, the local tyranny of cliques which abused local government for party and personal ends, kept Sicily ripe for agitation. In 1 89 1 Socialism made its first appearance, and the Socialists organized a network of unions (fasci) among the downtrodden peasants. The members of the fasci knew or cared little about Socialism. Practically, the organization was a kind of Land-League, and was in fact a security against violence. The fasci were founded and controlled by men of the middle class and a few young nobles ; they were religious, almost clericalist, in their tone ; they opened schools and aimed at developing cooperative societies and popular libraries ; in their club - rooms sometimes hung a crucifix, and by the side of Karl Marx and Mazzini were portraits of the King and Queen. In the troubled times that followed, their leaders always tried, and often managed, to keep order, and it was only a few of the worst organized fasci that had any hand in the disturbances. But the richer classes, trained by generations of unpunished tyranny, saw their power threatened. No longer would the landlords grind the faces of the 84 ITALY TO-DAY peasant-farmers ; no longer would the local cliques spend the rates for their own benefit. All the con- spired band of landlords and middlemen, of ofiicials and police, took fright. They refused work to members of the yasci; the police, unable to discover illegalities, invented them ; every demand for higher wages was prosecuted as " a strike with violence " ; the Sicilian Deputies had the ear of the Government, and hounded it on to flood the island with soldiers and put down the fasci with a strong hand. Collision inevitably resulted. Early in 1893 the peasants of Caltavuturo, thinking, probably with reason, that there was jobbery in the letting of the communal lands, went out one day in mass to dig them ; they were met by a company of soldiers, who without provocation fired on them and killed several. Giolitti promised that the soldiers should be prosecuted, but nothing was done, and feeling grew bitter through the island. Here and there the people were stung to violence. The police tried to break up the unions by legal or illegal means, and towards winter the people began to despair of peaceful remedy. In December the spirit was growing dangerous. Again and again some crowd, in protest against communal misgovernment and local taxes, hissed the Syndic or occasionally attacked the town-hall ; the soldiers fired, generally without any aggression from the crowd, the people retaliated with stones, till the street was strewn with dead and wounded men, and the people fled, to be arrested in batches and sentenced to savage penalties. Altogether in those days nearly 100 of the people and one soldier were killed. COERCION UNDER CRISPI 85 Meanwhile Giolitti had tried at first to shut his eyes to the trouble that was threatening, then made a feeble attempt to please both sides. He left the police a free hand in their evil work, and flooded the island with soldiery, but he seems to have hoped that the ofiicers, who all through behaved better than the civil officials, would act as peacemakers, and he put pressure on the local authorities to repeal the com- munal duties on corn. Naturally, he contented no- body, and the richer classes throughout the country called for Crispi, as the one man who had strength to stamp the sinister portent out. Crispi seems for a moment to have thought of conciliation and he planned drastic agrarian laws. But Crispi's head never long kept cool, and he readily believed the stories of conspiracy that the police invented. Convinced that only strong repression could save the island from revolution, he disgraced free Italy by a brutal coercion, that well- nigh rivalled the doings of Austrians or Bourbons in the old days. For seven months Sicily was under martial law. In many places people of all classes were arrested in mass ; the press was gagged ; co- operative stores, belonging to the poor, were dissolved and their eff"ects seized. The procedure of the military courts was often a farce of justice ; the evidence was generally such as no decent court would have listened to ; and though the young officers, who were the only counsel allowed to the defendants, manfully did their best, they were browbeaten by the presiding generals. The Central Committee of the fasci were charged at first with conspiring to sell the island to 86 ITALY TO-DAY France or Russia. The charge was made on the report of a police-officer, who had " metaphysical certainty " of its truth, but no evidence ; and though it was enough to convince Crispi, it was too flimsy even for a military court. They were sentenced, none the less, because, among other offences, they " ad- vocated the moral and material emancipation of the labourers." By June there were over 1800 Sicilians sentenced to the horrors of the semi-penal settlements on the islands {domicilio coatto). The Sicilian outbreaks were suppressed, and the landlords tore up their new agreements with their tenants. Disturbances among the marble-workers at Carrara were put down by martial law, though it was redeemed by General Heusch's endeavours to raise the position of the quarrymen. Coercion seemed success- ful, and Crispi expanded it into a crusade against Socialism and his own political enemies. "For two years," said Professor Sergi, "no man lived secure in his own house or in his own bed." A new temporary amendment to the Law of Public Security made any person liable to domicilio coatto, who excited to class hatred in a manner dangerous to the public peace. The Act was nominally aimed at the Anarchists ; in practice it was used against the Republicans and Socialists. Men were tried and condemned all over Italy for exciting to hatred of classes. A barrister was sent to domicilio coatto for singing the " Labourers' Hymn." The Government broke up the Agricultural Labourers' Union (lega di resistenza) in the Cremona district. A paper was sequestrated for attacking COERCION UNDER DI RUDINI 87 Crispi's African policy. The coercion naturally had the reverse effect of what it was intended to do. It created a feeling of disgust and indignation, that robbed the Government of all moral strength, and left it weaker and more discredited than before. Crispi's policy of adventure in Africa was perhaps meant to divert attention from home affairs ; but, if it were so, it singularly failed. His barren Imperialism soon lost its glamour, and Adowa was the signal for his fall. The country, tired of the dishonesty and recklessness of Giolitti's and Crispi's rule, turned to Di Rudini, as the one possible Premier who seemed to have a high standard of public morality. Even the Socialists welcomed him and his "Ministry of gentle- men" ; and in the universal reaction against "megalo- mania" and corruption Di Rudini had a noble chance to cleanse and heal. At first the new Ministry did well. Peace was made with Abyssinia ; better rela- tions were established with France ; the deficits nearly disappeared; for a moment there was less coercion, and the Government at once released nearly half the victims of domicilio coatto. But the Premier's weakness and the old miserable Parliamentary intrigues spoilt the splendid opportunity. Prefects were still removed or promoted for electoral services ; the duty on inferior cereals was increased to please the agrarian party; the Government hushed up a prison scandal, where a political offender, named Frezzi, was suspected of dying by foul play, and intensified the general dis- trust of law and police ; the Conservatives attacked him for his " pitiful toleration" of the extreme parties. 88 ITALY TO-DAY and though he left the Republicans almost unmolested, he mildly harried the Socialists. The Minister of Justice said that he had to think of defending "the institutions" as well as of observing the law. Men were sentenced i again for singing the " Labourers' Hymn," or prose- ; cuted or worried for assisting men on strike. Socialist ' meetings were forbidden ; Socialist Deputies were 1 shadowed and their telegrams mutilated. Two Com- : munal Councils were dissolved because Socialists sat . on them. A month after the Premier had declared himself in fa^'Our of Chambers of Labour,^ he allowed a Prefect to break up three. The Government pre- vented the reconstitution of the Cremona Labourers' Union, and broke up a tenants' defence league in Sicily. And meanwhile its promises of social legislation and military economies came to little, and Di Eudini's energies seemed absorbed in Parliamentary manoeuvring to Right or Left. Thus at the end of 1897 the situation was more dangerous than ever. When Di Rudini, after all his promises, did little or nothing to cleanse public life, the credit of Government went lower still, and the Frezzi scandal and another case of unpunished bank fraud at Como brought a feeling of despair of honest government, of dismay that free Italy had come to this. The Socialist attack became bolder in the com- parative immunity it had now; the Clericalists threw the blame on the Constitution, and Di Rudini made matters only worse by empty threats of prosecution. Towards the end of 1897 the Spanish-American war 1 See below, p. 213. THE FOOD RIOTS OF 1898 89 suddenly drove up the price of bread from i|d. to 2id. per lb., and part of tbe South, alwa3's a hand's- breadth from starvation, broke out in food riots. The old local feuds, the perennial disputes over the com- munal lands, burst into flame again, perhaps sometimes fanned by Socialist missionaries. In January 1898 there were riots all through the South, especially in the Marches, Apulia, and Sicily, and they continued up to April. There were no politics in the movement. Neither Socialists nor Clericalists had anything more than a very indirect part in it. It was a revolt of misery, such as had broken out from time to time since 1867. The anger of the crowd was directed against the corn dealers, who were supposed to be responsible for the rise in the price of bread, or the Syndics and Communal Councils, who had imposed the municipal duty on flour or denied the poor their share of communal lands. There was no conception of legislative reform ; " in the South the Commune is the State," and the Government was too far off and impersonal to attract the wrath of the uneducated peasants. Often the rioters cheered for army and king. The riots were forcibly suppressed, generally with a good deal of forbearance on the part of the soldiers, but with some loss of life. At the end of January the Government made a feeble attempt to mitigate the dearth by reducing the corn duty temporarily by one- third (later on it was altogether suspended for two months), and in a good many places in the South the local duty was abandoned from fear. But the 90 ITALY TO-DAY riots went on, and by the end of April they had spread to the North. There was a great strike of agricul- tural labourers near Bologna. Near Eavenna and at Piacenza and Parma there were scuffles with the police and loss of life. But these disorders — serious enough in themselves — were forgotten in the terrible sequel at Milan. At Milan there was a good deal of distress, but none of the acute misery of the South. The city boasted with justice that it was the first town of Italy — first in industry, first in municipal progress, first in political importance — that "what Milan thinks to-day, Italy will think to-morrow." It was growing fast, drawing to itself great numbers of Lombard and Venetian peasants, who came to find work in the factories which were springing up in all the suburbs. This rapid evolution into a great industrial city upset the social equilibrium. The new population consisted largely of rough, uneducated countrymen, drawn suddenly from village life into an atmosphere of keen political interest, and therefore naturally tending to extremes. The native workmen and middle classes were the very strength of the reaction against the militarism which had led to Adowa, against the police abuses and the corruption which had had their recent instances in the murder of Frezzi and the Como bank scandal. Their close connection^ with neigh- bouring Switzerland, the constant going and coming of migrant workmen, brought contrasts unflattering to their own country. And apart from more general causes of unrest there was an angry municipal struggle. The Moderates, sometimes with, sometimes without the THE FATTI DI MAGGIO 91 alliance of the Clericalists, had always had a majority in the Municipal Council. They had administered the city excellently well,'^ but they had made the local taxation fall heavily on the poor, and had probably used their control of the princely charities of the city to secure their own political position. For some years there had been before the Council a proposal to enlarge the city boundaries so as to include the populous and growing suburbs. The proposal was no doubt a wise one ; indeed, it had been made absolutely necessary by a new law on local finance, which deprived the city of an annual income of nearly ;^5o,ooo. But it implied an extension of the municipal customs to the suburbs, and though it seems to have been taken as axiomatic that the duties on articles of prime necessity should be reduced, if not abolished, there was a feeling of angry suspicion among the suburban manufacturers and work- men that the new scheme would injure them. On the top of all this political unrest and local bitterness came the agitation of Clericalists and Socialists and Repub- licans. None of them had any thought of revolution,^ but all had attacked the Government in language that was well deserved, but was sometimes more true than prudent. The Osservatore Cattolico of Don Albertario had spoken slightingly of "Savoy princes" and " Savoy policy," and bitterly reproached the rich for their indifiierence to the sufferings of the poor. Signor De Andreis, the Radical Deputy for Milan, had spoken of " the vote and the carbine " as the two weapons of the people ; Signor Turati, two years before, had ' See below, p. 275. ' See below, pp. 95, 96. 92 ITALY TO-DAY written of the possibility of "a provisional local Republican Government at Milan." There had nearly been a riot after the news of Adowa. At a mass meeting of Socialists in the past March the watch- word had been " Spread the discontent." The cele- bration in the same month of the jubilee of the " Five Days of Milan " called up memories of barricades, and at one of the festivities the Royal March was hissed. Thus there was plenty of inflammable material, but no influence making consciously for insurrection, and but for an accident and the subsequent blundering, or worse, of the authorities, the crisis would have passed ofi" quietly. On May 5, in a scuffle with the police at Pavia, Muzio Mussi, the son of the present Syndic of Milan, was killed while trying to prevent bloodshed. The news made a deep sensation at Milan ; a handbill, which was certainly inflammatory, was printed next day, and some workmen were distributing it in their dinner-hour, when the police arrested three of them. Other workmen, standing outside a neighbouring fac- tory, tried to release the prisoners ; a scuffle followed, and the police retreated with one of the arrested men to their barracks. Some troops were called up ; the crowd broke the windows of the police barracks, and probably threw stones at the soldiers. The soldiers fired, and two workmen and a plain-clothes policeman were killed. A heavy storm helped to disperse the crowd, but next morning it collected in much greater strength. Some employers closed their factories ; at others the workmen came out on protest. The crowds THE FATTI DI MAGGIO 93 paraded the streets, but there was no threat of violence, nor anything worse than some gibes and hisses at the soldiers, chiefly from the factory girls in the procession. Suddenly, towards noon, some cavalry charged the crowd at the gallop in the Corso Venezia, and the mischief began. The crowd seized some tramcars and made two barricades of them ; here and there they broke windows, and mounted the roofs of houses to throw down tiles. But there was still nothing very serious. The defenders of the barricades stood in front of them to be photographed, and a fire-engine or two would probably have ended the whole riot. But the authorities seemed paralyzed ; either they were anxious to avoid bloodshed, or they were afraid to take strong measures with the few troops they had at hand. The soldiers looked on, while barricades were thrown up and the factory girls threw vile insults at their officers. It was, in some instances at all events, not before they had been stoned, that they fired. After this the authorities lost their heads. In the words of a Milanese Moderate, till then they had been afraid, now they were afraid of having been afraid. Martial law was proclaimed ; more troops were hur- riedly brought up, and for three days soldiers and police carried on what was little better than a mas- sacre. The police hunted the demonstrators through the houses, and shot them down with their revolvers. The soldiers on the roofs picked off every man who showed himself. Next day grape-shot was fired. On the 9th an artillery officer, mistaking for insurgents a crowd of beggars who had come for their usual dole 94 ITALY TO-DAY of soup to a Capucin monastery, battered down its walls. ^ In the three days ninety at least were killed and several hundreds wounded, many of them labourers going to their work, girls and old men passing down the streets, shopkeepers standing at their windows. It was a senseless, brutal butchery. The officers and soldiers, perhaps for the first and last time, disgraced the honour of the army by an inhumanity that is very rare in Italy. Both they and the authorities were maddened with fear. They magnified a street riot into a revolution, and perhaps the baser Moderates wel- comed the chance of crushing the Democratic movement that was threatening their monopoly of power. The crowds made little effort to defend themselves. They had no arms, no organization. The better class of workmen kept aloof all through, and the demonstrators were mainly rougher workmen, factory girls, and boys. It is said that a handful of students from Pavia and a crowd of peasants marched on the city, and were driven back after a hot skirmish ; but considerable doubt hangs on the story, and, at all events, all through the business only one soldier was killed — by a tile thrown from the roof — and twenty-three were wounded, most of them with stones. The railway was broken in several places, and a manifesto was distributed among the railwaymen urging them to strike and prevent the transport of troops. But there is no evidence that any man of standing among Socialists or Republicans or Clericalists had any part in the disturbance. It is 1 The Government tried hard to suppress Signer Valera's L'assalto al convento, which gave the facts of this grotesquely iniquitous business. THE FATTI DI MAGGIO 95 certain that some of them did their best to persuade the crowds to disperse ; and though the people had the suburbs at their mercy, there was no arson, except of one tramcar, and only a few thefts. On whom lies the responsibility? In the trials that followed, the theory of the prosecution was that the Socialist and Republican, and to a minor degree the Clericalist leaders, had prepared materials for a rising at Milan ; that the riots in the South were directly due to their instigation, and part of a concerted plan ; and that a general strike of railwaymen was intended to prevent any transport of troops to Milan while the revolution seized the city. But the evidence in sup- port of the charge utterly broke down, and the military court itself admitted that the riots broke out unex- pectedly, that the Socialist and Republican leaders were surprised by them, and that there was no con- certed plan of revolution. The charge against the Clericalists was even flimsier. The Government stated that it had proof of a seditious understanding between Clericalists and Socialists, but, as it has never produced an iota of evidence, one must be allowed to class this with other phantasms of a panic-stricken executive. The riots all through bore an obvious mark of spon- taneity. But for the carelessness or provocation of the police, they would never have gone beyond the first day. The crowd had no guns and very few revolvers ; the barricades were badly defended ; women took a prominent part all through; there were very few red emblems. As said one of the ofl&cers told off to defend the accused, " A revolution does not break 96 ITALY TO-DAY out without arms, without a flag, without a battle-cry." Its failure was in marked contrast with the "Five Days" of 1848, when the Milanese drove 12,000 Austrians from the city. The Socialists and Clericalists, if not the Republicans, were opposed on principle to a revolution, and the worst that can be said, after giving all possible weight to the raked-up evidence of the prosecution, is that in their just indignation at the misgovernment of the country they sometimes used expressions that were unwise, that one or two dropped phrases that might be twisted into an appeal to revolu- tion, and that the half-understood Socialist teaching made its cruder hearers think that somebody had robbed them, and filled them with an aimless desire for revenge. A graver responsibility lies on the Government and the Milanese authorities. The real causes of the disturbances of i8g8 were the misery that came largely of bad government, the corruption in high places that had destroyed all trust in public men. And a special guilt lies on the Moderates of Milan. It was their blundering that allowed the movement to feel its head ; it was their blind, frightened party-passion that allowed a hundred of their fellow-citizens to be slaughtered in civil blood- shed, and polluted the city with a crime that Milan will not forget or forgive for many a year to come. At the time, however, the theory of revolution found easy credit, and through- all Italy the Fatti di maggio scared the well-to-do classes. Had the riots been con- fined to the South, they would have had no more effect than the Sicilian troubles of 1 894 ; but the disturb- COERCION UNDER PELLOUX 97 ances at Milan were a portent that dismayed them. Few understood the Socialist policy, and the Socialists loomed as revolutionaries plotting for a Red Republic. The Government yielded readily to the general cry for coercion. Martial law was proclaimed at Milan, at Florence, where had been a little disturbance, and at Naples, where there had been none. The railwaymen and all employees in the public services were put on a military footing, which made any one disobeying orders liable to two years' imprisonment. Two-thirds of the Catholic Committees and Associa- tions — many of them with purely philanthropic objects — were dissolved. The Republican Societies were pro- scribed and their papers seized. Almost all the Chambers of Labour were dissolved. A number of Village Banks and Cooperative Societies were broken up and their stores seized, on the pretext that they were organized by Socialists or Revolutionary Cleri- cals, and were helping to plan a general strike. The Government seized a fund that the railwaymen had formed to purchase shares in the Companies so as to be represented at shareholders' meetings. A trust- fund to find work for the unemployed was seques- trated, because some Socialists sat on the governing body. A university professor at Bologna was sus- pended, because he had subscribed to a strike fund. Three schoolmasters at Turin were dismissed for expressing Socialist opinions out of school. The Secolo, the great Radical paper of Milan, which had strenuously preached peace during the riots, was suspended for four months. It was the reaction of 98 ITALY TO-DAY militarism let loose, of a stupid, frightened dread of labour and its claims ; and it found ready followers in the men who thought the monarchy in danger but were themselves its worst enemies ; in the capitalists of the North, who wanted to have the artisans at their mercy ; in all the comfortable classes, who had a vague idea that any vindication of the labourers' rights would hurt themselves. The reaction showed itself at its worst in the Military Court at Milan. When the indictment of conspiracy against the Socialist and Republican and Radical leaders broke down, various more or less irre- levant charges were substituted, and punished with savage sentences. Political criticism was treated as a crime. Signor Turati and Signor De Andreis were condemned to twelve years' imprisonment on the ground that they had stirred class hatred, and were thus indirectly responsible for the riots. Two well- known journalists, Signor Romussi, the editor of the Secolo, and Signor Chiesi of the Italia del Popolo, were sentenced to six and four years' imprisonment respectively, for " continually attacking the institu- tions and authorities," "exaggerating the suflferings of the people, and thus embittering the hatred of classes," and " creating the environment from which the disorders sprang." Don Albertario, the Catholic journalist, was sentenced to three years for " attack- ing the monarchy and institutions with subtle irony," " sowing class hatred between peasants and land- lords," and " turning many of the clergy from their natural work of pacification." Madame Kuliscioff was COERCION UNDER PELLOUX 99 sentenced to two years for her Socialist and trade- union propagandism. There was hardly a pretence of decent legal procedure. The President of the Court, General Bava-Beccaris, was as indifferent to equity as he was ignorant of law. One of the young officers, who were entrusted with the defence, was punished for consulting a barrister on a doubtful point of law. Much of the evidence was worthless. The Public Prosecutor, after reading extracts from a prisoner's writings to prove his extreme opinions, argued that a person holding such views was bound to have taken part in the disturbances, and asked for his con- viction on that score. A police inspector assured the Court that there was a plot, but owned that he had no information of it. When those of the accused, who escaped to Switzerland, returned and were tried before a Civil Court two years later, the judge laughed the police evidence to scorn. Nor were the illegalities confined to Milan. A priest nearly eighty years old was prosecuted and detained four months for preaching to his well-to-do congregation that they ought to con- sider the interests of their employees. Signorina Paola Lombroso, daughter of the foremost scientist of Italy, was sentenced to three months' imprisonment for writ- ing an article, which commented mildly on some unfair dismissals of workmen. It was the Government's un- gentlemanly way of expressing its contempt for intellect. An Italian Liberal has called the Fatti di maggio a mistake. An event cannot be a mistake, which is the result of accident. And in the long run the loo ITALY TO-DAY Milanese riots have done good. They have cleared the air and created a plain issue between progress and reaction. They have cemented the union of the popular parties. They have brought about, far beyond the borders of the Extreme Left, a wide revulsion against a system, which many had acquiesced in because they had not recognized its inevitable outcome. After the first panic there was general disgust at the grotesque illegalities of the military courts. Three hundred and sixty thousand persons signed a petition for pardon, and at the end of the year a partial amnesty released 2700, who had been condemned for minor offences. Turati was returned again to Parliament by an undi- minished majority, though after his sentence he was legally incapable of standing. De Amicis' election at Turin made the first Socialist breach there. So strong was the feeling against the army, that a popular general was defeated in another Piedmontese constituency, in spite of the Subalpine military tradition. At the muni- cipal elections in the following year the popular parties carried all before them at Milan, Parma, Pavia, Piacenza, and gained heavily at Turin, while the Clericalists swept Venice and Genoa. Meanwhile Di Eudini had resigned as soon as Parliament met in June. The new Ministry was formed by General Pelloux, who had served in the first Di Eudini and Giolitti cabinets, where he had been a rigid economist, willing to see a very large reduction in the army. His colleagues, like him- self, were drawn mostly from the Constitutional Left, and while they professed themselves Conservatives in THE DECRETO-LEGGE lOI maintaining order, promised reforms in every branch of legislation. The reforms were soon forgotten, partly, perhaps, because the Chamber was even more re- actionary than the Government, and to some extent forced Pelloux' hands. In 1898 he promised to use only the existing law for purposes of repression, but in the following February he introduced the Bill whose troubled history has made the gravest constitutional crisis of United Italy. Its more im- portant provisions proposed to empower the Prefects or police to forbid meetings in the open air or in places open to the public, and empower the Govern- ment to suppress any association, " whose object was to subvert by overt acts {per vie di fatto) social order or the constitution of the State." The Bill was met by very cogent objections. It was urged by many, even of those who agreed with its principles, that it was unwise to stir up angry controversy, when the more important of the powers contemplated in the Bill were already possessed by the Govern- ment, or, at all events, had been exercised by it for years past. Under the Italian law both the right of public meeting and the right of combination were on a very unstable footing. Charles Albert's Statute recognized no right of public meeting in the open air or in places of public resort. The Law of Public Security, by requiring the promoters of a public meeting to give twenty-four hours' notice of it to the authorities, seemed tacitly to recognize the right. But the Government had, at all events since 1890, held that this provision gave them the right to pro- I02 ITALY TO-DAY hibit beforehand meetings which had illegal ends in view, and Nicotera and Crispi and Di Kudini had acted freely on this interpretation, the first even forbidding meetings to protest against the Triple Alliance. The right of combination was not men- tioned in the Statute, but it had long been practically recognized, and the Penal Code, by providing against criminal associations, implicitly admitted the legality of those which were for lawful ends. But a clause of the Code, which punished for " exciting to hatred between difi'erent social classes in a manner dangerous to the public peace," was capable of great latitude of interpretation in the hands of judges, who wanted to use it against the Socialists or any labour move- ment. No doubt there were good arguments for putting the law on a clear footing ; but Liberals felt that it were better that restrictions of liberty should rest on an arbitrary stretching of the law than on the law itself. They dreaded that under a reactionary Government, and with judges only too amenable to its pressure, the new law would be easily turned into a weapon against labour, that every trade- union and cooperative society and chamber of labour would be at the mercy of the Government and the local cliques of employers who had its ear. Besides, the country was quiet again ; it was folly to waste on an odious and unnecessary Bill time that was so urgently needed for financial and social reforms ; and sensational legislation tended to make Europe think that Italy was on the verge of revolution, discredited the country, and frightened foreign capital. For several THE DECRETO-LEQGE 103 months the Bill was suspended, but in the summer of 1899 Pelloux finally broke from the Left, and in June the Bill, made yet more stringent by a Parlia- mentary Committee, came again before the Chamber. Then, for the first time in the history of the Italian Parliament, it was met by determined obstruction. There had been disorderly scenes in previous Parlia- ments, but now the Extreme Left fought with a dogged and persistent use of obstructionist tactics. The Government grew impatient, and on June 22 announced that unless the Bill were passed within a month, its provisions would come into efi"ect by royal decree, though they were to be submitted to Parlia- ment at some unspecified future date. When the threat failed to daunt the obstructionists. Parliament was pro- rogued on the last day of June, and the decreto-legge came into efi"ect on July 20. The decreto-legge was defended on the ground that in the face of obstruction it was the only means of giving efiect to the wishes of the majority of the Chamber. But it was flatly unconstitutional. It is true that it was not the first of its kind. Still the principle was entirely subversive of Parliamentary government, and so conscious were the ministers of its illegality, that they tried to postpone its promised discussion by Parliament, and hoped to appease public opinion by a fuller amnesty for the Fatti di maggio. But in February 1900 the Court of Cassation at Rome, for once showing independ- ence, decided that the decreto-legge had merely the status of a Bill before Parliament, and had therefore I04 ITALY TO-DAY no legal effect. The whole unconstitutional structure collapsed, and the Ministry was compelled to bring the Bill afresh before the Chamber. Public opinion had declared more and more against it, and now it was opposed not only by the Extreme Left, but by nearly all the Constitutional Left and by the Di Rudini section of the Eight. In the first division on the Bill the Government had a majority of only 27. Amendments poured in ; the Extreme Left obstructed by interminable speeches, and the first clause was still under discussion, when the majority attempted to checkmate the obstructionists by moving to appoint a Committee to draft new Standing Orders, and give at once provisional effect to their recommendations without further reference to the Chamber. That more stringent Standing Orders were necessary was ac- knowledged by all parties, including the Extreme Left. But it was intolerable that the Chamber should abdicate all voice in making them, and the unlucky motion only gave the obstructionists a new oppor- tunity. There were angry scenes between Deputies and the Chair ; the opposition refused to be conciliated by some nominal concessions of the Government ; and on March 29 Signor Colombo, the President, put the amended motion without allowing further discussion, and in a scene of confusion declared it carried. The Constitutional Left protested against the illegality ; the Extreme Left next day hissed the President out of the Chamber. But neither he nor the majority would draw back, and four days later the two Lefts and a few members of the Right walked out of the THE EXTREME LEFT OBSTRUCT 105 Chamber in protest, and the new Standing Orders were approved by the remaining Deputies. Parliament was prorogued for six weeks, and the Government, satisfied with their victory or despairing of further success, demonstrated the futility of their policy by withdrawing the decreto-legge. The new Standing Orders contained nothing that would have been very dangerous to minorities under an impartial President, and to an Englishman the opposi- tion to them may seem exaggerated. The more strin- gent of the rules empowered the President to name a disorderly member or, in extreme cases, to suspend him for eight days ; and in the case of an unduly pro- tracted debate to ask the Chamber to limit the length of speeches or to move the closure. In another Parliament there would have been nothing unfair in this. But in a Chamber, where the President was chosen by a party vote and was generally more or less the tool of the Ministry, these powers were unsafe. The Extreme Left, with Colombo's rulings fresh in their memory, believed that it was a question of life or death to them, that it threatened their exist- ence as a Parliamentary party. When the Chamber met on May 15, and Colombo tried again to act on the new Orders, they twice shouted him down, and the sitting broke up in confusion, while they sang Garibaldi's Hymn and shouted insulting epithets. Next day the President resigned, and the Ministry decided to dissolve Parliament and appeal to the country. Sonnino, who all through was the influence behind the scenes, had persuaded himself that the io6 ITALY TO-DAY Extreme Left would be extinguished at the new- elections. Probably few shared his illusion. The country woke to a sudden interest ; the Extreme Left was the only party with an electoral organization ready at hand, and the elections resulted in the triumphant increase of their party and the moral defeat of the Ministry. It came back with a small and unstable majority, and on the actual votes polled it is doubtful whether in the country it had a majority at all.^ The wiser men in the Cabinet, including the Premier, recognized their defeat, and were willing to compro- mise. Their cooler followers realised that the crisis was becoming a very dangerous one. Signor Gallo, the new President, proposed that the Standing Orders of April 3 should be tacitly shelved for new ones, and the Extreme Left concurred, on condition that the clauses for suspending members and limiting the length of speeches were abandoned. It seems that everything was in train for a settlement, when the rank-and-file of the Eight, supported by part of the Cabinet, revolted, and refused to come into any arrange- ment which ignored the April Standing Orders. This made Pelloux' position impossible, and he resigned on June i8. A new Cabinet was formed by Signor Saracco, a member of the less extreme Eight, whose appointment marked a policy of conciliation towards both the Lefts. Signor Villa, the new President, ' Signor Torresin gives the Ministerialist vote at 663,000 ; that of the Constitutional Left at 271,000 ; that of the Extreme Left at 331,000. Another estimate gives : Ministerialist vote, 611,000 ; Constitutional Left, 304,000 ; Extreme Left, 345,000 ; and a few thousand Independent votes. See note 2 on p. 67, SARACCO MINISTRY 107 had fresh Standing Orders drafted, which were unani- mously accepted by the Chamber, though Sonnino and the irreconcilables of the Right abstained from voting. The new Orders allowed the President to suspend a disorderly member for any period not ex- ceeding eight days, but omitted the clauses that em- powered the Chamber to limit the length of speeches or move the closure. The crisis closed to the general relief, and not even the assassination of King Humbert a few weeks later seriously disturbed the political quiet. The reaction- aries did their best to exploit the crime ; they tried to fix the odium on the Socialists, and clamoured for a return to coercion. They perhaps had their sympathisers in the Ministry, but both King and Premier sturdily refused to plunge the country into chaos again. It was clear that the assassin was an Anarchist, and the common fairness of the country refused to blame the Socialists for a crime, that was the fruit of theories which they had been the foremost to combat. So far the new reign has made for peace and against reaction, and the young King's sympathy with progress has probably wrought a considerable change in the inner working of politics. The Saracco Ministry is, however, in no sense a Liberal one. It has allowed the police to carry on its usual work of harrying freedom of speech and meeting ; the censorship has lost nothing of its crass dislike of a free press ; the compact between Government and Majia in Sicily stands firm. The Cabinet is paralyzed by its own dissensions, and can only present a maimed and pitiable programme of legislation. Signor Saracco, however io8 ITALY TO-DAY amiable and sagacious, is too old for a position and a time that call for vigour. His Ministry has done the country a great service in checking reaction and bringing it through the crisis of the King's death, but it is obviously only a stop-gap. The succession must go almost inevitably to Sonnino or Giolitti, though the next Premier may be a nominee. Sonnino has ap- pealed to the " constitutional " parties to unite in a common opposition to the Extreme Left and the Clericalists. He has a programme, which is not without its value — reform of the Civil Service, an honest administration of justice, some mitigation of protective duties. But it is vague, and leaves the urgent social problems untouched ; however sincere Sonnino himself may be, he rests his strength on men who would successfully mutilate any genuine policy of reform. And if his fusion of parties were possible, which it is not, it would make revolution the almost inevitable alternative of Conservatism. In personal force and character Giolitti stands below Sonnino. But he is a Liberal from expediency and more or less from conviction ; and he has made himself the champion of the popular finance, which is the crying need of the moment. He asks for drastic changes in the local duties on food, for the municipalization of public services, and the exemption of small properties from land and income tax. He knows, of course, that he could not find a majority in the old Left alone ; but it is probable that he has made overtures to, at all events, the Radical section of the Extreme Left. Just as Sonnino has asked for an alliance of the constitu- SAEACCO MINISTEY 109 tional parties against the Extreme Left, so Signer Alessio of the Constitutional Left appeals for a union of his party and the Extreme Left against the reaction- aries. There are no doubt expectations that, when the Saracco Ministry falls, the King will call to office a coalition Government of Constitutional Left and Radicals. They probably could not command a majority in the present Chamber, but they would appeal to the country on an " honest election," fought with little or no governmental pressure on the constituencies, and they hope that when the hand of the Prefects is removed, the progressive parties would gain enough seats, especially in the South, to give them the majority in a new Chamber. Probably it is the best thing that could happen in the immediate future. NOTE These pages were -written before the recent ministerial crisis. Early in February a debate took place on the ques- tion of the Chamber of Labour at Genoa. The Government had allowed the Prefect to dissolve it, then, frightened by a general strike, allowed the Chamber to be reconsti- tuted. Its vacillations exposed it to attack from both sides, and it was defeated by a large majority. The honours of the debate rested with the two Lefts, who were working in unison to secure a Giolitti Cabinet. The King took the sensible and constitutional course of calling the Constitutional Left to office, and a Cabinet has been formed, with Zanardelli as its nominal Premier and GioHtti as its real leader. Two seats in the Cabinet were offered to the Radicals, and would have been accepted, but for irreconcilable differences on the question of miUtary expenditure. But though the Extreme Left are unrepresented in the new Government, no ITALY TO-DAY their attitude is a friendly one, and if Giolitti is true to his promises, he will have their support. The weakness of the new Government lies in the unfortunate inclusion of two members of the Right and one of the Crispi faction. This has been done, no doubt, in order to secure a sufficient Parlia- mentary basis and avoid the necessity of appealing to the country. But as Giolitti cannot command a majority without the support of the Extreme Left, it seems almost inevitable that he must frankly abandon any attempt to win votes from the Right, and if, as is probable, he finds himself in a minority in the present Chamber, appeal to the constituencies. If he does this, the omens are favourable for his success, and he wUl secure a working alliance of the two Lefts, which will clear the whole political situation, and mark a very sensible advance in Italian politics. CHAPTER V NORTH AND SOUTH Southern Italy. Antagonism between North and South. Results of Unity in the South. Federalism. The Camorra. The Mafia. As soon as Italy became a nation, one of its gravest problems was how to level up the South. And still it is "a country where two stages of civilization co- exist in the same State." It is easy to illustrate the contrast between the industrial, progressive, democratic North and the agricultural, stagnant, feudal South, where (leaving aside the buffer Central States) illite- rates are nearly thrice as many, where there are three or more times as many murders and violent assaults, where gambling in the State Lottery is twice as ram- pant, where the death-rate is higher, where books and newspapers are comparatively rare, and postal corre- spondence is less than half. Here the poverty of Italy becomes destitution. The wealth per head is only half as great. The returns of land-tax, income-tax, stamp- duties, consumption of tobacco, witness to its relative inferiority. The land is comparatively the monopoly of a few. Individualism runs riot ; there is little mutual trust or cooperation, and industry goes limp- ing in consequence. It is a land for the most part given over to inertia, with little ambition of better things. The masses have small sense of cohesiveness 112 ITALY TO-DAY or hope or effort. The great landlords are mostly absentees, or, if they live on their estates, still keep something of their feudal rule. The middle classes of the towns, living in sordid idleness on the incomes of their little properties, are the pitiless tyrants of their tenants. The noble and the bourgeois rule or misrule with a sway that is seldom questioned. No- where in Italy is the gap so great between rich and poor. " The rich man's troubles are the poor man's joys," says a common proverb of the South. The educated Neapolitan rarely talks dialect like the Piedmontese or Lombard or Sicilian. Each sordid little town is absorbed in the feuds of the richer families, and there are few or none who think of the common good or the interest of the masses. Nowhere in Europe, says Signer Turiello, are the middle classes so sovereign. It is the inevitable result of history. The rule of Spaniards and Bourbons, the late survival of feudalism, only abolished in a half-hearted manner at the begin- ning of the century, threw the country generations in arrears of civilization. When Garibaldi won the South in i860, Cavour saw that long years yet were needed to cleanse and raise it. Had he lived, much would have been accomplished in the forty years that have passed since then. As it is, the progress has been small. Brigandage scourged the country more or less down to the early seventies. Free Trade, intro- duced in the last months of Bourbon rule, though on the whole it has helped the agricultural South, killed some of the protected industries, and Lombard com- NORTH AND SOUTH 113 petition has perhaps done more. The South has given much for the sake of Unity. It has lost its separate army and civil service. Taxes have more than trebled. It is indeed probably true that on a balance it has gained. It has better education, better public order, more roads and railways ; its trade, its shipping, its cooperative societies have multiplied. But it has gained less than it ought to have done. And it still remains a country, which through a large extent is almost feudal in its ideas, where the poor man likes to see a show of luxury in the rich, where the landlord, sometimes for good, more often for bad, rules his tenants with an absolute sway, where the reactionary party can find a servile Parliamentary majority to vote down the democratic North. It is perhaps inevitable that there should be a good deal of bickering between North and South, as there has been more or less since i860. The Lom- bard bitterly reflects that, but for the South, he would have a democratic Parliament, that it is the corruption and servility of the South that make reform so difficult, that from the South comes the impulse to militarism and colonial adventure, that the South wants State activity and therefore heavy taxes, while the North is crying to be let alone and pay less. There is much unwise talk, especially at Milan, about "the Vendue in the South" and " Southern barons." Irritating theorists maintain that the defects of the South are due to race and climate and therefore incurable, that the South Italians are non-Aryans, though, as the theory derives them from 114 ITALY TO-DAY the same stock as Greeks and Komans, it would hardly seem to be oflPensive. The Northerners taunt the people of Palermo with re-electing Crispi, " the Southern brigand," when his credit has fallen so low. When the Southerners wished to avenge the defeat of Adowa, the peace-loving North retorted that it wanted to sell its mules. Much of this comes of ignorance. The South may be desolate, but it is not the utterly forlorn land of Northern imagination. It is said that when Signor Zanardelli once invited some Northern Deputies to visit the prosperous town of Nocera, they thought they were going to some barren mountain village. The South, at all events, has its sufl&cient answer. If it is backward politically and socially, it is because the reactionaries of the North have exploited it. The great majority of Ministers and Prefects and civil ser- vants come from the North, and if they had tried seriously to raise the South instead of keeping it a close preserve of ministerial corruption, if they had given it their best instead of their worst administrators, it would be in far better case to-day. Even now, perhaps, if it were left free from ofl&cial pressure, it would return a progressive majority ; and, after all, Piedmont, Lombardy, Venetia, Liguria gave as many votes to the Right in last year's elections as all the South and Sicily. The South can prove that financially and economically it has had less profit from Unity than the North ; that it is taxed out of proportion to its wealth ; that the State spends £2 per inhabitant in Piedmont and Liguria and Latium, while it spends less than 12 s. in the Abruzzi and the Basilicata and FEDERALISM 115 Calabria ; that the great bulk of public money spent on railways and ports and reclamation and irrigation has gone to the North and Centre. The South has been a very useful market for the manufactures of the North ; and the protectionist policy, while it has had mixed results in the North, has done only evil in the South. The Southerner retorts that if govern- mental influence vitiates politics in the South, there is as much or more bribery in the North ; that if the South excels in deeds of violence, fraud is comtaoner there. When it is told that its civilization is behind- hand, the South points to certain signs of progress, to the vast development of trade from its ports, to the industrial progress in Campania and at Bari — at the latter a development more rapid even than that of Lombardy, — to the dawn of political revival more or less all round the coast and especially in Apulia, to the fact that a Socialist was returned last year at Naples, where the political degradation is worst. It is very profitless, however, to strike a ledger- balance between North and South, and the controversy is rather a dangerous one. In the South it is fanned by the reactionaries, who see an opportunity of making the South solid in opposition to the democracy of the North. Here, and especially in Lombardy, there is a certain movement, both among Moderates and Social- ists, to be rid of the incubus of the South. In Sicily there always has been more or less feeling for some kind of Home Eule. And it is probable that every- where the cleavage has been growing of late years. But there is little bottom for the fear that it may lead ii6 ITALY TO-DAY to federalism. If, indeed, no more is meant by federal- ism than some big measure of decentralization, the creation, perhaps, of " regions " with very extensive local powers, such as has cropped up from time to time in the schemes of politicians from Minghetti to Di Rudini, the policy is a possible and probably a desir- able one. But any proposal to set up Home Rule Parliaments for North and South is an artificial one, and has no popular demand behind it. The thorough- going federalists are now, as they have been since 1856, a handful of thinkers, who speak of their policy with somewhat fearful breath. Federalism is unpopular. It provokes all the old passion for Unity, which at bottom is very strong in the hearts of the people. The Catholics have been shrewd enough to see that any suspicion of a leaning to it would be fatal to their influence. When the Moderates want to bring odium on the democrats of Milan, they invent the silly calumny that the latter are aiming at a separatist "State of Milan." Even Di Rudini's scheme of regions was wrecked, as Minghetti's was thirty years before, by the unreasoning suspicion that it might be dangerous to Unity. And the popular instinct is right. Federalism would only intensify the friction ; it would perhaps abandon the South to the monopoly of a reactionary clique, and the conscience of the North will not allow it to wash its hands of its troublesome sister. It is easy to say that the North needs local liberties, and the South a strong centralized govern- ment, but any differentiation of political liberties is unthinkable. Even less is there any danger of disrup- THE CAMORRA ii-j tion. The very federalists protest that they want federalism to save Unity. The men who are bitterest against the South add in the same breath that Unity is dear to all. The South is monarchical by instinct ; though there may be little positive loyalty there to the existing order, there is no disloyalty, and its leaders have always been at pains to show themselves more Italian than Neapolitan. The landlords may abuse the North, but they will be faithful to a State which has given Protection for themselves and plentiful posts for their sons. And so the present ugly feud will pass away, and perhaps leave behind it a better mutual understanding and respect. It is largely born of igno- rance and impatience, and to calmer minds it is likely to become supremely distasteful. In treating of the South of Italy it is necessary to allude to the Camorra and Mafia, though their importance has generally been a good deal exaggerated. The Camorra is practically confined to the city of Naples, where it finds a fair field in the deep social degradation of a section of the people. Its picturesqueness lives mainly in the imagina- tion of foreign correspondents ; in reality, despite its esoteric organization, its fantastic ritual, its strange perverted code of honour, it is a vicious, malodorous conspiracy of the dissolute and criminal poor, who live by blackmailing their fellow-poor and selling their electoral services to the Govern- ment or the local Deputies. It has its tariff of blackmail on boatmen, porters, prostitutes, gam- ii8 ITALY TO-DAY bling-houses ; it drives a lucrative trade in unspeak- able horrors ; it exercises a terrorism at public auctions, and takes care that no one bids against its associates. And such is the traditional fascination which it has on the imagination of the citizens, that its sway is often absolute, and the police are glad to call in its authority where they are powerless. Not long ago a cabdrivers' strike was only terminated by the intervention of the Camorrist chief. It is a lurid phenomenon and it has a double gravity. It is no casual growth ; it is the almost inevitable outcome of the squalid misery, the physical degeneration, the appalling wickedness of a section of the Neapolitan population. Even if the police tried to stamp it out, which they do not, they would be powerless. It is, says Professor Villari, the natural and neces- sary form that the social state of Naples takes ; the poverty of the city is probably still increasing, and it needs long years of wise and patient govern- ment to destroy the environment in which it thrives. And its yet more dangerous feature is that the Grovernment, so -far from discouraging it, has often protected it for its own purposes. There is an " upper Camorra" — without the ritual of its lower counter- part, but well understood, — the "kid-glove Camorra" of Deputies and municipal councillors and journalists and professional men, who live on jobs and mal- versation of public moneys. It is their protection that paralyzes the police and allows the Camiorra to thrive, while the Government gives its tacit support to a system, which keeps the majority of the Neapolitan THE MAFIA 119 constituencies for its supporters. The leaders of the Camorra found a quarter of a century ago that " electioneering is the only business that pays at Naples," and they have made themselves adepts at it. They are repaid by the certainty that the Government will make no serious effort to disturb their infamous trade in vice and cowardice, that it will wreck every attempt of the more honest citizens to purify the air. There are symptoms, however, that the system is beginning to totter. The Socialists here as elsewhere have made a noble fight for honest government, and the return of a Socialist Deputy for one of the Neapolitan constituencies last June was an omen of hope. Last winter the revelations in a libel case drove the " Camorrist Deputy," Casale, to resign his seat, and the united vote of the Constitu- tional Left and the Socialists has wrested another Neapolitan constituency from the gang. When once the upper Camorra is driven into hiding, the disease is half cured, but it will be long before the system loses its evil power among the criminal population of the city. The Mafia of Sicily has lost most of its mystery, and with that, it is to be hoped, its glamour. Eecent revelations have stripped it to what it is in reality, a blackmailing conspiracy, nearly as sordid and ugly as the Camorra. There is, indeed, a loose sense of the word, in which it may be called " a degenerate form of chivalry." Traditions, whose roots are lost in history, have made revenge a sacred law in Sicily ; and in the small towns, where men are forced into close touch with one another, and neighbours' feuds are things of I20 ITALY TO-DAY living fierceness, a man " makes himself respected " by avenging an injury or slight with some hardly concealed crime, by murdering the ofi'ender or insulting his family honour or lifting his cattle or cutting his vines. The Mafia expresses the universal suspicion of the public law, sometimes exercising a rude kind of justice among its own members or policing their orange-yards. Public opinion shields the criminal, and the strong un- written law of omertd, holds a man disgraced, if he helps to bring the murderer or cattle-lifter to justice, and bids him perjure himself or go to prison for life rather than incriminate another. In this sense the Mafia spirit affects the great mass of Sicilians outside the great towns, especially the better-to-do peasants, but it is a social tradition rather than an organization, and is by no means confined to Sicily. In its true sense the Mafia means a number of small gangs, the cosche (artichokes), whose members hold to one another closely as the artichoke's leaves. A gang seldom consists of more than a dozen members, led by some accomplished criminal, who, however, retires, except on great occasions, from active work, when his reputation of lawlessness is sufl&ciently high, and delegates the practical business of the gang to its younger members. The Mafia is hardly a secret society, for it almost certainly has no rites or formulas of initiation, and there is little or no organization common to the different gangs. It is a kind of criminal aristocracy, rarely drawn from the very poor, generally from men of the small proprietor or small tradesman class. Sometimes the chiefs are men in a THE MAFIA 121 good social position ; on the latifondi it is often used by the middlemen as part of their machinery for grinding the peasants. Usually it lives by blackmail- ing on the suavest and most courteous lines, and it only resorts to theft and murder, when need requires to terrorize the rare refuser of tribute or punish treachery in its own ranks. The true Mafia is not a very formidable pheno- menon in itself. The number of gangs is probably not numerous. They hardly exist in the east of the island, or to any serious extent in the great towns. ^ It is, perhaps, only in the villages round Palermo and in the sulphur districts of Girgenti and Caltanisetta that they are at all widespread. The danger lies in their connection with the richer classes and the Govern- ment. It is a tradition of the Sicilian noble to make himself "respected" by intervening with the autho- rities on behalf of criminals from his own district. Sometimes a rich proprietor pays blackmail to save his cattle and vines from outrage. But the ransom bleeds him more than an occasional raid, and the complicity of the rich is due in the main to political causes. The Mafia, like the Camorra, has made good use of the ballot-box, especially since the extension of the franchise. Where the Mafia is strong, it is impossible for a candidate to win a Parliamentary or local election unless he promises it his protection. Thus it has its patrons in the Senate and Chamber, who use it for political and worse ends ; and the Government has its well -understood relations with the mafiosi grand- 1 The best authorities differ as to their power in Palermo. 122 ITALY TO-DAY electors. The gangs are allowed free rein ; they have licenses to carry arms, while honester citizens are denied them ; they know that there will be no inter- ference with a discreet blackmailing, provided that they terrorize the opposition voters at election time and keep the seats under their control safe for the ministerial candidates. It is this unseen hand at Eome that paralyzes the police. Perhaps at the best they are too ready to connive. They have inherited the traditions of the Bourbon officials, who permitted impunity and oblivion of small crimes, if the criminal leaders undertook to abstain from any too crying scandal. But when a police officer or magistrate, more honest or more energetic than his fellows, tries to lay a strong hand on the Mafia, he finds himself discoun- tenanced by his superiors, or removed to a distant post. The scandals of the Palizzolo trial and the De Felice libel action last year are ringing through Italy, and shattering the weak remnants of faith in honest government and impartial justice. Nothing is more sinister in Italian life than the alliance of Mafia and Government to assist and shield high-placed swindlers. Under their joint patronage local councillors almost openly abuse their control of public moneys to fill their own pockets. The Customs' revenue at Palermo falls steadily, because the Communal Council allows its friends a lucrative contraband ; and when, at the local elections of last autumn, the Socialists tried to return men pledged to put the scandal down, the police allowed the miscreant friends of the party in power to carry arms and terrorize the electors. THE MAFIA 123 The most notorious evidence of all this evil game has come to light in the still unfinished Palizzolo trial. Eight years ago Signor Notarbartolo, a governor of the Bank of Sicily, discovered certain frauds on the part of a brother-governor, Palizzolo, and sent a secret report of the facts to the Minister of Com- merce. A few days later he was surprised to hear his report read at a meeting of his Board. It had mysteriously disappeared from the Department, and had found its way into the hands of the incriminated governor. A week or two passed, and Notarbartolo's body was found, with a score of wounds pn it, by the side of the railway twenty miles out of Palermo. The police, it has since been proved, had very strong evidence that the murder had been committed by certain notorious mafiosi, and Palizzolo's relations with the Mafia were well known. But Palizzolo was a Deputy, and not long after was given a ribbon by Di Eudini. The Bank scandals at Rome and Naples had lately shocked all Italy, and the swindlers who had plundered the Bank of Sicily dreaded what might come to light, if Notarbartolo's murderers were brought to justice. They had the ear of the Government. The evidence was suppressed, the murder was hushed up, and it was not till six years after that the per- severance of the murdered man's sons compelled the authorities to bring Palizzolo and his confederates to justice. The trial is, at the time of writing, still un- finished, but enough has come to light to put Palizzolo's guilt beyond doubt, and prove that the police knew well and shielded the authors of the deed. CHAPTER VI THE POVERTY OF ITALY Statistics of poverty. Salaries and wages. Food. Pressure of taxation. Richer or poorer ? " Italians," says Signor Ferrero, " have been used for two centuries to live on half- rations ; " and columns of painful statistics prove how hard is the struggle for life among the great majority of his countrymen. The wealth of Italy is pitifully small by the standard of Western Europe. Signor Bodio calculated in 1 89 1 that its total wealth stood at ^2,160,000,000; and on this basis its annual income, taking it at 11 per cent, of capital (the proportion taken by M. de Foville for France), would be ;^2 3 7,000,000, or £"]. i6s. 8d. per head of population. M. de Foville collected in 1893 the best available statistics of wealth in other Western countries, and showed that the average income per head was in Great Britain over £,'^1, in France ;^26, in Saxony ^20. 7s., in Prussia ;^i7. 2s., in Austria £,2>. An Italian enjoys less than half the income of an Englishman or Frenchman or Prussian. Calculations, based on the local family-tax, go to show that out of 10,000 heads of families, nearly 8000 have incomes under ;i^40, only three have incomes above ;^2ooo. The poverty is evidenced by the low rate of salaries and wages. The incomes of the professional classes SALARIES AND WAGES 125 rule low. One or two barristers may make ;^4000 a year, and a few doctors perhaps ;^3000 ; here and there a civil engineer may earn ;i^8oo to ;i^i20o; but such cases are exceedingly rare. The average pro- fessional income of a barrister cannot be put much above ^250, that of a town doctor at ^300, that of a village doctor at ;ifioo. In the whole army and navy, the bench, diplomacy, and civil service, there are only 10 1 individuals with salaries exceed- ing ;^400. The permanent head of the Ministry of Education has £2>^o, a head inspector £160 to ;^28o. The highest salary in the Post Office is ;^320. A colonel's pay is ;^28o, a captain's is ;^i28. A pretor (stipendiary magistrate) has £120, including the allowance for his house. A clerk in the Ministry of Education has ;^8o to ;^ 160; in the Post Office he sometimes has no more than £14,0 after thirty years of service. A stationmaster gets £^^ to ;^i8o, and his house; the maximum salary of an elementary teacher is ;^53 for a man and £/^2 for a woman. A foreman engineer in a large shop earns, as a rule, £2, to ^^3. 12s. a week.^ The wages of artisans and labourers are corre- spondingly low. The following figures of daily wages are based on a large number of data : — ' See also below, pp. 241, 260. 126 ITALY TO-DAY Extreme Rai ige. d. Usual Kates. £ !. d. £ £ 8. d. £ s. d. Boiler-makers, fitters, ) and smiths . . j I ^\ to 5 7 2 5 to 3 7 Founders O I 7 ,. 6 5 2 S „ 4 Enginemen . O 1 5 » 4 9* 2 2^,, 2 9l Masons .... O 1 ^i „ 5 °? 2 „ 2 5 Carpenters O I 25 „ 5 n 2 „ 2 9* Chemical workers . I „ 3 n 2 5 „ 3 2I Cotton operatives . O 1 3 „ 2 6i I 2i„ 2 Woollen operatives o o 9i „ 3 7I I 6 „ 3 Miners .... O I J, ° 3 7 I 2t„ 2 3 Unskilled labourers o o ]i| ); ° 4 I 25,, 2 'Agricultural labourers — Regular o 4 !, I 4 8 „ I 2 Casual (winter) . o o li ,> 9j 5," 9l „ (summer) o o 5 „ I 7 9i,, I 7 „ (harvest) O 2 >! 4 2 „ 2 5 Women — Silk operatives . o o 5 „ I 7 6 „ I oj Cotton operatives o o 6 „ 2 5 9i„ I 4 Wool operatives . o o 6 „ 2 8|„ I 3i Agricultural labourers O 5 „ 9i 5 „ 7I It must be noted in connection with this table : — 1. That it takes no account of piece-work, which is common. In some industries this means an addition of 15 to 60 per cent, (perhaps on the average 40 per cent.) to the day-wage. 2. That there is still a good deal of Sunday labour, though it is tending to become rare in, at all events, the larger works. The weekly wage of some artisans and labourers must therefore be estimated on a seven- days' basis. On the other hand, a casual agricultural labourer works and is paid for only from 240 to 270 days, and in some of the silk-mills employment appears to be still more irregular. 3. Many of the women operatives in mills have 1 Paid, as a rule, largely in kind. SALARIES AND WAGES 127 free lodgings and food provided below cost price. The agricultural labourer often has his perquisites. 4. In estimating family incomes, it must be remem- bered that women's work is very general. The wife of an agricultural labourer almost always works in the fields, except in Sicily, and her wages are generally from one-half to three-quarters those of a man. The following table represents approximately the average wages in certain trades as compared with those of other countries ^ : — Italy. Boilermakers Masons Carpenters . Miners Agricultural labourers Women in textile mills d. o 3 5 II 10 France. s. d. 2 II 3 2-^ 3 o 2 li England. d. 4 4 "2i O Germany. s. d. 2 II 2 9i 2 8| I I I 9 6 Hours of labour are, as a rule, 8 in the Government's tobacco-works ; 9 in the Government's dockyards ; 8 to 10 in most mines ; 9 to 10 in railway-works ; 10 to 1 1 for engineers and probably the majority of industries ; 9 to 12J and occasionally as high as 14 in textile mills. There have been many strikes lately for a reduction of hours in the mills. Eailway servants have had till recently to work sometimes for as much as 18 hours at a stretch, but a Government order of last year prescribes 1 English figures based on Mr. Bowley's papers in Statistical Journal (summer wages) and his Wages in the Nineteenth Century ; French figures on de Foville, La France ^conomique (1890) ; German figures on LavoU^e (1882), de Foville, and other information. The different dates, of course, lessen the value of the comparison, and it must be remembered that some wages, e.g. of miners in England, fluctuate widely from year to year. 128 ITALY TO-DAY that they shall have a normal rest of 8 consecutive hours and never less than 7. The hours of agri- cultural labourers vary, of course, according to the seasons, but they are always long as compared with those in England. The extreme limit is probably reached in the oliveyards of Apulia, where picked men work in the presses for 19 or 20 hours day after day. Holidays are few ; the Clericalist employer closes his works on the great festivals of the Church, the Liberal employer on Government holidays, which are almost identical ; in some places little work is done on Mondays. The food of the people corresponds to the low level of wages. Wheat is the staple cereal, but to a much smaller extent than in other Western countries. Maize, eaten as bread or polenta, more or less takes its place among the peasants and the poorer-paid workmen of the North — sometimes, as in the Venetian and Eomagnuol highlands, to the entire exclusion of wheaten bread. In 1885 wheaten bread was the normal food in 5380 communes, maize or other inferior cereals in 2878. The use of maize is not entirely due to its cheapness ; to the ill-fed peasant it gives a sense of repletion, and he will eat it by preference even when better food is available. When of good quality and well-cooked, it is not innutritions, but when gathered unripe and kept in damp places it produces the terrible disease of pellagra. Pellagra is not, as it has been called, a disease of poverty, nor is it due to the consumption of maize in itself The Wallachian peasant, according to M. de Laveleye, lives exclusively on maize ; but pel- FOOD 129 lagra is unknown to him. It is essentially a disease of the Po valley ; and though it exists in parts of Central Italy, it is only prevalent in the lower parts of Lombardy, Venetia, and Emilia. Statistics of pel- lagra are unreliable ; but there is unanimous evidence that it is on the decrease (owing largely to the adop- tion of better methods for drying maize), and, at all events, it is not nearly so serious a plague as malaria. Even when allowing for the use of maize, rye, and barley, the quantity of cereals consumed by an Italian is abnormally low. It is estimated that on the average he eats in the year 205 lbs. of wheaten flour, 65 lbs. of maize, and about 40 lbs. of other inferior cereals, or 310 lbs. in all. At Turin a workman's family of six in moderate circumstances eats 1469 lbs. of wheat, maccaroni, and rice. An Italian soldier is allow^ed 746 lbs. of wheaten bread and maccaroni, which re- presents, perhaps, 615 lbs. of flour. An English agri- cultural labourer, with a much more varied diet, eats from 400 to 440 lbs. of wheaten flour ; the inmate of an English workhouse has 365 lbs. of bread and 62 lbs. of meal. A Spaniard's average consumption of wheaten flour is said to be 471 lbs., a Belgian's is 441 Ibs.^ The deficiency is even more apparent in other articles of food. Though the consumption of meat rises steadily, it is still very small. Various estimates put it at 25, 27, or 39 lbs. per head. At Eome it was 88 lbs. in 1893, in Apulia it is probably as low as 10 lbs. At Turin working people in average circum- stances have 28 lbs. per head, those in better circum- 1 Wheat is taken as making seven-ninths of its weight in flour. I I30 ITALY TO-DAY stances 50 lbs. An English workhouse pauper has 57 lbs. The consumption of sugar has decreased by one-quarter since heavy duties were imposed to protect native beet-sugar, and it averages barely over 5 lbs. per head. An average and better-to-do workman at Turin consumes 10 and 15 lbs. respectively. The use of salt is brought to a minimum among the poor by the iniquitous salt-tax.^ There are no available figures to show what the domestic consumption of it is, but to some of the peasants its taste is barely known. Sometimes they will cook their polenta in sea-water, though this is an offence against the Excise, and women are still arrested or fired at, if they are found drawing from the sea ; and it is said that a poor child in Venetia, if given the run of a kitchen, prefers to eat salt rather than sugar. On the other hand, the consumption of all kinds of vegetables and pulse is probably above the average, and the use of olive oil amounts to 1 2 lbs. per head. A good deal of cheese is used. The chief drink is, of course, wine, and in this the average consumption is not far short of that of France, and higher than that of Spain. The Italian drinks on the average 20 gallons per head ; in some towns of the North and Centre he drinks from 31 to 49 gallons, Rome having a bad pre-eminence. In some districts, as in the province of Lecce, wine costs gd. to 13d. the gallon, and its use is general. The returns of 1885 report that it is drunk by all classes in 3254 communes out of 8262. The use of beer and spirits is very small, that of tea is practically nil, that of 1 See below, p. 139. FOOD 131 coffee a little under i lb. per head. Each inhabitant smokes on the average i^ lbs. of tobacco. And even poor as it is, the Italian workman's food absorbs more than a normal proportion of his income. A report to the last Socialist Congress estimates that only 15 per cent, is left for clothes, rent, and all other expenses. Engel's researches show that the normal surplus of the income of the poorer classes, after providing for food, is 30 per cent. In the case of Le Play's Nottingham tanner it was 31 per cent. House-rent is low in Italy, but, even w^hen allowance is made for this fact, the expenditure on clothes must be very small. One is bound to conclude that, in spite of his large consumption of vegetables and fruit, including a good deal of pulse of high nutritive value, the typical Italian is underfed. Cases of death from starvation are very rare, but there is a terrible permanent lack of food. Recent inquiries into the food of school children have proved that at Perugia one-third have little or no dinner, that at Pavia one in ten, at Milan one in twenty-eight, have no dinner at all. The ease of the adults is probably worse. And yet the men, who have been nurtured on this miserable fare, are perhaps the most industrious peasants of the world. There is no more cruel or untrue taunt than that the Italian, be he from North or South, is idle. The Italians are the navvies of the Continent ; they have pierced the tunnels of the Alps ; they have buUt the harbours of Calais and Marseilles; they have made the railways through a large slice of Europe. Thousands cross the Atlantic every autumn to reap the harvest in the 132 ITALY TO-DAY Argentine, then return to gather in their own. The old Roman energy seems living in the underfed and overworked labourers of modern Italy. The typical day's food of an artisan in the North is given as follows by M. Lavoll^e. He makes his breakfast chiefly of bread, sometimes with milk or coffee, more often with cheese or bacon and vegetables or fruit, sometimes of bread alone. At noon he has his dinner of minestra, the standing Italian mash of vegetables or pulse or rice or maccaroni in its many forms, cooked with lard or oil, and variously flavoured. Sometimes he repeats his breakfast fare at the after- noon merenda. For supper he has another minestra. The Neapolitan, who seldom cooks at home and takes his meals at an eating-house, will consume two to three pounds of bread a day, maccaroni cooked with various relishes, potatoes, a minestra of vegetables, much fruit and salad, and some salt-fish or pigs' fry. The follow- ing table, which gives the weekly consumption of (A) an artisan in the North and Centre, (B) an artisan in the South, (C) a labourer in the North, is said to be based on a series of monographs.' To these we add recent calculations made at Turin of the weekly consumption by an artisan's family of six, (D) in average circumstances, (E) in good circumstances.^ 1 Annuario statistico Italiano, i88g-go. Some of the figures would seem to be above the average. 2 II municipio di Torino e il partita soeialista. FOOD 133 Individuals A Families of Six. 1 A. 1 B. C. D. E. Ozs. 1 Ozs. Ozs. Ozs. Ozs. Fresh meat . 27 i4i 7i 51 92 Salt meat or fish 12 3$ 71 very little 7 Bread .... 168 225 !'■! 32 s 367 Maccaroni . 32 107 55 57 Rice .... 30 7i 18 67 68 \ Maize hread or polenta 50 1 nil 142 ? ? Cheese 12 14 7* 15^ 24 1 Vegetables . 71 142 71 ! ? Wine .... 8 pints 9 pints 2 pints 10 pints 14 pints Brandy a little nil nil J ? Including butter. M. LavoUee estimates the cost of an artisan's food at 9|d. per diem. A silk-spinner of Como gives that of himself, wife, and child at is. 3^d. The food of the peasantry has been elaborately de- scribed in the Inchiesta agraria of 1883, and by other writers. It varies ir definitely from that of the pros- perous farmers of the higher Val d'Aosta, who fare as well as a Swiss peasant, to that of the labourers in the rice-fields near Vicenza, who have nothing all day but the polenta they bring with them and water from the ditches, or the out-of-work labourers of Calabria and Sicily, who in spring-time often live on wUd lentils or the raw heads of Hedysarium coronarium. But there is no great difference in the fare of the great majority of farmers and better class of labourers. The peasant of the Po valley and Venetia lives mainly on maize polenta or maize bread, often badly cooked, with more or less of minestra made of vegetables and pulse and 134 ITALY TO-DAY generally rice, cooked with a little lard or oil. In the hill districts he often has chestnuts ; in many places he grows potatoes on his allotment; in a few more pros- perous spots he has wheaten bread in summer. Some cheese, an occasional sausage or taste of bacon or salt- fish, frogs from the ponds and ditches, here and there milk or eggs, make the only exceptions to a vegetable fare. The larger farmers eat meat and poultry, but to the great majority the taste of meat is only known on rare festivities. The peasant's wine is scarce and bad, though taverns increase and there are complaints of much drinking on holidays ; his water is too often polluted. In the hill country of Piedmont and the Riviera the food is better. Wheat and rye bread often take the place of maize. There is more con- sumption of cheese and chestnuts, meat is not so rare, the wine is better and more plentiful, here and there coffee is generally drunk. In Emilia and the Marches and the lower parts of Tuscany there is a fair consumption of wheaten bread, though maize is still the staple food, and eggs, meat, poultry, and wine are not so rare as in Lombardy. In the hill districts of Tuscany and southwards from them (ex- cept along the coast from Rome to Naples and in parts of the Abruzzi), the use of maize is much re- duced and wheaten bread becomes the staple food, though here and there in the poorer districts rye and barley bread take its place. Otherwise the food does not greatly difi'er from that of the North, ex- cept that figs and other fruit are abundantly used, that perhaps more pulse is consumed, and that in FOOD 135 Sicily, at all events, wine is generally and largely drunk. In large districts in the extreme south of Apulia the labourers and small farmers live on black barley bread (baked twice or thrice a year and soaked before it can be eaten), sheep's cheese, potatoes, chicory and young poppy heads for salad, and snails. The harvesters in the oliveyards live on beans or peas and oil, the women on baked and crushed maize. The migrant labourers of the Agro Komano eat nothing but polenta or maize bread, often without salt, and will greedily devour the carrion flesh of cattle that have died of disease. The following give the quantities of food consumed in a week by (A) a family of 13 persons (of three generations), including 6 young children, at Este, in lower Venetia ; (B) a fairly well-to-do farmer's family of 7 persons at Eovigo ; (C) a regularly employed labourer's family of 7 persons, also at Eovigo; (D) a day-labourer's family of 5 persons in Eomagna ; (E) a mezzaiuolo farmer's family of 1 6 persons (probably of three generations) near Fermo, in the Marches ; (F) a mezzaiuolo' s family of 4 adults and a small child, in rather above average circumstances, at Eeggio-Emilia. A, D, E, F, are budgets of actual families ; B, C, are estimates.^ ' Inchiesta agrariay Countess Pasolini, Monografie di alcuni operai braccianti nel comune di Bavenna; Eabbeno in Economic Journal, Sept. 1894. Other budgets may be found in Mantovani, Bilanci di Trenta Famiglie and Bulletin de I'institwt international de statistique, 1890. 136 ITALY TO-DAY A. B. 0. D. E. F. (13 per- (7 per- (7 per- (S per- (16 per- (S per- sons). sons). sons). sons). sons). sons. ) Wheaten flour 10 lbs. 26 lbs. 13 lbs. 21^ lbs. 20 lbs. 49 lbs. Maize . . . 95 » 42 „ 59 .. 17 „ 152 ,. 13 ,. Frumentello . '3 » Oil and condi- ments . . }9id. ' ? 9id. i.3pints 7d. Meat and bacon . . I pig in the year 1 loilbs. nil -1 I pig in the year \- Poultry, eggs, cheese, milk ! ' 3s. 4d. 3* ;£6,6oo,ooo or 10 per cent, monopolies of salt and tobacco . ) Civil Services Railways and Public Works Army and Navy . Debt .... 13,500,000 „ 20 2,300,000 „ 4 15,700,000 „ 24 27,500,000 „ 42 Now it is clear at the outset that no great economy is possible on the first three heads. Without a radical change in Italian finance, the expenses of collection are bound to be heavy. Public works, so far as they are started to buy political support or find casual em- ployment, may profitably disappear. But others are urgently needed, as, for instance, the various schemes for reclaiming land, or the great aqueduct which is shortly to be built to supply Apulia with drinking water, at a cost to State and local bodies of over ^6,500,000. Nor is any great retrenchment possible in the civil services or allied expenditure, though the bounties may with advantage disappear, and there is room, no doubt, for many small economies. The number of civil servants is excessive, but their pay is very small. In some Departments there is urgent need for more money. Education is starved. Italian justice owes its ill repute largely to the fact that judges and magistrates are paid salaries that will not attract good men. Money is needed to fight malaria, to stamp out phylloxera and the olive pest, to cheapen postal rates, to improve the consular service, to protect emigrants, to make grants-in-aid to the communes, that will enable them to carry out THE ARMY BUDGET 283 their educational and sanitary duties, and compensate them for the abolition of the local duties on food. Be it remembered that Italy could not afford her decennial census in 1891, that it cannot keep a single national library up to date, that priceless archives are rotting for want of store-room. Any substantial economy then must come on the army and navy or on the public debt. The cost of the army and navy (including pensions) has on the average of 1896-99 been a little over ^^i 6,000,000 a year, of which the navy takes ^4,300,000. It is a considerable reduction from the figures of ten years earlier, when the average cost was ^19,000,000, but it is still out of all proportion to the wealth of the country. M. Delivet has shown that it takes a higher proportion of the private income of the country than in any other European State.^ There is room, of course, here for a saving that would materially relieve the country. What probability is there of it ? That the fleet must be kept up to at least its present strength is common ground with all parties. The coast of Italy is too vulnerable to be left defenceless, and even the Extreme Left do not attack the principle of a strong navy. Signor Crispi has recently appealed for a large increase in its force, and indeed it is probable that at present its efficiency is low. On the other hand, there has been a strong and persistent attack on the Army Budget. In the early nineties it came largely from individuals on the Right, as Count Jacini and Signor Colombo. Twice Di Rudini when in office attempted to cut down the 1 Italy 5.14, Spain 4.96, Russia 4.43, Germany 4.28, France 4.03. 284 ITALY TO-DAY Budget, but these and every attempt were defeated by the influence of the late King. The Extreme Left have consistently preached the substitution of a national militia for a standing army, and the lessons of the Transvaal war have strengthened their arguments. The proposal is outside practical politics for the present, but the criticism of the economists has so far reached its mark, that General Pelloux promised in the spring of last year to keep the normal Army Budget down to ;^9; 560,000, exclusive of pensions (;^ 1,400, 000) and the cost of troops on foreign service. These figures have been adhered to in the Budget now before the Chamber ; but the scheme allows some ^700,000 from the sale of military lands and stores to be added to them,-^ and it pledges Parliament to certain expenditure, such as the arming of the artillery with quick-firing guns, which makes it very doubtful whether the limit can be adhered to in future Budgets. It is to be hoped, in the highest interests of Italy, that the retrenchment will go much farther. Her one prime'"" need is to relieve her poverty, and no false national 1 pride should weigh against that. Though it is an error to suppose that the terms of the Triple Alliance pre- scribe any particular military strength,^ it makes none the less for a large and expensive army. And this being so, it is very difficult to justify it. Italy no doubt has her dangers from without, but for defensive purposes her wealth and her credit are more important 1 It was on this point that tte Eadicals refused to join the Zanardelli Cabinet. See above, p. 109, note. ^ See below, p. 299. THE NATIONAL DEBT 285 than any legions of half-trained soldiers. What are the prospects of a renewal of the Triple Alliance in 1 903 we shall see in the next chapter. In the meantime we may note that there are a good many, outside as well as inside the Extreme Left, who would like, sooner or later, to economise at any cost, though at present the Eadicals are satisfied with asking that the limit of ;^9, 560,000 shall be rigidly and honestly observed. On the other hand, the influence of the army is strong, and politicians are afraid of seriously discontenting it. It is probable on the whole that there will be no heroic retrenchment, but the swelling cry for popular finance is likely to necessitate successive small inroads on the Army Budget, and .though there is no statesmanship strong and wise enough to do all that should be done, the country may before long economise an appreciable sum on it. There remains the cost of the Debt, which makes 42 per cent, of the whole national expenditure. According to M. Delivet's figures (after allowing for deduction of income-tax) the charges on the debt ab- sorb over 8 per cent, of the whole private income of the country, a proportion which is exceeded only by Spain, and is nearly twice as high as in France, and four times higher than in England. The possibility of reducing them is the most momentous problem in Italian finance. Signor Flora has shown that in 1897 Italy was paying in interest £4. 4s. for every ;^ioo of debt, while France was paying ;£2. i6s., Eussia ^3. 3s. yd., and Austria ;C3- i6s. 6d. Can this figure be reduced? In 1894 Baron Sonnino, by raising the income-tax, practically reduced the interest on the nominal 5 per 286 ITALY TO-DAY cents, from £4.. 6s. pd. to ^4, and it is notable that the funds went up in consequence, because his action was taken as meaning that the finances were being put on a proper footing, and that there was less danger of repudiation. If his action could be repeated, and the interest on the consolidated debt be reduced i per cent., it would save the Exchequer nearly ;!f 2,000,000 a year ; and Signor Ferraris has calculated that, including the reduction of interest on local debts and commercial capital which would follow, the country would make an annual gain of over ;^6,ooo,ooo. If Italy could raise her credit to the level of that of France, there would be a probable saving to the Ex- chequer alone of ;^6,ooo,ooo a year. Any conversion of the debt depends of course on the price of the funds and the premium on gold. The former has been steadily rising of late years. In 1886 the average price at Eome went up to 99.63 ; the commercial depression that began in 1888 brought it down rapidly, till in 1894 it fell to 82.64. Since then it has been going up with only temporary breaks, till, at the time of these pages going to press, it stands at 100.75 ^^ Rome. Apart from the contingency of war, it is likely to go on rising. Eepudiation is im- possible. Trade, as we have seen, is expanding and likely to expand. The deficits have ceased, and the new strength of the movement for economy makes their recurrence improbable. The second condition of successful conversion is the disappearance of the premium on gold. It nearly or quite vanished in 1884-90, when the forced currency was really abolished. In 1 894 the exchange on London went up THE NATIONAL DEBT 287 to 29.14. At present it is declining, and now stands at a little over 26^.^ This makes tlie funds about 4 to 6 per cent, lower at Paris and London than at Kome. It may be noted, however, that the proportion of Italian bonds held outside Italy is declining at the rate of ;i^6,ooo,ooo to ^8,000,000 a year, and are now about only 1 8 per cent, of the whole debt. The agio is due to 'some extent to the state of the exchange. The balance of trade is against Italy (though there has been a considerable improvement during the past two years) ; and the steady transference of bonds from foreign into native hands means an exportation of gold to pay for them. These movements are partially compensated by foreign investments in Italian com- panies, by the money brought in by tourists and foreign residents (estimated at .^12,000,000), and by the savings of emigrants sent to their families in the mother country.^ Eecently the drain of gold has been somewhat checked. But the main cause of the agio is the excessive circulation of the paper money of the State and private banks. After the bank crisis of 1893 the right of issuing notes was limited to three banks. Their issue is limited, and has to decrease every year till it reaches a minimum in 1 906 ; these notes are legal tender. Strict conditions are laid down as to the reserve in coin and bullion, and the banks are required to liquidate by 1908 the mortgages which had been the chief cause of the crisis. Though their position has improved, it is not yet entirely sound, and their notes are not worth their face-value. The Government still allows the legal limit to be exceeded at times. 1 At par it would be 25.2215. ^ See below, p. 312. CHAPTEE XVI FOREIGN AND COLONIAL POLICY Italy and France. Tunis. The Triple Alliance ; in 1887 ; in 1891. Pros- pects of its renewal. Its effects. Italy and England. Erythrsea. Italy in China. Italy has never been able to make up her mind whether to lean to the French or the Germans. The princes of Savoy sold their help alternately to France and Austria, and profited from every bargain. Modern Italy, less successful and more honest, has always wavered between Paris and Berlin. Her natural lean- ings have been, and are still, to France. The common Latin civilization, a kindred tongue, the Napoleonic tradition, a joint antagonism to Austria, the social intercourse with Paris, already drew Italy and France together, before the third Napoleon cemented the friendship at Magenta and Solferino. A few years were enough to shatter the alliance. To French Catho- licism the attack on the Temporal Power was the un- pardonable sin, and Italy could not forget or forgive Mentana. Already, before Mentana, Italy and Prussia had fought as allies, and when the war of 1870 broke out, not all the eflforts of the King and the military party could overbear the determination of the country to shed no drop of blood for France. The Third Ke- public wiped out Napoleon's blunders, and there was TUNIS . 289 still a strong body of sentiment in Italy, that would have welcomed a renewal of the old ties with France. But there were two insuperable obstacles. French policy was still dominated by Catholic opinion, and the question of the Temporal Power remained more powerful than the natural affinities, which should have drawn the two nations together. And now that Italy had become a first-rate Power, she inevitably became the rival of France in the Mediterranean. It was the threats of Frenchmen to restore the Pope to his pos- sessions, and the occupation of Tunis in the teeth of promises, that threw Italy into the arms of Germany and Austria. At the Congress of Berlin Bismarck prompted both Italy and France to seize Tunis. The cynical wicked- ness of it mattered nothing to him, if he could embroil the two countries and divert French ambitions from Alsace and Lorraine to barren conquests in Africa. The English Government assisted him by encouraging the French, if not to annex Tunis, at all events to develop their influence there.^ For the moment, how- ever, the statesmen at Paris were too wary to swallow the bait, and promised Italy to make no move except by agreement with her. Possibly, had it not been for the astounding blunders of the Government at Eome, they would have waited long. It was, perhaps, from a real though quite unfounded fear that the Italians intended to declare a protectorate over Tunis, that in 1 88 1 the French decided to forestall them, and, throw- i Parliamentary Papers, 1881, Tunis, No. i ; Chiala, Tunisi, 116, 125- 130, 184, 287-288, 322. T 290 ITALY TO-DAY ing to the winds their repeated promises to Italy and England, occupied the country and proclaimed a pro- tectorate. The irritation in Italy was intense. It was feared that Tunis was a step to Tripoli, and that, with all the South Mediterranean shore in her pos- session, France would " shut in Italy with a ring of iron," and make an easy swoop on Sicily. Without allies, Italy was hopelessly overmatched, and so far from her having allies, it seemed as if the Papal ques- tion might range Germany and Austria as well as France against her.^ The insults to Pio Nono's corpse gave the Pope a cry, and Bismarck was angling for his support to manage the Centre. " Italy is no friend of ours," he replied, when the Nuncio asked him if he would oppose the restoration of the Temporal Power. ^ It was a common belief in Italy that France intended sooner or later to restore the Pope, or at least to raise the question of the Pope's position under the Law of Guarantees. If German sympathies were against her, Italy might find herself powerless to resist French demands, except at the cost of a terrible war and almost certain defeat. Men, who saw the dangers of her isolation, pleaded that the country should abandon a policy that had tried to please everybody and pleased none, and frankly oflfer her alliance to the German Powers. Foolish patriots talked of " Eome aspiring to her ancient greatness," and urged that Italy should make herself a great military and naval power, and ' For the history of the Triple Alliance down to 1897, we have relied mainly on Signer Chiala's La triplice e la dupKce alleanza. 2 Cappelli in Nwma Antologia, November i, 1897. THE TEIPLE ALLIANCE 291 plunge into the full current of European politics. There were cooler heads who saw the danger. Tunis was lost, and no alliance would recover it for Italy. The country was financially almost at the mercy of France, and the hostility of the Paris Bourse would mean a heavy fall in Italian securities, and make the abolition of the forced currency very difficult. The negotiations for a new Commercial Treaty with France were pending, and if they were unsuccessful, Italian trade would lose its best market. And even so half- hearted a Liberal as Depretis saw what peril lay in a rupture with the country that represented Continental Liberalism and in a close association with the two great Conservative Powers. But the feeling against France was too strong, the fear of isolation too instant, to allow prudent doubters to be heard. And though the Radicals protested against a policy that made for militarism, and the Irredentists denounced an alliance with Austria, and Depretis in the Cabinet clung to the hope of friend- ship with France, the mass of the Left and his own colleagues overbore his hesitation, while Sonnino brought the Centre and Minghetti brought the Eight into line with the majority. The Italian statesmen went cap in hand at Vienna and Berlin to plead for the alliance of the three States. At first they found scant welcome. Andrassy had not forgiven the Irre- dentist agitation, which had nearly led to war a year ago. Bismarck was probably at the moment seriously favouring the Temporal Power, perhaps because a Pope with a sea-board must listen to 292 ITALY TO-DAY his cannon ; and lie thought the Depretis Ministry too Radical, and knew the Premier's strong liking for France. But at bottom both Austria and Germany- were ready to listen to the Italian overtures. Austria wanted Italian support in the event of a war with Russia, and was probably glad to get the Government at Rome pledged to discountenance the Irredentists. Bismarck, after Gambetta's accession to ofl&ce in November 1881, was seriously afraid of an attack from France and Russia, and willing to take any allies that offered. But it was still difficult to come to terms. The German Powers wanted a mutual under- taking to follow a Conservative policy at home, and to this even the " cautious Liberalism " of the Government could not consent, though they knew that in any case the Conservative drift of the alliance was bound to react on home affairs. Italy, for her part, asked that the contracting Powers should mutually guarantee each other's interests, which would have secured her German and Austrian support in the Mediterranean ; but she could get no more than a promise of " mutual friendly intelligence" on great political questions. The treaty, as finally signed in May 1882, probably contained no more than a mutual guarantee to protect each other's territory and a promise to abstain from any act of aggression.^ The treaty was to last five years. It soon became very doubtful whether it would be renewed. Bismarck, always obsessed by the fear of an attack from Russia, found that he could safe- 1 Chiala, op. cit, 312-318. THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 293 guard himself for the time by an agreement with her, which he did his best to conceal from Italy. There all parties were soon at one in condemning the treaty. The country had gained nothing from it, except so far as it had helped to preserve peace. Italy had involved herself in heavy responsibilities, and had nothing to show for it. There was little fear at the moment that France would intervene in the Pope's interest, and the treaty gave no security against her advance in the Mediterranean. Germany had flouted Italy by the secret agreement with Eussia. The alliance practically meant a heavy military ex- penditure, for which the country had small liking. The French Commercial Treaty had been temporarily prolonged at the end of 1881, but it would expire in 1887, and prudent men wanted to have no political tension to reinforce the protectionist agitation that threatened it in both countries. If the Triple Alliance were renewed, at least, its critics urged, Italy should gain some more obvious advantage from it. It- was the offer of better conditions that made the renewal possible. Before the treaty lapsed, Bismarck had become so fearful that Eussia would break away again, that he was willing to buy a continuance of the Italian alliance by a clause that protected her interests in the Mediterranean. It was at this time, no doubt, that England bound herself to defend the Italian coast. ^ The Government at Eome was satisfied with the con- cession, and the treaty was renewed for another four years. In the interval the old battle was fought over 1 See below, p. 299. 294 ITALY TO-DAY it with increased vehemence at home. The Extreme Left, hitherto divided, declared strongly against any further renewal. Count Jacini, on the Conservative side, warmly denounced the " megalomania," that was imposing on the country burdens beyond its strength and had helped to bring about the disastrous tariff- war with France, and he pleaded for military economy and a policy of friendliness to all neighbouring countries. But his death and the stiffneckedness of France in refusing any commercial concession killed the agita- tion that he had set on foot. The " megalomania," which he attacked, had found its ablest champion in Crispi, who had done his best to exasperate France by speeches of supreme unwisdom. Bismarck possessed for him the fascination that a first-rate statesman generally has for the parvenu minister. He had some big indefinite idea that Italy could become a great military and colonial Power, and that the Triple Alliance made the road to this. Crispi went out of office before the time came for the next renewal of the treaty, but he had given a great impetus to the imperialists. The feeling against France was very bitter. The country charged the alarming fall in the funds to the hostility of the Paris Bourse. During a visit of French pilgrims some one wrote " Long live the Pope-King " in the visitors' book at the Pantheon, where Victor Emmanuel lay buried, and the silly trifle was taken as fresh proof of French intrigues against Italian Unity. The tariff- war with France had brought wide disaster to the trading classes and farmers. It was inevitable under the circumstances that the Triple Alliance should be PROSPECTS OF ITS RENEWAL 295 renewed. In June 1891 it was continued for six years, or, if not then denounced, for twelve ; and the three contracting countries concluded liberal Commercial Treaties to last for the same period. The treaty was hardly renewed, when the Dual Alliance began to appear on the scene. In July 1891 the French fleet went to Kronstadt, and whether or not there has been any written alliance between France and Russia, some kind of close understanding between them has existed since then. But this later period has seen a marked improvement in the relations between France and Italy. At first, indeed, the bitterness was as great as ever. In 1892 the anniversary of the Sicilian Vespers was ostentatiously celebrated at Palermo, and stones were thrown at the French Embassy at Rome. Next year some Italian workmen were killed in a fierce riot at Aigues-Mortes. In 1896 the flame burst out again, when France de- nounced the Italian treaty of navigation with Tunis. But henceforward the tide has set steadily towards France. Visconti-Venosta became Foreign Minister in November, and has held almost continuous office since then ; ^ and however wanting in force he may be, he at all events represents the older and saner school of Italian statesmen. A new Tunisian treaty was con- cluded, which practically recognized the French pro- tectorate. In 1898, perhaps as the exchange for this, a new Commercial Treaty brought French and Italian trade together again. There has been a growing cool- ness between Paris and the Vatican, and France is no 1 He is now (Feb. 1901) out of office. 296 ITALY TO-DAY longer likely to harass Italy for the Pope's pleasure. International interests have shifted to colonial ques- tions. Italian Imperialism has had its day and is discredited. Trade with Tunis has not suffered, and the Italian settlement there has tripled. The grow- ing democratic forces naturally make for friendliness with France, and though there are still suspicions of French designs in Tripoli and Morocco, Italy is not likely to go to war to check them. And at the same time the old dislike of the Triple Alliance, which never quite died down, has revived in greater strength than ever. In the days of cool reflection, that have come since Adowa, Italy has realized that her mili- tarism threatens to ruin her, and that big armaments follow alliances, as night follows day. There is a good deal of friction on minor points. It is true that Irre- dentism is a nearly spent force. The Austrian Italians are making a brave fight for their nationality against the wave of German and Slav propagandism that threatens to submerge them ; and though they are losing ground in the Tyrol, they seem to be holding their own in Istria and Dalmatia. But their efforts are directed rather to asserting their position in the Empire, than to any movement for union with Italy ; and they no longer appeal, as they did even ten years ago, to Italian sympathies. The old generation, which remembered the war of 1866 and the Irredentist agitation of 1879, is passing away. The Socialists re- pudiate them as a reactionary and Clericalist party, and bid the country think of " the terra irredenta of Lombardy, where men die of pellagra and hunger." EFFECTS OF TRIPLE ALLIANCE 297 But Irredentism still makes possibilities of friction on the frontier, and there is some strain over the future of Albania. We must have either an independent Albania or an Italian Albania, but never an Austrian Albania, which might endanger Italian control of the Adriatic, says the Tribuna. There are smaller differences with Germany — a natural dislike of the Emperor, indignation at the German barbarities in China. And there are two much more serious obstacles to a renewal of the alliance. One is the internal con- dition of Austria. The other is the protectionist agitation in Germany and Austria, which threatens the renewal of the Commercial Treaties in 1903. Should it be successful in denouncing or mutilating them, a heavy blow would be struck at Italian trade, and the political alliance would lose its one solid advantage. Already it is rumoured that the Italian Government has made their renewal a sine qud non of any prolongation of the alliance. In spite of all, however, the probabilities are that the Triple Alliance will go on. If, however, it is renewed, it will be from no enthusiasm for it, but only to purchase the continuance of the Commercial Treaties, or from a kind of supine fatalism, which accepts it as an unavoidable burden.^ It is very difficult to weigh what Italy has gained and lost from the Triple Alliance. In its early days, 1 Signer Zanardelli has quite recently (March 1901) informed a corres- pondent of the New York Herald that he will not pledge himself to a renewal of the alliance ; that " in any case Italy and France must remain friends." This either is bluff to obtain better terms in the Commercial Treaties or indicates a serious hesitation on the part of his Government as to the future of the alliance. 298 ITALY TO-DAY no doubt, it safeguarded her from the very real danger of a French attack. Possibly it has helped to preserve the European peace, and if so, Italy has gained, for a war in which she was involved would have brought bankruptcy and perhaps revolution. But only con- jecture is possible, and one may be sceptical of the contention that the mere adhesion of Italy to the alliance of the Central Powers has weighed among the forces that have made for peace in the last twenty years. At all events, other profit there has been none. Italy has not saved Tunis ; she has refused the condominium in Egypt ; the North African hinterlanii has passed under French control ; and — far worse than these — the Triple Alliance has fed the disas- trous colonial policy, which has drained the strength and credit of the country. At home it may be questioned whether the fears of Conservative contagion have been altogether realized ; but the alliance has probably had a subtle influence on Court and Cabinet, that helped to swell the reaction against Liberal government. Com- mercially, Italy has probably gained. The Commercial Treaties with Germany and Austria are the direct fruit of the political understanding. Nor would it be fair to charge to the alliance the rupture of the French treaty ; for the strain between the two countries was largely independent of it, and the protectionist current ran too strongly, at all events in France, to permit any renewal of the treaty in 1887. On the other hand, the with- drawal of French capital and the hostility of the Paris Bourse and banks, which was the immediate cause of the building crisis at Rome and helped the depreciation ITALY AND ENGLAND 299 of Italian bonds, sprang mainly from political causes. And trade, like every other department of Italian life, has suffered from the cost of the swollen arma- ments, for which the Triple Alliance is chiefly responsible. It is true that there is no specific obligation in the Triple Alliance, which compelled Italy to increase her armaments.^ It is true, too, that quite independently of it, the influence of the Court and the reactionary party has made for a strong army, and that the first increase of military expenditure was prior to the alliance and due to French hostility. But none the less it has inevitably strengthened the tendency ; for Italian pride insisted that the country should have an army as far as possible worthy of its allies, and make at least some pretence to pose as a military power. It has been said that the alliance has brought a moral gain, that Italy has gained in dignity and self-respect by the consciousness that she is playing a part in the European polity. It may be doubted whether there is very much in this, whether a nebu- lous and undirected national pride is worth as much as the sense of social duty, the education of industrial efibrt, that quiet domestic development would have done much more to foster. Fantastic " megalomania," with its want of bottom, its inattention to the prose of national duty, has impaired both the sanity and morality of Italian politics. A feeling of the uselessness or mischief of the Triple Alliance has prompted a certain desire to replace it by an exclusive understanding with England. It is prac- 1 Chiala, op. cit, 593-595. 300 ITALY TO-DAY tically an established fact that when the alliance was renewed in 1887, some sort of treaty was made between Italy and England, which engaged England to preserve the status quo in the Mediterranean and defend Italy from invasion by sea.^ As early as February 1887, according to the inspired information of Signor Chiala, Depretis told his colleagues that, "with regard to Eng- land, no Italian Cabinet would have dared to hope for what our Count di Eobilant (the Foreign Minister) has gained ; our position is now secure both by land and sea." In the following November Lord Salisbury hinted at the alliance at the Lord Mayor's Banquet, and the Times gave its main provisions. Five years later Bismarck practically asserted its existence in the Ham- burger Nachrichten. Attempts to elicit the facts in the House of Commons drew from Sir James Fergusson and Mr. Gladstone vague replies, that left little doubt as to the main fact. Whether the alliance still exists is a secret of the Cabinets, though, at all events as late as 1896, the then Italian Foreign Minister stated that "our friendly relations with England are in our view the natural complement of the Triple Alliance." Nor is it known what is the quid pro quo ; probably it has reference to common action in the Near East or to Egypt. A section, at all events, of Italian politicians would gladly see the understanding with England con- tinue, even if the Triple Alliance broke up, and they speculate that England wUl be driven by her isolation to make it yet more complete. Such an alliance would I Chiala, op. cit., 595, 701-707; Cappelli, op.cii., 751 ; Stillman, The Union of Italy, 389. ITALY AND ENGLAND 301 be all to Italy's interest in the event of a European war. Her great military danger lies in her long and unpro- tected coast. If an invading force landed in Tuscany, it would cut the country into two ; and, in any case, without the command of the sea, Sicily and Sardinia would fall an easy prey to expeditions from Biserta or Toulon. Whether England would stand to gain is more doubtful. The day has passed when the Italian posses- sion of Erythrsea can be of any service to us in Egypt. Though the Italian fleet is fairly strong on paper, it may be questioned whether it has any great fighting value, and pessimists in Italy prophesy that on the outbreak of hostilities it would fall an easy prey to the French, unless it formed a junction with the British fleet. And the desire for our alliance is based simply on calculation of its utility, in no degree on any afi'ection to us. The old sentimental attachment to the England of Palmer- ston and Gladstone and Victoria is dying out. For thirty years past it has been the policy of the English Government to use Italy for its own purposes, and our recent attitude in particular has, in spite of the alliance, left a good deal of soreness. The Italians reproach us that we pushed them into the African fiasco, that we gave them little thanks for holding Kassala to facilitate our advance up the Nile ; they complain that the Anglo- French agreement on the North African hinterland has bartered away their dormant claims to Tripoli, which would be valueless without the trade routes to the interior. And, far more serious than these minor causes of friction, there is a very strong resentment against our South African policy, especially in its later develop- 302 ITALY TO-DAY ments. The Liberals and Democrats criticize it bitterly. The official classes, while they do not wish to see an ally lose prestige, protest that their sympathies are with the Boers. Men, who had been trained almost to venerate England as the friend of nationality and free- dom and the weak, lament that we have deserted the principles that once won for us the love of Italy. The language question at Malta also stirred, at all events at the moment, a good deal of angry feeling. The mass of the Maltese speak a ver- nacular of their own, with affinities to the Arabic. But there is a large and important Italian colony ; Italian has long been the language of the law courts, it is extensively used in commercial corre- spondence, and is a kind of lingua franca here as throughout the Mediterranean. And though it may be a foreign tongue to the non-Italian natives, it is hardly more so than to the dialect-speaking Sicilians, and indeed to the mass of Italians on the mainland.^ Till recently the English Government had been care- ful to show a scrupulous respect for Maltese nation- ality. This policy has now been reversed, and a recent Order in Council has, in dejfiance of the practically representative Council of Government, and in defiance of Maltese opinion as expressed at the polls, enacted that English shall be used in the courts in certain cases at once, and in all cases after fifteen years. There appears to be no sufficient reason for the change ; the arbitrariness and want of tact that has marked the ^ See below, p. 322. ERYTHEMA 303 action of the Colonial Office has made matters worse, and the Maltese have been encouraged by the language of officials, though no doubt mistakenly, to regard the new departure as the first step of a systematic attack on their nationality and religion.^ Their irritation has naturally had its echo in Italy, and added to the anti- English feeling that the Transvaal war called out. One of the worst results of the Ttiple Alliance has been the encouragement it gave to the luckless essay at colonial empire. As early as Cavour's time there had been plans for a commercial settlement on the Abyssinian coast. In 1870 the Rubattino Steamship Company bought, with funds supplied by the Govern- ment, the small coaling-station of Assab, north of the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb, and towards 1882 the station was gradually transferred to the Government itself. In 1885, at the instigation of the English Government, the Depretis Cabinet suddenly decided to occupy Massowa, a little port in the midst of a fever-stricken, sandy waste, near the Tigrd province of Abyssinia. The motives of the occupation were complex. In part it was a counterblast to the French occupation of Tunis, and Mancini, the Foreign Minister, talked in melodrama of "picking up the keys of the Mediter- ranean in the Red Sea." Partly it was prompted by a desire to conciliate England, somewhat affronted by the refusal of condominium in Egypt three years 1 Parliamentary Papers, 1899, Malta (Political Condition). For a sample of Italian feeling on the matter, see Atti delta Society "Dante Alighieri," Marzo, 1900, pp. 31 rf seq. 304 ITALY TO-DAY before.^ Partly it was a reply to the German-Russian understanding, and was intended to show that if Berlin could have its special agreement with St. Petersburg, Rome could have hers too with London. And the public were nursed with grandiose dreams of empire, of an occupation of Abyssinia and a diversion of Italian emigration thither, of a great colonial territory under the Italian flag, which would perhaps stretch to the Soudan. The death of Gordon and the abandonment of the Soudan checked any further move for the time, and the Government, with very doubtful sincerity, still protested that the colony was not intended to be more than a small commercial settlement. But in 1887, partly to satisfy the inevitable tendency to expansion, partly to find healthier quarters for their troops, the Italians advanced to the contiguous highlands. Up till now there had been every desire on the part of the Abyssinians to give them special trading facilities ; but the advance at once made the Negus John and his feudatory chiefs suspicious that it was the first step to an attack on Abyssinian independence. The Negus demanded a withdrawal to the coast, and when this was refused, one of his chiefs attacked and destroyed a column of 500 men at Dogali. The real mis- fortune of the defeat was that it pledged the Italians to a war of conquest. Public opinion, hitherto very scep- 1 We can find no confirmation of Mr. Stillman's statement (op. cit., 377-378) that there was a secret understanding with France to make it a base for reaching the Nile at Khartoum, and pave the way to a condominium of England, France, and Italy. The statement seems to conflict with all the known facts. ERYTHEMA 305 tical of the whole colonial experiment, cried for revenge, an expedition was hurried out, and all the endeavours of the English Government to patch up peace were spoilt by Crispi's refusal to pledge himself against further annexations. For the moment, however, the Negus' retreat and his death in a battle with the Dervishes at Metemma early in 1889 seemed to offer the prospect of peaceful expansion. The new Negus, King Menelek of Shoa, had been helped by the Italians to the throne, and he probably hoped to have them as allies against his half-rebellious subjects in Tigrd. Two towns on the highlands had already been occupied and outposts pushed forward as far as the Mareb river on the South. The new colony was baptized Erythrsea, and a protectorate was declared over part of the Somali coast. Menelek signed the Treaty of Uccialli, which, the Italians fondly imagined, secured them the protectorate of all Abyssinia and indefinite possibilities of expansion. But the pleasant dream soon faded. The colony brought no return ; the attempts at settling Italian colonists broke down ; there was constant friction between the Government and the military authorities ; the policy towards Abyssinia had been one of pitiful vacillation ; the army of occupation was too small to guard the colony from a serious attack, and attack from Abyssinia or Tigrd was only too probable. The native regiments, indeed, repulsed an attack of Dervishes on the Western frontier at the end of 1893, ^^^ Kassala was occupied in the following summer. But this small success was overshadowed by the greater danger from 3o6 ITALY TO-DAY Abyssinia. Menelek, there is little doubt, had definitely accepted the protectorate. But native feeling declared against the treaty ; he was irritated by the overbearing claims of the Italians as to the frontier of the colony and by their encouragement of the rebel feudatory of Tigr^. French intrigues worked on his suspicions. He took advantage of an inaccurate translation of the treaty to deny that it implied a protectorate, and in 1891 he practically repudiated it. This and Crispi's return to oflS.ce in 1893 niade war inevitable. The forward party in the colony were given free rein. The blundering Italian diplomatists had broken with the Eas of Tigr^, and at the end of 1894 the Italians invaded the province with a force that was ludicrously inadequate. So long, however, as they had only the Tigr^ levies to oppose them, they found it easy to advance, and as soon as Crispi could get a free hand at home, he ordered the occupation of the capital, Adowa (April 1895). Later in the year the province was for- mally annexed. But the Government had been blind to all warnings of danger from Abyssinia. Native opinion made it impossible for the Negus to brook the invasion of a feudatory State. He seems to have sin- cerely desired peace ; J^but Crispi would have none, till the Italians had won a conspicuous military success and Menelek had recognized the Italian protectorate. The Government amused itself with drafting humiliating conditions of peace, while the Negus was advancing with an overwhelming force. They had entirely under- rated his strength, and when they recognized the danger, sent reinforcements which arrived too late. In ERYTHR..EA 3o7 March 1896, 14,000 Italian and native troops were attacked by 100,000 Abyssinians near Adowa. They made a fine defence against overwhelming numbers, but one-third were killed or wounded, and less than half the army escaped to tell the tale of defeat. There had always been grave doubts of the wisdom of the colonial policy, and it had needed all Crispi's masterful insistency to push it forward. Adowa finally disillusioned the Italians of hopes of colonial empire. In the days of wrath and panic that succeeded the disaster, a regiment refused to sail to Africa, and Milan and Pavia were not far ofi" from revolution. There was a strong party, especially in Piedmont and Lombardy, for abandoning the colony, or at least restricting it to the coast. 138 Deputies, drawn from every party in the Chamber, voted for withdrawal, but the mass of opinion would not sanction what seemed a humili- ating and cowardly surrender. Di Rudini took a middle course. He insisted that the colony should be organized on a commercial and not a military basis, that its cost should not exceed ^360,000, and that its limits should be drawn so as to bring the expenditure within that sum. The protectorate of Abyssinia was aban- doned and peace was concluded. In 1897 a commercial treaty with the Negus gave Italians liberty to travel and trade in Abyssinia and conceded the most favoured nation clause. Negotiations were opened for the de- limitation of boundaries, though the difficulties of reconciling Italian and Abyssinian ambitions have pre- vented up till now any final settlement. The protec- torate of part of the Somali coast is retained, and by 3o8 ITALY TO-DAY an amazing arrangement, which betrays the colonial incompetence of the Italian Government, p^ 16,000 a year are paid by the State to a private trading com- pany for administering the district of Benadir. If the Italians had been wise, they would have abandoned a land, which has brought and will bring nothing but loss and danger. The colonial experiment has been throughout one story of mismanagement and miscalculation. It has probably cost from first to last not much less than ;i^20,ooo,ooo ; it still means a financial loss of ^360,000 to ^400,000 a year. It has been an evil and perturbing influence on Italian politics. It has brought the country a great humilia- tion. And there is nothing to show for it. The coast zone is almost uninhabitable for Europeans. The hill- country is healthy and in parts fertile, but there is much scarcity of water, and the great variations of temperature make it impossible to grow colonial pro- ducts. The attempts to cultivate cotton and tobacco have been abandoned. And colonists will not settle in a half-savage country, where war may break out again at any moment, while in South America there are rich and peaceful lands, where great Italian settle- ments welcome the emigrant to a land where his own tongue predominates. Gold has been discovered near Asmara, probably in fairly rich deposits, but the country is at present too difficult of access to encourage miners. The railways that are being built in the colony and in Abyssinia may facilitate the opening of commerce with the interior, but again the prospect is too uncertain to attract business enterprise, while ITALY IN CHINA 309 there is a far larger and easier field in the Argen- tine. And meanwhile the colony is a standing peril to Italian security. The little army of 1300 Italians and 5500 natives is sufficient to irritate but powerless to protect. Erythrsea lies in close proximity to a powerful military state, which might at any moment find it to its interest to invade the defenceless border. Menelek has probably 160,000 to 180,000 good rifles, 100 modern cannon, 20,000 to 25,000 good cavalry, and an inexhaustible supply of foot soldiers, who have been good fighters as long as history has record of them.^ The English advance to Khartoum no doubt makes him less disposed to take any ofiensive. But French and Russian influences, though weakened, are not extinct ; the colony invites a raid from the half-savage tribes that own his more or less nominal sway ; the still unsettled boundary question leaves the possibility of friction with himself, and still greater danger, should his death open the way to civil war and anarchy in Abyssinia. It is probably too much to hope that the Italians will sacrifice national pride to national welfare. But a truly wise and strong statesman would undo the error, which hangs so threateningly over the future of Italy, and withdraw for good and all from Erythrsea. So unteachable, however, is the Italian Government, that it could not resist taking a part in the scramble for China, and in 1899 occupied the bay of San-Mun. There was no excuse for it. The Italian trade with China is very small ; and practically no Italians have settled there. It implied either a heavy addition to 1 Ad. Rossi, L'oro e le spine nell' Eritrea, 13-16. 3IO ITALY TO-DAY the cost of the fleet or a serious weakening of the home defences. The whole incident was marked by an incredible recklessness. Nobody in Italy, it is said, knew anything of the geography of the bay, till some foreign books were found to tell them a little of it. So blundering was the diplomacy, that Giolitti from the opposition benches prayed the Government in sheer pity for the country's credit not to publish the papers. Luckily, however, the public saw the danger, and so present was the dread of a repetition of the African mistake, that the Government realized that Parliament would not consent to the occupation, and withdrew the ships. The adventure cost the country ^160,000, but its issue has shown that Italy has no wish to have another Erythrsea added to its burdens. The part taken in the present expedition to China stands on another footing. It would, no doubt, have been very difficult for Italy to break away from the European Concert, and even a section of the Extreme Left have felt this. But there is a strong fear that the Government, despite its disclaimers, intends it as a step to fresh colonial adventures, and it is possible that there are commercial interests, which will do their best to push them to it. The barbarities of the allied troops have created a strong repulsion to the whole business, and there is an agita- tion of some strength for the withdrawal of the Italian contingent. CHAPTER XVII GREATER ITALY Emigration. Its effects in Italy. Emigration to the United States ; to South America. Greater Italy. The Government and emigration. The Erythraean folly is the greater, that Italian expan- sion has advanced triumphantly in another direction. While the Government has wasted its millions on a land of war and poverty, while trade has stubbornly refused to follow the flag, the Italian artisans and labourers, unaided, sometimes diseneouraged, by the State, have been building up in South America a Greater Italy, which is destined to play a big part in the world's history. The flow of emigration during the^ last twenty years is the natural remedy for a poverty, ' that comes largely of over-population. The Italians are one of the most prolific of races. The birth-rate is nearly the highest in Europe — highest, unfortunately, in those districts where illiteracy and poverty are greatest. The excess of births over deaths is exceeded only in Germany, Great Britain, and the Scandinavian countries, and it tends to increase, as better sanitation rapidly reduces the death-rate. The density of popu- lation is far in excess of that of Germany or Austria or France. Parts of Lombardy and Venetia have a thicker population than any European country except Belgium, and a careful observer has estimated that 312 ITALY TO-DAY there are one-third too many labourers in the Po valley. There are parts of the country, where Malthus' theory becomes fact, and the growth of population means something not far off starvation. Thus emigra- tion is having a beneficent economic influence at home, and is likely to have more in the future. In the rural districts, from which most of it comes, it is sensibly reducing the mass of poverty, though perhaps not in its acutest form. " Tens of thousands of peasants and labourers," says Professor Mtti, "go to gain outside their country the daily bread they could not gain within it." They send to their families and relatives in the old country from ;^6,ooo,ooo to ;if 8,000,000 a year — a sum, which not only means a sensible addition to the income of the working classes, but must have its influence on the problem of the currency. And the reduced pressure of competition is perhaps the most hopeful agency to raise the wages of the agricultural labourer and reduce the rents of the small farmer. Emigration has a still more far-reaching consequence. The multitude of emigrants, who return home again, bring to many a dark and sequestered village a pros- perity and a standard of life unknown before. Besides the thousands, who leave for the summer's work and return regularly in the winter, there are few emigrants, who do not cherish a hope of seeing home once more. If they sell their little property before they go, they generally retain the power to repurchase. In 1898, 66,000 emigrants, half of them agricultural labourers, returned to the port of Genoa. They come back with their little savings to buy or improve a farm or build EFFECTS OF EMIGRATION IN ITALY 313 a better cottage. There are several small country towns in Southern Italy, which have risen from squalor to something of prosperity through the money and influence of those who have come home. And they return from France and Switzerla,nd, from the United States and the Argentine, with their old Conservatism broken up, and bringing back a stock of new ideas, that are leavening rural thought. As in Ireland, the returned emigrant is sapping the domination of the landlord and the priest. Italian emigration is of two kinds. There is the temporary emigration of the men — two-thirds of them from Venetia — who seek various kinds of work, mostly unskilled, in France and Austria, in Switzerland and Germany and Tunis. They are the navvies and railway- builders of the Continent, a sober, industrious, saving race, bitterly hated by the native workman, because they take a lower rate of pay, living lives of squalor and privation, but managing out of their wages of 3s. or 3s. 6d. a day to bring back a little hoard to keep their farms going or tide over the winter. Their number grows steadily year by year, and in 1899 there were about 165,000^ of them. There are a certain number of permanent emigrants, who settle in France and Tunis. The latter is almost an Italian country, and so much is Italian its language, that the French Deputies have to address public meetings in it. But these movements, however important in their economic eflfects, have not the political moment of the emigration, 1 The official figures are misleading, as some 12,000 "temporary" emigrants sail every year to America from foreign ports. 314 ITALY TO-DAY which takes over 150,000 every year to settle across the Atlantic. Three countries — the United States, Brazil, the Argentine — absorb nearly the whole of these. The emigration to the United States grows steadily. In 1898 it reached 78,000, and for the first time was greater than that of any other country, being more than double the British immigration and three times greater than the German. But from a political point of view the immigration into North America is of comparatively little importance. The Italian finds himself face to face with the Anglo-Saxon and the German, and is handicapped in the fierce competition by his poverty and illiteracy.^ He is despised as a pauper, suspected by the working classes because of his cheap labour, hated by the Irish, who regard him as an enemy of the Pope. And thus he often loses his nationality, and becomes an undistinguished part of the great alien proletariat. Or if he retains his love of fatherland, his ambition is to save a little money and return ; he has none to raise the status of his class in his adopted country. It is only in California, where there are 45,000 Italians, mostly from the Riviera, that they prosper. Here they have a certain amount of trade in their hands, especially fruit-growing and fish- ing. Their property is estimated at ;!f 10,000,000. A Piedmontese firm of vine-growers at a new Asti pro- duced in 1897 two million gallons of wine. While the Italians as a race have no future in North America, a vast breadth of the southern con- tinent promises in a few decades to be a great Italian ' See above, p. 235. EMIGRATION TO SOUTH AMERICA 315 country. There are already, it is probable, in Brazil and Uruguay and tbe Argentine about 3,000,000 Italians in a population of some 23,000,000, of whom the great majority are Portuguese or Spaniards. Their numbers swell with an annual immigration of 110,000, nearly as many as that from all other countries com- bined ; and they are more prolific than the stagnant native population. It is not an extravagant estimate that by the middle of the century there will be 15,000,000 of them, and even if they are not a numerical majority, they will, at all events, be the virile and dominant element. In Brazil there are at least 1,300,000^ of Italian blood, possibly many more, and some provinces are peopled almost entirely by them. In 1891-95 the Italian immigrants numbered 378,000 out of a total of 660,000, and unenterprising Spaniards and Portuguese formed the great bulk of the remainder. In some respects their position is not so bright as in the Argentine. Much of the country is unhealthy. Thousands have been lured by the delusive promises of emigration agents, and find themselves isolated and helpless, in a condition not far removed from serfdom. But they are asserting themselves rapidly among the inferior races that surround them. The Portuguese have all the pride and idleness of a decaying people ; the half-bloods and freed slaves have small wish or power to aspire. And the Italian, un- known here thirty years ago, has brought a patient industry and a commercial enterprise new to the land. * The Jomal do Commercio of Brazil puts them at 1,374,000. Signer Ginaudi estimates them at 2,000,000. 3i6 ITALY TO-DAY The chief building firm at Eio, the largest flour-mills in the State, belong to Italians ; the banks, the hat in- dustry, the textile manufactures are largely in their hands. The great State, with an area nearly as large as Europe and of boundless fertility, promises under Italian auspices to rise to a prosperity it has never known. What is likely to be the future of Brazil is already happening in the Argentine. Here, out of four and a half million inhabitants (almost all white men), over one million are Italians, and Italian blood runs in the veins of perhaps one-third of the remainder. The annual Italian immigration averages over 46,000, or nearly one-half of the whole. At Buenos Ayres at least one-third of the 600,000 inhabitants are Italians. They already hold the first rank in the industry of the country. The bulk of the engineering and milling and furniture, of the paper and soap industries, almost all the hat and tobacco manufactures, most of the cement and marble works, a large part of the tanning and tinned meat businesses, is in their hands. They own nearly half the commercial firms of Buenos Ayres, with a capital of ;^30,ooo,ooo, and more than half its workshops. Italian architects and masons have built the greater part of Buenos Ayres and La Plata. Italians and Dalmatians have all the river carrying trade and two- thirds of the coasting trade. Italian peasants and men of business have almost a monopoly of the corn-farms. The native Spaniard despises tillage, and the produc- tion of corn and artificial grasses and vines has been practically created by the new-comers. They own GREATER ITALY 2,^7 rural property to the value of ;^ 10,000,000, and one in every eight is a proprietor. In the wheat-growing provinces they constitute the enormous majority of the population. A Piedmontese proprietor plants 67,000 acres in wheat ; an Italian firm mows 1 2,000 acres of temporary grasses ; an Italian, the foremost wine producer of South America, has 2500 acres under vines. The Italian vine-growers of Mendoza and San Juan and Buenos Ayres produce every year 33,000,000 gal- lons of wine. It is a mighty work, that these unedu- cated, poverty-stricken Italian peasants have built up in a few years. By sheer dint of industry and persever- ance and native shrewdness, the men, who in the United States are contemned as useless or dangerous paupers, have carved their way to comfort or affluence. Many a poor peasant, who crossed the Atlantic to escape a life of squalor and misery, sees his sons in Parliament or prosperous lawyers and engineers, and perhaps has sent them to have a university education in the mother-country, which he left a pauper. Boys and men have gone from Como and Novi and Domo- dossola with nothing but the clothes on their backs, and now are masters of great factories. The chief agent on Change at Buenos Ayres was an unruly boy, who ran away from home without a sou. The Argen- tine " wheat king," whose property is valued at ^2,000,000, had half a franc when he landed. One, who was a humble engineer on a Sardinian railway, is now the greatest contractor in South America. A small cotton millowner from Busto Arsizio has built up in ten years a business, which owns the largest mill 31 8 ITALYJ TO-DAY in South America, and imports ;^300,cxdo a year of Italian stuffs. Italian lawyers and authors have made themselves a name. An Italian has been President of the Republic ; the present Ministers of Education and War are Italians. Most of these or their fathers have been self-made men ; but of recent years the immigrants have included not only peasants and artisans, but managers and manufacturers, whose capacity finds here an outlet, which it never had at home. " Italy," says Signor Einaudi, " is beginning to export not only common labour, but captains of industry as well." Here, then, in the vast plains of South America lies the future of the Italian people. And a great future it is. In another century there will be 100,000,000 Italians, and Italian will be, after English and Russian, the most widely spoken of Aryan tongues. The future of the world is to the colonizing races ; and there are only three white peoples that have the colonial instinct. But Greater Italy differs from Greater Britain and from Russia in that it has no dream of an imperial destiny. The Italian colonist, indeed, clings, as a rule, to his nation- ality; he refuses tobe absorbed, as the German does, by the environing race ; he has all the Englishman's tenacious love of the language and customs of the mother-country. He keeps his close connections with it, social, educa- tional, industrial; already the Argentine imports more from Italy than from any other country except Great Britain. But he has no ambition to live under the national flag. Circumstances have shaped it other- wise, and he has brought with him bitter memories of what Italian government means. He prefers to EMIGRATION LAWS 319 become the loyal citizen of another country, to work out his individual salvation there, and let his own native force make him the predominant element in it. The future will show whether his ideal or the British is the more enduring. The Italian Government, in its short-sightedness or worse, has viewed all this great movement with indif- ference or suspicion. A few years ago the feeling was general among the ruling classes that emigration was a loss to the country, and in the heyday of pseudo- patriotism under Crispi the Government did all it could to discourage it. It was not only landlords, who pleaded that a cheek on emigration was the only cure for agricultural distress ; even the economists con- demned it. In 1887 Crispi proposed that the Govern- ment should have power to restrict emigration in any given province, and punish officials and priests who recommended it. In the following year a law was actually passed, forbidding any person liable to military service in time of war, that is, all males under thirty- two, to leave the country without permission of the War Office — a law which at once reduced permanent emigration by nearly one-half. It goes without saying that the State has done little to protect the emigrant. It supports an emigration office at Ellis Island, near New York, but so far from doing anything in South America, in a fit of perverse economy it abolished the Italian consulate at Buenos Ayres. It did nothing to check the unscrupulous emigration agents, who sometimes drive a " slave-market " in Italian labour ; it did nothing to insist on proper accommodation in 320 ITALY TO-DAY emigrant ships. These are scandals that have rung through Italy. In 1896 there were over 7000 emi- gration agents in the country, and too many of them have speculated on the peasant's ignorance, giving false information as to the labour-market, sometimes cheat- ing him of the little hoard he had taken with him, or deliberately sending him to a different locality from that agreed upon. Men, who had paid to be taken to their relatives in South Brazil, have been fraudulently sent to the pestilential provinces of the North ; or, when they had taken berths on a fast-sailing vessel, have been forced to travel on some slow and ill- appointed ship. Some of the larger shipping lines treat their passengers fairly well, but sometimes even the subsidized companies provide disgraceful accommo- dation, and a recent ring has raised the fares to a figure, that means the loss of tens of thousands every year to the poor emigrant. Some of the smaller vessels take months to cross the Atlantic, and have a frightful mortality. Unseaworthy colliers, unfit for their original uses, have been turned to carry human flesh. Careful statistics have proved that the great majority of deaths on the voyage are due to avoid- able causes. Public opinion is at length forcing Parliament to take action. In 1896 it was proposed to make the emigration agencies illegal and insist on a minimum standard of accommodation in emigrant ships. A Bill introduced in the spring of last year was shipwrecked in the political crisis, but another drawn on the same lines passed the Chamber in December, and, it is to EMIGRATION LAWS 321 be hoped, will have become law before these pages see the light. Its chief provision establishes a State Com- mission for emigration with local committees, which will protect the emigrant, diffuse information as to foreign countries, and have power to revise all fares on emigrant vessels. At the same time the emigration agencies will become illegal, and the Government will erect shelters at the chief porjis of departure and arrival. It is possible that before long the Govern- ment will take under its charge the Italian schools in the Argentine. It was only last year that Italian became an obligatory subject in them, and the voluntary Italian schools, to which the Government at home contributes a poor ;^56o, provide for only one Italian child in six. It follows that the patois-speaking immigrant finds it as easy to learn Spanish as Italian, or adopts a lingua franca. A good deal has been done by the richer Italian residents and by the " Dante Alighieri " Society, founded " to protect and diffuse the Italian tongue and civilization among Italians outside Italy." But their resources have proved inadequate, and public opinion will probably compel the Govern- ment to take action in a matter so important for the preservation of Italian nationality in South America. CHAPTER XVIII LITERATURE Literature in Italy. Giosue Carducci. Olindo Guerrini. Gabriele D'Annunzio. Antonio Fogazzaro. Giovanni Verga. Emilio De Marchi. Edmondo De Amicis. Giovanni Pascoli. Matilde Serao. Ada Negri. Conclusion. Before passing any judgment on recent Italian litera- ture, it is well to consider tlie conditions under whieli it has been produced. Literary Italian is, and always has been, a conventional language ; nowhere spoken as a living tongue ; ^ nowhere a medium for the expression of the intimate realities of life. It therefore lacks that vivifying contact with popular sentiment and activity, so essential to a great national literature. Authors, if they wish to give verisimilitude to scenes of humble life, are driven either, like Fogazzaro in the Piccolo Mondo antico, to use the vernacular, and so make their dialogue unintelligible to the majority of Italian readers, or, like Verga in his Sicilian stories, to debase the fine gold of the Italian language by too great an alloy of dialect. Moreover, the exercise of the higher forms of literature is a luxury in Italy. No poet, hardly a novelist, succeeds in making a livelihood by his pen. Even Gabriele D'Annunzio would fare 1 Prof. Mosca of Turin tells us there are some slight indications of a beginning in this direction, but too small at present to draw conclusions from. A Sicilian, he confesses difficulty in expressing himself adequately on popular and intimate subjects in Italian. 322 GIOSUE CAEDUCCI 323 ill, were lie to depend exclusively on the sales of his works in Italy. For educated Italians are poor, the proportion of illiterates, especially in the South, is high, and even of those who satisfy the small require- ments of the elementary school, a certain number soon lose the power of reading and speaking Italian. Again, the nation has no recognised literary centre, no focus of intellectual activity, to give men added strength and perfected art, where " Gome specchio V uno all' altro 7'ende." ^ Yet again Italians, by the exigencies of their national condition and by the predominant tone of their minds, have been directed to economic and social studies rather than to belles-lettres. They are like a man who should come to the heritage of a vast and neglected estate, burdened with debt and responsibilities. His first and urgent duty is to set his house in order. The essentially practical nature of the Italian genius, therefore, has been, and is, mainly applied to working out economic and social problems. Of the amazing output of this economic, sociological, and scientific literature it is not our province to treat. Many of its exponents are men of European fame : Lombroso in criminology, Grassi in biology, Loria in economics, Villari in history, are but a few. These disadvantages make the real merit of the best Italian writers the more remarkable. Of their poets, one at least stands in the front rank. In Carducci Italy has given birth to a singer, whose verse has immortalised the aspirations, the enthusiasms, the revolutionary daring, 1 Purgatory XV. 75. 324 ITALY TO-DAY of the generation that made Italian Unity, and has set again to music the underlying Latin and Hellenic in- stincts in her people. Poets there are, and have been, so steeped in Roman and Greek culture, that the fabric of their thought is suffused with Paganism. But Carducci's classicism is part of his very being : it is a reawakening of the Pagan ^ bred in the Italian race. In him this immortal Hellenic spirit, overlaid indeed, but not driven out by Christian thought and sentiment, lives on : its love of external nature, of corporeal strength and sensuous beauty ; its call to enjoy ; its aversion from pain and asceticism; its abhorrence of the ugly and deformed ; its shrinking from the grave ; its clearness of vision ; its virile strength ; its sense of proportion ; its grace of form. All these in Carducci are native and not acquired qualities ; they are the man himself He may be defined as a Pagan re- calcitrant under Christian influences rather than a Christian classicised by Pagan culture. Born in 1836, of a well-read country doctor in Tuscany, he was early taught to love Virgil, Dante, and Tasso. His mother was wont, he tells us, "in the peaceful solitude of our home to teach us to read Alfieri instead of fostering superstition." At the age of twenty -five he was appointed to the chair of literature in the University of Bologna, and in this famous old city he has devoted an uneventful ^ but strenuous life to the service of his art and of higher education. 1 To this day common oaths in Italy are per Bacco (by Bacchus), Oorpo di Bacco (body of Bacchus), per Diana (by Diana). 2 He was, however, suspended for a brief period in 1867 for having signed an address to Mazzini. GIOSUE CARDUCCI 325 His work has the strength and nobility of genius. Spite of critic or populace, he would yar V arte (live for his art). He was ever a fighter. " I am by nature," he says, " inclined to opposition even in literary matters. I feel like a fish out of water when I am with a majo- rity." During his period of fervid patriotism, he did not conceal his scorn of the monarchical party, and urged the King to pitch his crown over the Po and become the armed tribune of the Italian revolution. The publication of the Odi harbare in 1877 marked an epoch in Italian literature : in their last edition ^ they most fully reveal the maturity of Carducci's powers. Early in his career he revolted against the flaccid, con- ventional forms of Italian poetry, with their facile versification and premium on mediocrity. For his new thought he felt the need of a new metre, and in the Odi he has beaten out his music in forms of ancient classic models, modified, however, by essentially Italian rhythm and cadence. The innovation excited a fierce literary controversy ; but it is the privilege of genius to make its own rules, and it were as futile to criti- cise Carducci for breaking from traditional form in poetry as to criticise Wagner for having done the like in music. No modern lyrist so closely reproduces the chiselled monumental grandeur, the sobriety and grace of the classic poets. Yet his subject-matter is actual enough. The poem on the death of the Prince Imperial,^ while it has the calm pathos and reserve of a Greek tragedy, is in content essentially modern. And Carducci 1 Bologna, 1893. ' " Per la Morte di Napoleone Eugenio." — Odi iariare. 326 ITALY TO-DAY too has been subdued by the influence — the baleful influence, as he would term it — of Semitic theology. There runs a burden of sadness through even his most joyous song : " The pale form of the Nazarene casts its shadow and pollutes the air with sorrow." He enters a Gothic church ; ^ the marble shafts seem in the sacred gloom an army of giants marching in steady files to war against the Invisible ; panting and solitary souls strive amid the tumult of men to reach God's presence. But he asks for no God ; he watches till the echoes are awakened by a dainty, well-known footstep, and Lydia reveals her bright tresses, and love shines from a pale, shy face through the black veil. "Farewell, Semitic God ; Death rules in thy mysteries ; thy temples shut out the sun." Nor has he escaped the more prosaic and clamant social problems of the age. Aurora,^ sweet goddess, may arise and kiss the clouds with rosy breath, heaven shine in all its splendour, the fields laugh, and Lydia's eyes sparkle with love ; but the sun's face looks down on a wearied race, and on the toiler cursing the dawn that recalls him to his bond- age.^ Nor have the dead a message of hope for mortals. "Blessed are ye," they say,* "wayfarers by the hill- side bathed in the warm rays of the golden sun. The garlands that crowned our damp skulls are rotted away. Love ; and enjoy the sun. Down here 'tis cold. We ' "In una Chiesa gotica." — Odi iariare. ^ "AW Aurora." — Odi barhare. 5 For his sympathy with the poor and disinherited, his scathing indignation at their heartless exploitation by the rich and powerful, see " II Garnwale " in Levia Oravia. * " Fuori alia Gertosa di Bologna." — Odd barbare. GIOSUE CARDUCCI 327 are alone." He is greatest when expressing the natural beauty and tender associations of classical scenery. For perfect art, subtle magic of style, and sweet pathos, nothing in modern poetry excels such lyrics as Sirmione and AUe Fonti del Clitumno in the Odi. His ideal is essentially modern and democratic. He yearns for a time when labour shall be a joy and love secure, when a mighty people of freemen shall bid the sun shine no more on the slothful ease and selfish wars of tyrants, but on the pious justice of labour.^ Though one of his Latin translators calls him the most parlante of Italian poets, approaching nearest to that ideal poetic style which allows no word or con- struction that would seem aflfected in a well-educated girl, yet he is too severely classic ; he appeals too ex- clusively to the learned ever to become a popular poet. Excepting some early patriotic verse, and the rhetorical, revolutionary "Hymn to Satan," ^ with its defiant attack on the dominant faith, none of his works seem to have touched any section of the common people. But his noble and austere genius has exercised a mighty power for good on the Italian nation. His example and influence have maintained among the youth of Italy a high standard of scholarship, a sustained enthu- siasm for literature, and the habit of a simple and studious life.^ It is not without emotion that the 1 " La Madre." — Odi ha/rbare. 2 The date of this poem is characteristic : " mmdcxviiii. era of the Foundation of Rome." 3 See also Lema Gravia, 1875, Nuove Poesie, 3rd ed., 1879, GiomnM ed Epodi, 1882, and a number of critical and other prose writings of great range and power, published in the complete edition of his works by ZanicheUi of Bologna. Ten vols, have as yet appeared. 328 ITALY TO-DAY literary pilgrim enters Zanichelli's shop at Bologna to press the veteran poet's hand where he sits of an after- noon, stricken indeed, but with interests and enthusiasm unabated. In 1877, the year which saw the publication of the Odi, a dainty little volume of poems issued from Zanichelli's press, as startling in content as the Odi were in form. They purported to be the literary remains of a young poet, Lorenzo Stecehetti, an early victim of Cupid's shafts and tubercular phthisis, and to be edited by his cousin, Olindo Guerrini. Char- acterised by the morbid sentimentality appropriate to consumptive poets, they were yet penetrated by an ostentatious carnality and irreverence, that outraged the conventionalities, not to speak of the decencies, of literary expression. The success of Postuma was immediate. Many, it is said, were the pilgrims of sentiment, who came from all parts of Italy to weep over the tomb of Stecehetti, as of a new Abelard, in the little village of Fiumana, " under the fifth cypress tree on the left as you enter the cemetery," and — found it not. The volume was followed in 1878 by Nuova Polemica, a short collection of poems, dedicated to a local publican, with a long preface by "Lorenzo Stecehetti," in which the writer championed the cause of the Veristi (Eealists), who had rallied to the defence of Postuma. These were a group of ardent literary revolutionists, who aflfected an impudent realism both in form and content. There was much flouting, often in very bad taste, of time-honoured traditions, but OLINDO GUEERINI 329 essentially it was an inevitable revolt, a demand for greater liberty on the part of the new generation, cramped within the narrow area and arbitrary bound- aries of the Idealisti, who had made a literary fetish of Manzoni's name.i Their protagonist writes with a breezy rhetoric, a mordant sarcasm, a playful humour, that either shock or delight the reader. The poems are more shamelessly decoUetes and profane than Postuma. His theory of art is a familiar one : Art is neither moral nor immoral, but simply good or bad. They who accuse the new school of obscenity or irreligion, confound criticism of thesis with criticism of form ; the true distinction being between authors who write well and those who write ill. Life must be portrayed whole, in its deformity as well as in its beauty, and Art, like Ezekiel's mouth, must not turn away from nastiness. In 1897 appeared the Rime of Argia Sbolenfi, with a preface by " Lorenzo Stecchetti," an even more scandalous Polemica. It is difficult, how- ever, to avoid the suspicion that all this shocking cynicism and bohemianism is but a fearsome mask worn to epater le bourgeois, " to make the reader's hair stand on end — if he has any." For this literary satyr,^ bevendo in fresco e bestemmiando Cristo, is none other in private life than Olindo Guerrini him- self, a staid civil servant and worthy citizen of Bologna with two grown-up children, an exemplary husband and father, who, after his day's work as librarian, goes home to the wife of his bosom, his 1 That stormy petrel of Italian politics, Felice Cavallotti, himself no mean poet, was one of the champions of the Idealisti. See Anticaglie, 1 879. 2 " Ebhro."— Postuma. 330 ITALY TO-DAY donna ideale, who wears a grey dress costing 3s. 6d. a yard. The true Guerrini may be sought in certain poems like Justitia in Nuova Polemica and some dozen others at the end of the Mime, where " the seven seals are torn from the casket of his heart." Here his verse rings more true and intimate. It is penetrated by a deep sense of human brotherhood and of compassion for the victims of social tyranny and wrong. It burns with indignation at hypocrisy in Church and State, at the bloody Erythrean sacrifice of the youth of Italy, torn from workshop and plough, to the ineptitude or vanity of her evil counsellors and rulers. He claims to have at least the poet's gentle heart if not his skill,^ though in truth he is endowed with no small faculty of artistic expression. But all interest in the logomachy of Veristi and Idealisti is long dead, and whether his verse will survive by its art alone is doubtful. In the late seventies, a young Neapolitan, nursing hatred of compulsory academic verse, was passing through this same city of Bologna. Arrested by the appearance of some volumes of Carducci's poems, he bought and devoured them with feverish interest. He learned the Odi by heart, and, with Southern impetu- osity, dedicated himself to the service of the Muses. His first essays in poetry ^ were hailed as the promise of a new glory to Italian letters. The great critic Chiarini spared neither fatherly counsel nor sympathy to the • " lo ch' ho in petto il gentil cuor SJl poeta, it me ne manca I' arte." — Justitia,. ^ Primo Vere, 1880. GABRIELE D'ANNUNZIO 331 young poet; but the children of the brain no less than those of the loins are wont to get beyond their parents' control ; and even so it was with D'Annunzio, who soon developed a passionate hedonism,^ an " aphro- disiac frenzy," which dismayed and at length disgusted Chiarini. D'Annunzio is the Tannhauser of Italian poetry,^ defiantly singing of his passion, his falls into sensuality, his remorse, his attempts to escape, his feeble courage, his self-contempt — all with exquisite art and passionate music. But, convinced that the novel was destined to be the art form of the future, he turned from poetry and adopted fiction as the expression of his genius. His novels are essentially studies in mental and sexual pathology.^ There is hardly an important character in them, who is a sane, healthy human being. His best known work, Trionfo della Morte, has been de- scribed by an Italian critic as " the clinical history of a special form of rudimentary paranoia in a degenerate." The story is told with an opulent beauty of style and an elaborate art that often captivate the imagination, but the most loathsome details of a worse than bestial passion are dwelt on with nauseating insistence. Even the French translator has not dared to give in their entirety the inventions de ce terrible homme, ce Baudelaire effre'nS* How much of his fame with the reading public 1 Canto Nuovo, 1882 ; Intermezzo di Bime, 1883. ^ Poema Paradisaico, 1891. ' See II Piacere, L'Innocente, Trionfo della Morte. Good sea legs are needed to brave a course of D'Annunzio. * See De Vogii^ in the Revue des Deux Mondes, January i, 1895. 332 ITALY TO-DAY north of the Alps is due to the subjects he treats of, or to the gorgeous pageant of his prose, it were hard to judge. Certainly many Italians are at a loss to account for the vogue he enjoys abroad. His egoism, his obsession by the boudoir and the lupanar, disgust them. His latest work, Fuoco, an unseemly exploitation for literary purposes of a liaison with a famous actress, has pained them. They reflect with some bitterness that while the names of Carducci, of Fogazzaro, of Pascoli are little known abroad, D'Annunzio's works are regarded as the highest manifestation of the Italian genius. It must be remembered, however, that his European reputation is largely based upon the French translations of his novels. Any one who will com- pare the partially deodorised French version of the Trionfo with the Italian original will learn how much the author owes to M. Herelle's critical sagacity and courage and fine sense of proportion. D'Annunzio's fame has hardly been increased by his dramatic works. His introspective habit of mind and lack of wide human sympathy ; his genius, which interprets suffering more than doing, unfit him for grasping a dramatic action and developing it clearly and inevitably before the spectator. Felicitous expres- sion, gorgeous rhetoric, vehement passion, are good as clothing, but unless the author possess the faculty of creating a real man or woman that shall be convin- cing to his audience, the accessories count for little. Whatever else be accidental, the creative power is essential, and except the dramatist efi"ace himself in his characters, he will fail of achievement. This is GABRIELS D'ANNUNZIO 333 precisely what D'Annunzio cannot do. Behind all his puppets we are conscious of the writer's overweening egoism ; and so Byron's fate as a dramatist will be his. Even his style, Italians have complained to us, is marred by an elaborate preciosity and an affected archaism.^ It certainly lacks virility and simplicity. We are too conscious of effort ; the word is too much with us. And the passions he treats of have neither dignity nor grandeur. His social horizon is narrow; he has no outlook on the great, living, toiling world about him ; nothing but contempt for the democracy ^ — the gran bestia trionfante. Over all his works there hangs a pall of melancholy ; the greyness of his mental horizon is relieved by no flash of humour ; his purview of life is void of faith, of hope, and of charity. He is the least Italian of writers. Like all passion-ridden souls, he has but little originality. Ever subject to foreign influences, he is dominated now by the French decadents, now by de Maupassant, now by Dostoievsky, now by Nietsche. But the time is not yet to pass a final judgment on this wayward genius. He is barely over the mezzo del caramin. A saving love of nature, a passionate feeling for the sea^ meet one at times in his works like the sweet breath of heaven stirring the foul air of a lazar- house. By his devotion to his art he has faithfully upheld the traditions of the new Italian school. He ' In the prose of daily life "Gabriel of the Annunciation " is plain Signer Rapagnetta. ^ He went over, however, to the Opposition in the parliamentary struggle of last year. See p. 70. ^ See the Odi Navali, 1893. 334 ITALY TO-DAY gave five years to tlie Trionfo. Whatever views we may hold of his artistic ideals, no one can doubt the sincerity of his self-revelation and the marvellous power he has of gripping the attention. Once under the spell of his genius, the reader is held with invincible fascina- tion. But the Muses are nine, and Erato is she who has the smallest lyre ; may he soon escape her thraldom. And now we turn to a greater than he ; we reach a purer air, a loftier outlook, a wider horizon. Better known as novelist than poet, Antonio Fogazzaro is the one figure in contemporary fiction worthy to stand by his master, Manzoni. Though on its artistic side his poetry falls short of excellency, it is informed with a sympathy, a gentleness, and a strength, which leave a refreshing taste after the morbid and heady productions of a D'Annunzio. His first published poem, Miranda,^ tells of the tragic loves of a maiden of noble family and a young poet. The theme is trite enough, but Fogazzaro's wondrous personality has invested it with rare freshness and charm. We are reminded of Margaret in Goethe's " Faust," as the whole-hearted, truthful love of a gentle girlish nature is revealed. In A Sera ^ he gives expression to his deep religious feel- ing and his sympathy with human sorrow. In the sweet melancholy of the evening shadows falling on a peaceful Italian Vale he hears the rich-tongued bells from height and depth praying for pity on the living and the dead ; on hidden sin and pain ; on all who sleep, guilty or innocent, in the quiet cemetery ; for peace to all who live, and feel, and love, and sorrow. 1 1874. 2 Valsolda, 1876. ANTONIO FOGAZZAEO 335 The poems in Valsolda, that are inspired by scenes of natural beauty, seem almost pantheistic in feeling. They betray a deep sense of the divinity in external phenomena, a strangely Teutonic habit of mind that loves to personify and commune with natural objects. To Fogazzaro, as to Faust, it has been vouchsafed to gaze into the heart of nature as into the bosom of a friend, and know his brethren in the silent bush, in the air, and in the water. As a novelist he is dominated by an unfailing purpose. Art, he believes, should concern itself not only with physical, but with moral and intellectual beauty.^ Its mission is to cooperate with the cause of the universe ; to strengthen that divine element in human nature, which aspires to a greater knowledge and a purer love. The study of the human beast is not excluded, but man's struggle to tread under foot the brute within must hold first place. His theme is the perennial strife between moral principle and human lust ; between duty and self-interest ; between faith and unbelief. Fogazzaro's genius matured slowly. It was not till 1896, when he was fifty-four years of age, that he won the primacy of modern Italian fiction by the Piccolo Monde antico ^ — a masterly picture of a phase of Italian life now past, the time of the Austrian domination in the North between '48 and '59, when men were divided, not by class distinctions, but by Austrian and patriot sympathies. The novel just misses greatness by reason 1 See a lecture given in Paris, published in Ascensioni umane. 2 Piccolo Hondo moderno is now appearing in the Nuova Antologia. 336 ITALY TO-DAY of the besetting impulse of the author (though here seen in lesser degree) to make his principal characters protagonists of an ideal. At the supreme crisis of his life — the loss of an only child — Frank, his hero, gains strength from Faith to rise above despair and conse- crate his life to a noble cause, to live, suffer, work, and die, if need be, for Italy ; while the mother, Louisa, who lacks the Faith, breaks down, hopeless and com- fortless, under a violent reaction against the injustice and cruelty of fate. In Malomhra, in Daniele Cortis, in the Mistero del Poeta, this subordination of char- acter to thesis, this tendency to preach, are more marked. It is the minor personages, such as Zio Piero in the Piccolo Hondo and Don Innocenzio, the de- lightful old priest in Malomhra, who are truest to nature, while the central figures often lose their indi- viduality in the dim outline of the ideal type. Fogazzaro is a force that makes for strength, and sanity, and righteousness. Inspired by the romantic school of Scott and Manzoni, he adds that subtle power of psychological analysis, which the more complex art of modern times demands, and a piercing insight into human character, which comes of absolute sincerity and undeviating truthfulness. An enlightened Catholic, a Christian Socialist, a fervent patriot, taking his part in communal government, fond of athletics ; his popu- lar sympathies, his sunny good-humour, his deep sense of the pathos and tragedy of humble life, his invin- cible faith in the ideal, make him a noble and lovable figure amid so much that is morbid and faithless in contemporary fiction. ANTONIO FOGAZZARO 337 His political creed, Mazzinian in its idealism, is deve- loped at length in Daniele Cortis. The Fatherland may not be held tbgether by struts and clamps like an ancient monument. Providence has not raised Italy from the dead that a bad democracy may rub shoulders with a bad literature. The monarchy is not a something in the clouds, but a power responsible before God and man. He dreams of an alliance between King and Church to inaugurate an era of social reform, of a fra- ternity of science and faith working together for the com- mon weal. No republic will solve the problem of the future and elFect this orderly social revolution, unless the religious sentiment has its part; and this in Italy can only be given by the Catholic Church. But she must renounce her blind opposition to the national movement and fatal esteem of worldly goods. She must teach her priesthood something more than the Summa contra gentes. And as for the rest, avanti a tutti Italia ! His ideal Catholicism is a religion illumined by love and intelligence, compatible with every new dis- covery of the human mind. He dreams of a time when representatives from all the religions of the world shall meet as brethren to do homage to the universabfather- hood of God. A convinced Darwinian, he startled the Church by a public avowal of his belief in evolution at a lecture in Venice on St. Augustin and Darwin in 1 89 1. Needless to say, this did not endear him to official Catholicism. The Civiltd cattolica trained her big guns on him ; his reply may be read, together with a report of the lecture, in Ascensioni umane} Like ' 1899. He seems, however, to follow Wallace rather than Darwin as to the evolution of man. 338 ITALY TO-DAY most Italian thinkers, he has a profound admiration for Herbert Spencer. " One cannot read Spencer," he says, " without being struck by the wealth of his imagina- tion ; on that side of his genius he is a great poet." But, when party passion runs high, he that is not with me is against me. Fogazzaro's calm, philosophic outlook causes him to be rejected by the Clericalists, and looked on with suspicion by the Democr9,ts. Like Dante of old, he has become a party unto himself, and in his beautiful home at Valsolda, by Lake Lugano, he devotes his life to neighbourly service and to his art. Pensa a Iddio, V ideal, prega, lavora ; Sii grande e puro. lo non piego, io non gemo, altero al mio Posto di guerra attendo il giorno, e Dio. "Meditate on God and the ideal, pray and labour; be great and pure. I bend not, nor do I complain ; a warrior at his post, I await the dawn and God." An interesting subject to the student of fiction is afforded by the literary career of Giovanni Verga, best known out of Italy by the association of the dramatized version of his Cavalleria Rusticana with Mascagni's music. The evolution of modern realism is epitomized in his works. Beginning as a conven- tional novelist, he reaches a final development as a consistent realist. Of the first period, a typical example is Tigre Reale} Here we have the whole stock-in-trade of the romanticist — the cruel beauty with marble forehead and glacial smile, jealous as a panther, a lioness in fury when baulked of her love ; ' 1875- GIOVANNI VERGA 339 illicit passion ; the duel with the outraged husband ; the despairing lover who blows his brains out at his mistress' door ; the death from consumption ; the final reconciliation between husband and wife. To turn from Tigre Reale to I Malavoglia^ is to jump from the younger Dumas to Zola. / Malavoglia opens a series of studies (/ Vinti), designed to treat of the passions set in motion by the impulse in modern civilization towards material advancement, and by the effort in the individual to climb the social steps. In / Malavoglia the struggle is for the necessities of life among the lowest class. These being satisfied, there follow : greed of riches typified in Mastro-Don Gesualdo, a study of middle-class provincial life ; aristocratic vanity, in the Duchessa di Leyra ; political ambition, in the Onorevole Scipione ; culminating in L' Uomo di Lusso, who sums all these passions in him- self and is consumed by them. These are types of the Vinti (the Vanquished), fallen by the way and crushed under foot by the victors pressing on in the feverish race for material progress.^ I Malavoglia is a careful and minute study of the life of peasant and fisher folk in a Sicilian village wrought with much wealth of detail and clearness of outline. The tragedy of the sea, the poverty, the hardness, the sordid ideals, the petty gossip and scandal of village life ; the familiar types of the syndic, the reactionary priest, the republican apothecary, the returned conscript, 1 1881. 2 See preface to I Malavoglia. Only two of the series have as yet appeared. 340 ITALY TO-DAY Uncle Crucifix the miserly money-lender — only those who know the life of a Southern village can fully appreciate the art which brings this little world before us in such vivid relief. Mastro-Don Gesualdo, Zola-like in bulk, for it reaches 527 pages, continues the series. We mount a rung in the ladder. We see the decaying survivors of feudalism — the Barone and the Baronessa, with their pride of family and fallen state ; the contest between new men and old acres ; the upstart, hard-headed, successful speculator ; the marriage of wealth with rank ; the shadow of death withering up the fruits of success ; the pride of money and power turning to dust and ashes in the mouth. Verga is a master of the short story. Semplice Vita,^ Via Crucis,^ L'ultima Giornata^ are human documents of life in a great modern city, that chill the heart in their piteous realism. La Lupa,^ L'asino di San Giuseppe ^ are sketches of Sicilian peasant life, that appal the reader by the depravity and cruelty they reveal ; we seem almost face to face with the elemental savagery of brute nature. The figure of the physician in Eembrandt's " Lesson in Anatomy " comes back to us, as this clear-eyed, impressive ob- server stands outside his subject and lays bare the organism of modern society. Here in Milan, there in the South life is such : results are such and such. In common with writers of the realistic school, Verga is too prone to dwell on social pathology ; on the 1 Per le Vie, 1883. ^ Vita dei Campi, 1880. ' Novelle rusticane, 1883. EMILIO DE MAECHI 341 baser traits of human nature ; on physical suffering and disease. Everything is seen in a hard light : there is no atmosphere of poetic emotion. He some- times allows the interest of the story to be almost smothered under a mass of details, and scatters popular proverbs and local idioms over his pages with too lavish a hand. But when all is said, Verga, by regarding these doomed creatures as the victims of remorseless social and hereditary forces, lifts even the most sordid of stories into a region of tragic pathos. His types are true so far as they go ; but one who has lived with Barone and Contadino alike cannot accept these power- ful canvasses as pictures of Italian or, indeed, of Sicilian life as a whole. For its sunny good-humour, its gentle- ness, its loving-kindness, its native courtesy, its piety, we must go to Pascoli's poetry and to novelists like Fogazzaro and Emilio De Marchi, whose writings are coloured with a sympathy, a tenderness, a delicacy, for which one vainly searches in Verga, and which are at least as real and true to nature as the more firmly drawn and harder figures of the Sicilian master. Emilio De Marchi, whose untimely death this very month ■^ was a sad loss to Italian letters, has been called the Dickens of Italy, and by some critics is held to be a worthy compeer of Fogazzaro himself. One priceless service, at least, he has done to the literature of his fatherland. At a time when Italian fiction was wavering between the realism of Zola and the nerveless cosmopolitanism of D'Annunzio, he held fast to the Manzonian tradition, and preserved 1 February 1901. 342 ITALY TO-DAY in his works the " savour of the homely minestra." His short stories^ are simple, direct sketches, mainly of humble life, which he interprets with a serene philo- sophy that tempers his judgments with kindliness. He has a profound conviction of the essential goodness of human nature, a gentle irony with no tinge of bitterness, a saving humour that keeps his pathos this side of sentimentality. Of his more ambitious works, the best is Demetrio PianeUi, a finely-drawn and keenly-observed picture of Milanese bureaucracy. He has also published a volume of poems, Cadenze vecchie e nuove, pensive in tone, delicate in feeling, and classic in form. Students of literature, who would gain a full and intimate conception of the Italian character, will do well to supplement their reading of Verga by a perusal of some, at least, of the works of Fogazzaro and De Marchi. A valiant fighter with sword and pen for the national cause is Edmondo De Amicis, author of the most popular book in modern Italian — the only one, indeed, that has reached a phenomenal circulation. Cuore, now in its 246th thousand, is the story of a year passed in a communal school, told by a lad in a series of im- pressions noted day by day. It is written with rare insight and charm, and appeals to old and young alike. One of the earliest signs of an awakening interest in literature after the absorbing struggle for national independence was the success of his Vita Militare, published in 1867. The writer, by his talent for giving literary expression to the vicissitudes of a 1 Storie d'ogni colore, 1885 ; Nuove Storie d'ogni colore, 1895. EDMONDO DE AMICIS 343 soldier's life, touched a subject that was of present interest to every household in Italy. For the period, it had a remarkable circulation, which encouraged De Amicis to turn to literature as a profession. He resigned his commission in the army and travelled in search of impressions. There is small need to dwell on the series of volumes he subsequently published. They have been widely translated, and are well known outside Italy. Their author possesses a choice aptitude for picturesque description ; his impressions are coloured by a highly-strung and imaginative temperament ; he writes with an easy grace and playful sense of humour. But his style lacks virility ; he is wanting in breadth of composition ; his sentiment at times thins out to senti- mentality. Among his more essentially Italian works II Romanzo d'un Maestro holds deservedly a high place. It is a heart-rending story, or rather series of sketches, of the cruel lot of the Italian elementary teacher, painted in sombre colours, which happily now seem overdone, though indeed the partial failure of recent legislation proves that the evil still persists to the shame of Italian statesmen. De Amicis, like so many of his cultured country- men, has been won to the new Socialist movement,^ and in recent years has devoted himself more to the study of economic subjects than to imaginative writing. He is persuaded that literature must take sides in the issues raised by new social ideals ; that the novel is 1 He was led to the study of social questions by personal experience of the piteous sufferings of Italian emigrants on a voyage out from Genoa, and by reflecting on the economic miseria that lay behind. See SuW Oceano, 6th ed., 1889. o 344 ITALY TO-DAY destined to be the form of future propaganda ; that Socialism will give a new vitality to Italian letters. Apart from studies and pamphlets dealing with social problems, his most important work in recent years is La Carrozza di tutti (Everybody's carriage),^ sketches of typical Piedmontese characters as seen and noted in the tramcars of Turin. ^They are written with all the author's charm of manner and delicate sensibility. He has also published a small volume of poems,^ in which he touches a chord in the hearts of Latin peoples, their deep maternal piety, that never fails of a response. He is one of the most simpatico of Italian writers. If we may compare the arts of painting and of poetry, Giovanni Pascoli is the Millet of Italian verse, transmuting by the alchemy of his genius into beauty and pathos that very peasant life, which becomes so sordid and grovelling in the hands of a Verga and a D'Annunzio, when, indeed, the latter deigns to stoop his vision so low. To read Sementa is to escape from the aching unrest of a modern city to the refreshing calm of a country life, with its humble joys and full ^diurnal round of healthful toil. To the capoccio^ as he lay in the stillness of the night, the crickets, mourning the parting summer, seemed to cry, " Sow thy seed ! Sow thy seed ! " In the darkness before the dawn the dun cows are yoked to the plough ; with careful hand the peasant scatters his seed. The stars appear again ere the day's work is done. Mean- while at home Eosa the fair-haired sings as the shuttle 1 Eleventh thousand, 1899. ^ Poesie, 3rd ed., 1882. 2 The head of a peasant farmer's household. GIOVANNI PASCOLI 345 flies " Mary sought her Son." The mother's call is heard. Father will be home at the Ave Maria. The preparation of the simple evening repast is told : the steaming savoury herbs, the scent of the olive oil, the broaching of the cask. The Angelus rings in the deepening twilight. With grave and tremulous voice the village bells seem to pray to Him who made the ear and harvest and life, that not in vain yon folk may sow their daily bread in the dead furrow. The sowers recite the Ave Maria. The goodwife comes forth to meet them — not alone, for Rosa the fair and Viola the dark-haired with lither step trip at her side. His seed well sown, the tiTed peasant hears not by night the falling rain. He is dreaming of the growing corn, the advancing spring, the blossoming of the peach, the busy hum of bees, the ripening ear ; already he feels the scythe in his hand. Eosa, too, dreams of the birds and the woods, of the young hunter who shared their noonday meal. And so the poem ends on a note of promise, of Nature's bounty and of awakening love. His first volume of poems, Myricae,^ was written under the shadow of a great sorrow — the memory of his father's tragic death (he was killed by brigands) and of his mother's ever-present and fatal grief. They breathe a perfume of sweet melancholy healed by Nature's presence. He sings of the life of woods and fields, the seasons, rain and storm, snow and wind, the poet's sorrows and joys, the mystery of pain and death. But with hope. For if under every stone 1 1891. 346 ITALY TO-DAY there lurks a scorpion, every cypress has its nest.^ In the preface he promises that some day he will repeat with richer voice what he had sung in tones not yet sure and clear. The promise is fulfilled in the Poem- etti,"^ the first of which, Sementa, we have already summarized. The subjects are chiefly the same as in Myricae, but wrought with more perfect art and in- formed with deeper thought. True, he has no answer to the riddle of existence.^ He is wont to speak in parables, and helps the panting human soul rather by sympathy and suggestion. He can stoop to the meanest realities of life and invest them with beauty, or soar to the highest region of thought, to the in- scrutable mysteries of the universe. By virtue of his art, by its majesty and beauty and strength, by its classic sobriety,* he is the one contemporary worthy to stand by Carducci. We feel the same glow of passionate but controlled emotion, the same power of fusing noble thought into perfect form. But his call to a simpler life, to a nearer communion with our mother earth, make him akin to thinkers like Ruskin, who teach that too heavy a price is being paid for the complicated materialism of modern civilization, that living is sacrificed to getting, life to the means of life.^ One of the most talented and widely read of Italian writers is Matilde Serao, daughter of a Neapolitan exile 1 Giiore wmano. ^ 2nd ed., 1900. ^ II lihro. * He twice won the gold medal for Latin verse at the International Competition at Amsterdam. See Phydyle, &c., published Amsterdam, 1894. ^ Once a socialist communal councillor, he has long since given up any active part in political life, though he remains a socialist in theory. MATILDE SERAO 347 and a Greek princess, who by indomitable pluck and industry raised herself from the position of a poor clerk in a telegraph office to become one of the most prominent journalists in Italy. ^ While doing odd work at reporting, she published some realistic sketches in various newspapers, which attracted attention, and in 1880, by the publication of Fantasia, made her mark as a novelist. Commonplace enough in many of its incidents, it is characterized by much vivacity of style and acuteness of observation, and the authoress by her art has invested with a certain dignity and inevitable- ness what were else a vulgar story of adulterous passion. But it is by her faithful and sympathetic sketches of Neapolitan life that this versatile artist is justly famous. E Ventre di Napoli is a passionate appeal, straight from a woman's heart, to the rulers of Italy, pleading that no mere "gutting" of Naples by a few new streets can avail aught in healing the terrible social and economic miseries of her people. Few books move the reader more than this little volume of one hundred pages, telling of the moral and physical diseases that lie festering beneath the fair sky and picturesque beauty of this metropolis of the South — the gross half-pagan superstition, the universal lust for gambling, the poverty, the squalor ; yet withal a people of quick intelligence, patient of toil, naturally gentle, with an inbred love of music and colour. Let those who are tempted to indulge a facile indignation at the more obvious vices and darker features of 1 See Vita e Avventure di Riccardo Joanna, 1887, for a striking picture of Italian journalism in the bohemian days of twenty years ago. 348 ITALY TO-DAY Neapolitan life turn to the last chapter of this book, and learn somewhat of the exquisite refinement of its charity, the inexhaustible springs of human pity and neighbourly love, that sweeten the lives of this much- maligned people and make up a " daily martyrdom of incalculable self-sacrifice." In II Paese di Cuccagna, on the whole her best work, this material has been woven into a powerful story of the evil wrought by the passion for gambling fostered in the State lotteries. We see six centuries of noble lineage ending in a sordid gamester, who sacrifices honour, possessions, wife, and daughter to the mad frenzy for gain. But the doom of the Marchese Carlo Cavalcante, the hopeless loves of Dr. Amati and the Marchesina Bianca Maria and her pitiful death, are but a framework on which are hung vivid and faithful sketches of the varied phases of Neapolitan life. It is usual to class Serao as a realist, but her realism is touched with emotion. The picture of prison life in AW JErta Sentinella has a tone of senti- ment alien to realistic methods, and later in her career she avows her sympathy with the idealism of Fogazzaro. Her visit to Palestine^ has drawn her heart, if not her intellect, to the Church of Christ. She stretches forth her arms to the Cross, and, murmuring the words of the ancient Christians, Ave spes unica, lays her book at its foot — ■" the most sincere and human, if not the most artistic of my works." Whether Socialist or not, she is concerned with the economic and social distress of the common people, and would join them 1 iZ Paese di Gesti. ADA NEGRI 349 in a communion of love and sorrow and pain. Her style is characterized by a journalistic facility whicli makes much of her work read thin, and she is accused of writing an incorrect Italian. But, at least, her books are alive, and in matters of idiomatic purity much may be forgiven to a novelist of so poetic and individual a temperament as Matilde Serao. In the early nineties there appeared in the Corriere della Sera and the lllustrazione popolare some remark- able poems, which were added to and published (1892) in a volume, Fatalitd,. They were written with a spon- taneity and individuality of style that at once arrested attention, and it was soon recognized that in Ada Negri the toiling masses of modern industrialism had found a voice no less sincere than passionate. Doomed to earn her bread, if indeed bread were always forthcoming, by the most wretched of all professions ^ in Italy — that of an elementary schoolmistress : to her squalid garret in a poor Lombard village the muses came and bade her sing of the aspirations, the unrest, the long-suffering, the hatreds of her class. ^ It is difficult to give the reader who is unfamiliar with the originals an adequate conception of the concentrated passion, the nervous energy, that quiver in every fibre of this frail, solitary daughter of the people athirst for love and social justice and beauty. Wielding a lash that seems knotted with scorn, she scourges the dominant classes of society ; we can almost hear the swish of her whip as it cuts the 1 For a vivid picture of the sufferings of this unhappy profession, see De Amicis' II Romanzo d'un Maestro, noticed on p. 343. 2 Her mother was a poor factory hand at Lodi. Her father she never knew : he died in hospital. See A I'Ospedale Maggiore. — Tempeste. 350 ITALY TO-DAY faces of the smug, astute bourgeois ^ and his chlorotic donnina — the false world of pigmy cowards who would obscure the ideal and clip the wings of enthusiasm. As she broods over her fate, the pale figure of Ill- fortune^ by her bedside claims her, yet bids her remember that the sun of glory illumines those who labour in blood and tears ; that sorrow gives wings to the ideal ; that victory is for those who have brave hearts and fight on. An " enigma of hatred and love," she weeps with pity for the ill-fed in her class of eighty children ; ^ she cannot look on a poor, ragged, shoeless street-arab,* and think of his probable fate, without yearning to clasp him to her breast in a supreme embrace of pity and sorrow. She hears the infinite hordes of toilers ^ advancing with a noise of thunder, in serried ranks, bareheaded, with fevered eyes ; from fireless hearths and sleepless beds, from alley and hovel, they press upon her ; she feels their hoarse breath on her cheeks. She gives the pity they ask, but mingles it with fierce indignation. In Tempeste^ she tells of the sacrifice and the tragedies of the poor — the work- less, the ejected, the dead and wounded of the mine, the victims of machinery. But it is hard to tread the wine-press alone. " I am thy brother in misery," she says to a beggar asking for bread ; "in tears and fever I am dying, homesick for love." Poetic fame and devotion to a cause have never yet satisfied the hunger of a woman's heart, nor stilled her invincible craving for personal afiection. ' Sfida. ^ Fatalitd. ' Sinite Pa/rmdos. * Birrichino di Strada. * / Vinti. ^ 1895. ADA NEGRI 351 One, on whom she had bestowed the fine gold of her love, either by fault or by fate rejected it, and parted for America at the very time when a scholarship and a post at Milan assured her that leisure for self-culture she so ardently desired. In Tempeste are certain poems that tell with no less intensity and vehemence the bitterness of this disappointed passion. A later attachment found a happier issue ; but by a superb irony of fate, this social rebel, who had spurned with scorn the professed love of a young signore, " a calf of gold," because he was not a worker ; she whose ideal of manly excellence was a stalwart, broad-chested mechanic, with pale, thoughtful face and neck of bronze ; she who bade pallid, nerve-ridden dames, with waxlike hands, and phantoms in stovepipe hats grasp the spade and turn to fruitful labour on the land ; this railing accuser of the capitalist and the exploiter, is now the Signora Garlanda, wife of a rich manufacturer in Milan, her lyre unstrung, her music silent. These are some of the poets and novelists who have wrought so faithfully and well for the literary New Life of Italy. But it is ill judging for a foreigner, where native critics are not agreed. Lack of space rather than of esteem bids us pass by with a mere mention other soldiers of the intellect, who have an equal, perchance a greater, right to more generous treatment : — Arturo Graf, gloomiest of pessimists, expressing with rare art the brooding melancholy which he probably inherits from his half-German parentage. To him the bright Italian sky with its formidabile azzurro,^ the same ' Axxurro. 352 ITALY TO-DAY yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow, weighs upon the world like the immense covering of a tomb, and Nature under her white breast conceals a heart born for treachery : ^ — Rapisardi, the exuberant Sicilian singer and fierce antagonist of Carducci ; Panzacchi, the beloved poet of Bologna ; Nencioni, Marradi, Chiarini, and others of the brilliant constellation of poets that clustered round Carducci ; Giacosa, the one successful dramatic poet of modern Italy. But it avails little to string mere names together. We have preferred to sketch, all too lightly, some of the more salient figures among the living masters of an undeservedly neglected literature. Viewing as a whole the harvest of the past thirty years, and comparing it with the almost sterile days of the fifties and sixties, we have reason to hope well for the future of Italian letters. The time of French domination in the literary world is as dead as that of Austrian in the political. And although to this day publishers' catalogues of cheap fiction show how much of the mental pabulum of the reading public in Italy is raided from French novelists, there is a growing band of native writers of talent and originality competing for its sufi"rages. A more efiiectual elementary education, the greater power to purchase and increased opportunity of leisure, that will come from the expanding resources of Italy and from a more enlightened polity in her rulers, will increase the number of readers and react on the authors who appeal to them. Pity that the long neglect of the Italian language in England fences us out from so rich and fair a pasture. ' Natura, APPENDIX Xhe following list contains a few of the best and most recent books on Italian subjects. The authors would be glad to help students of special subjects by referring them to other sources of information. Letters should be addressed to them, c/o Messrs. Nisbet, Berners Street, W. Oeneral and Statistical. Miniatero di Agricoltura. Annuario statistioo italiano, 1900. Rome,? I goo. BoDlo. Di alcuni indici misuratori del movimento economico in Italia. Ed. 2. Rome, 1891. Canovai. L'ltalia presents e i suoi problem!. Rome, 1898. Fischer. Italien und die Italiener. Berlin, 1899. Royal Commission on Labour. Foreign Reports, vol. viii. Italy. (By G. Drage.) London, 1893. Political. Alessio. Parlamento e riforme. Nuova Antologia, Jan. i, 1899. Partiti e programmi. Nuova Antologia, Oct. 16, 1900. CoLAJANNl. Banche e parlamento. Milan, 1893. Feeeabis. Una politica di lavoro. Nuova Antologia, Jan. i6, 1898. Febeeeo. II fenomeno Crispi e la crisi italiana. Turin [1895]. FOETUNATO. Discorso a Melfi, 31 maggio igoo. Rome, igoo. Regio decreto che approva il testo unico della legge elettorale politica, i8gs. Regolamento della camera dei deputati. Rome, igoo. SoNNiNo. Quid agendum ? Nuova Antologia, Sept. 16, igoo. ToEBESlN. Statistica deUe elezioni general! politiche. La Riforma Sociale, Aug. 15, 1900. 353 2 354 APPENDIX Catholics. Atti e documenti del XVI. Congresao Cattolico italiano tenutosi a Ferrara. Venice, 1899. Bbrthelet. Le futur Pape. Paris, 1899. Carassai. Le corporazioni religiose. Nuova Antologia, Aug. i, 1896. La verity intornoalla questione romana, per B. 0. S. Ed. 9. Prato, 1889. Lbonis XIII Epistolse encyclicae. Turin, 1892. Mkda. Fatti ed idee. Milan, 1898. MuRBi. Battaglie d'oggi. Rome, 1901. Rezzara. II movimento cattolico neUa diocesi di Bergamo. Bergamo, 1897. " Un cattolico italiano." La dissoluzione delle'associazioni cattoliclie. Nuova Antologia, Aug. 16, 1898. ZocoHi. Papa e re. Ed. 2. Prato, 1884. Socialists. Biblioteoa della Critioa Sociale. La conquista deUe campagne. Milan, 1896. Congreaso Nazionale del partito socialista italiano, 1897. II partite socialista e le classi agricole. Milan, 1897. 1900. Various reports to. Modena, 1900. Gritica Sociale (La). Milan. Fatti di maggio, ^c. CoLAJANNl. Gli awenimenti in Sicilia. Palermo, 1895. MUano durante i tumulti 6-10 Maggio 1898. Supplemento illustrato aUa Lega Lombwrda. Milan, n.d. Valeka. L'assalto al convento. Milan, 1899. Dal CeUulare a Finalborgo. Milan, 1899. Villaei. Nuovi Problemi. Nuova Antologia, Nov. 16 and Dec. 16, 1899. North and South. OuTEERA. La Mafia e i Mafiosi. Palermo, 1900. MosCA. Che cosa e la Mafia ? Bologna, 1900. NiCEFORO. L' Italia barbara contemporanea. Milan, \i NiTTi. Nord e Sud. Turin, 1900. APPENDIX - 355 The Peasants. Atti della giunfa per la iachieafa agraria. 22 vols. Kome, 1881-86. Oavandini. L' America a Bergamo. Bergamo, 1900. Federazione (La) italiana del consorzi agrari e la cooperazione in agricoltura. Piacenza, 1899. Ferraris. Una riforma agraria. N-mva Antologia, Nov. 16, 1899. Gatti. Agricoltura e socialismo. Milan, 1900. GuEROl. Istituzioni agrarie della Provincia di Parma. Parma, 1895. Ministero di Grazia e Giustizia. Oommissione per i contratti agrari. Verbali delle adunanze, vol. i. Rome, 1895. NiTTl. Agricultural Contracts in South Italy. Economic Review, July 1893- Pasolini, Countess. Monografie di alouni operai braocianti nel comune di Ravenna. Rome, 1893. Una famiglia di mezzadri romagnoli nel comune di Ravenna. Bologna, 1891. Rabbeno. Manuale pratica della mezzeria. Milan, 1895. Valenti. II dazio sul frumento e I'agricoltura italiana. Bologna, i8g8. ViRGiLii. II problema agricolo e I'avvenire socials. Milan, 1900. Cooperation, ^c. Atti del VI. Congresso delle Banche Popolari. Rome, 1896. Banca (La) Popolare di Milano. Memoria per la esposizione universale di Parigi. Milan, 1900. Fenicia. La cooperazione in Piemonte. Turin, 1901. Gnocchi-Viani. Dieci anni di camere del lavoro. Bologna, 1899. Lega nazionale delle society cooperative italiane (Via Ugo Foscolo, 3, Milan). Decimo Congresso dei cooperatori italiani. Oomo, 1898. Undecimo Congresso. Como, 1900. Mabilleau and others. La pr^voyance sociale en Italie. Paris, 1898. MiCHELl. Le casse rurali italiane. Parma, 1898. Ministero di agricoltura. Banche Popolari, i8g8. Rome, 1900. Rabbeno. Le society cooperative di produzione. MUan, 1889. RoDiNO. Codice delle society di mutuo soccorso. Florence, 1894. Valentini. Del meccanismo d'una Banca Popolare Cooperativa. Milan, 1900. VrvANTE. Relazione sulla riforma delle society cooperative. Turin, 1B97. Poor Law, ^c. Camera dei Deputati. Relazione della commissione sul disegno di legge . . . cassa nazionale di previdenza, 24 giugno, 1897. NiTTi. Poor Relief in Italy. Economic Review, 1892. 356 APPENDIX Legge sulle istituzioni pubbliche di beneficenza. 1890. Legge suUa Cassa Nazionale di Previdenza. 1899. Perbgo. Dei monti di pietk Milan, 1896. Tessorierb. L'assicurazione degli operai contro gli infortuni sul lavoro. Kome, 1899. Education. Ministero dell' istruzione pubblica. Regolamento generale per I'istruzione elementare. Rome, 1895. [Toreaca]. Supplemento al N. 47 del boUetino ufficiale del ministero dell' istruzione pubblica. Rome, 1897. ViLLARi. I disordini universitari. Nuova ArUologia, Feb. 16, 1897. Local Oovermnent and Finance. Flora. II nostro sistema tributario. ia JEt/ormaSociaZc, April 15, 1898. II Municipio di Torino e il partito socialista. Turin, 1898. Legge comunale e provinciale. 1898. Nuovo regolamento sui dazi interni di consume. 1898. ViaONl. Nel municipio di Milano. Nuova Antologia, Oct. 16, 1899. Foreign and Golonial Policy. Arbib. La questione d'Afrioa alia Camera italiana. Nuova Antologia, Jan. 16 and Feb. i, 1896. . L'Africa nei Libri Verdi. lb., Feb. 16, March i, May 16, 1896. Chiala. Tunisi. Turin, 1895. La triplice e la duplice alleanza. Turin, 1898. Rossi. L'oro e le spine nell' Eritrea. Genoa, 1900. Greater Italy and Emigration. ElNAUDl. Un principe mercante. Turin, 1900. NiTTi. L'emigrazione italiana e i suoi awersari. Turin, 1888. La nuova fase dell' emigrazione d'ltalia. Turin, 1896. ViLLARI. La " Dante Alighieri " a Messina. Rome, 1900. LITERATURE. Criticism. Squill ACE, F. Le tendenze present! della letteratura italiana. Turin, 1899. DoHNis, Jean. La poesie italienne oontemporaine. Ed. 4. Paris, 1900. Ojbtti, Uao. Alia scoperta dei letterati. Milan, 1895. Hbnckbll, C. Ada Negri : ein Vortrag. Leipzig, 1 896. APPENDIX 357 James, Heney. Matilde Serao in North American Re-view, March 15, igoi. OuiDA. Gabriele D'Annunzio, in " Critical Studies." London, 1900. Anon. Do. Quarterly Review, July 1900. Rod, M. E. L'^volution actuelle de la litt^rature italienne. Revue des Deux Mondes, July 15, 1893. VoGu:^, Vicomte de. La renaissance latine. Rev%e des Deux Mondes, Jan. I, 1895. The titles of the chief works of the best Italian writers have already been given in Chapter XVIII. They may be obtained of any foreign bookseller. The following list of translations is compiled for the infor- mation of English readers : — Greene, G. A. Italian Lyrists. London, 1893. Sbwall, F. Carducci's Poems. New York, 1892. Gabriele D'Annunzio. Hdghes, A. The Virgins of the Rocks. London, 1899. Hahbing, G. The Child of Pleasure. London, 1898. The Triumph of Death. London, 1898. VivANiA, Kassandra. The Flame of Life. London, 1900. Stmons, a. The Dead City. London, 19CXD. Antonio Fogazzaro. Dickson, F. T. Malombra. London, 1896. Simeon, S. L. Daniele Cortis. London, 1890. / Giovanni Verga. Dole, N. H. Under the Shadow of Etna. Boston, 1896. Strettell, A. Cavalleria Eustioana. London, 1 891. Craig, M. A. The House by the Medlar-Tree (7 Malavoglia). New York, 1890. Master Don Gesualdo. London, 1893. Matilde Serao. Haeland, H., and Sylvester, P. Fantasy. Ed. 4. London, 1891. Harland, H. Farewell Love ! London, 1896. Edmondo De Amieis. GODKIN, G. S. Heart. London, 1895. Craig, M. A. The Romance of a Schoolmaster. London, 1892. Cady, W. W. Military Life in Italy. Now York, 1882. INDEX Where one date only is given after a person's name, it denotes date of birth ; if two are given, they denote dates of birth and death. Abyssinia : Italian policy towards, 303-307 ; military strength of, 309. See Erythrcea Accidents Insurance : 68, 216-217 Adowa : battle of, 306 ; its effects, 6, 87. 307 Afforestation : 180 Agio : 286-287 Agriculture : chief crops, 157-163 ; difficulties of, 178 ; improvements in, 179, 183-192 ; capital in, 182, 183, 186 ; movement towards small holdings, 191. See Afforestation, Land-laws, Peasamts, Reda/mation Agricultural education : 182, 1 88 Agricultural labourers : Socialists and, 64, 72 ; trade-unionism among, 86, 88, 90, 212-213; wages of, 126-127; hours of labour of, 128 ; food of, 128, 133-136; condition of, 165-166, 175- 176 ; cooperative farming among, 207. See Peasamts Agricultural Syndicates : 57, 184-186 Agro Romano : 135, 172, 176, 179 Albania : 297 Albertario, Don Davide : 53, 91, 98 Anarchists : 61-62, 80, 107 Anti-clericals : 30-31, 50, 255 Apulia : republicans in, 74, 115; pea- sants of, 128, 135, 172-174. See also 236 and Bari Argentine : emigration to, 316-318 ; Italian trade with, 318 ; Italian schools in, 321 Army : Socialists in, 72 ; in riots of 1893-96, 84-85, 89, 93-94; ex- penditure on, 282-284 j proposals to economize on, 79, 283-285 ; effect of Triple Alliance on, 299 ; in Brythrsea, 306, 308 Artisans : Deputies from, 19 n. ; Catholi- cism among, 30-31 ; Socialism among, 71 ; wages of, 126-127 > hours of labour of, 127 ; food of, 129-133 ; income-tax on, 139 ; capacity of, 148 ; and People's Banks, 201 Assab : 303 Association : law of, 102 Austria : commercial treaty with, 153, 29s, 297 ; alliance with, 290-299 ; present feeling towards, 296-297. See Triple AUiance Bailiffs: farming under, 174-175 Bari: 31, 73, 115, 247 Bergamo : Catholicism at, 30, 47-49, 256 ; cooperation at, 189, 203 ; dazio eonswmo repealed at, 272 Bismarck, Prince : relations with Leo XIII. , 38 ; attitude to Temporal Power, 44, 290-291 ; and Tunis, 289 ; and Triple Alliance, 291-295 Bounties: shipping, 23, 146, 154-155; sugar, 154-155, 163 Boys' Homes : 225-226 Brazil : emigration to, 315-316 Bread : price of, 89, 138-139. See Dazio consumo Bread-riots : 89 Bribery : 3, 15-19, 121 Butter : 163 Camorra : 15, 23, 117-119 Capitalists : politics of, 7-8, 98 Carducci, Giosue [1836] : 323-328 Carrara : riots at, 86 36o INDEX Casse rurali. See Village Banks Catholics: definitions of, 29 ; strength of, 30-31, 257; revival among, 31-32; attitude towards Socialists, 34-351 53 ; position as to Temporal Power, 40-46 ; and the non expedit, 46-49, 59 ; allied with Moderates, 48-49, 53-54 ; mtramsigenti, 49-50 ; con- ciliatory party among, 49-53j 257> 262 J parliamentary policy of, 53 ; social work of, 54-60 ; municipal policy of, 57, 275 ; and Village Banks, &o., 57-58, 183, 189, 203; and dis- turbances of 1898, 89, 91, 94-96, 98; Committees dissolved by Government, 97; on Communal Councils, 48, 51, 100 ; attitude towards federalism, 51, 116; and Law of Guarantees, 253 ; and religious education, 256- 257 ; and civil marriage, 257-258 ; and Pogazzaro, 337. See OathoUe Congresses, Christian Democrats, Church and State, Clergy, French Catholics, Leo XIII. Catholic Congresses : 56-59 Catholic Socialism : 36, 55-56 Cattedre anibwlanti. See Agricultural Education Cattle-rearing: 158 Chamber of Deputies : character of, 19-20 ; Government's influence in, 21-22 ; Deputies and local jobbery, 23-24, 119; good side of, 25; Extreme Left in, 77 ; reactionary in 1898, loi ; in 1899- 1 900, 103- 109 ; Standing Orders of, 104-107 ; and agriculture, 182 ; and civil marriage, 258 ; after Adowa, 307 Chambers of Labour : 69, 97, 109, 213- 214 Charities : history and magnitude, 221- 222 ; law of 1890, 223 ; Councils of Charity, 223-224 ; private, 225-226 ; free meals for school-children, 227- 228 ; instances of local, 229-230 Cheese : 163 China : Italian policy in, 309-310 Christian Democrats : 37 n., 51-53, 58- 60 Church and State : Leo XIII, and, 35 ; policy of Government as to, 41, 51 ; desire for reconciliation of, 50-52 ; relations between, 252-262 ; ditto as to church property, 258-261 Civil marriage : 31, 257-258 Civil Service : 24, 125, 250, 282 Clergy : character of, 32, 54-59 ; State control of, 254, 261 ; conscription of, 255 ; teach in schools, 256-257 ; and civil marriage, 257 ; stipends of, 261 Oolonia parziaria. See Mezzaiuoli Comitati di patronato : 227-229 Commercial treaties : with France, 188, 291 ; rupture of ditto and effects, 152-153, 293; with Prance (1898), 8, 153, 295 ; with Germany and Austria (1892), 153, 295, 297; and free trade, 155 Communal Councils : jobbery in, 23 ; elections of 1898-99, 100 ; and Co- operative Labour Societies, 209 ; and relief of poor, 220-221, 223-224, 227- 228, 230 ; and education, 234, 240- 243, 245-246, 267 ; importance of, 263-264 ; powers and duties of, 265- 268 ; finances of, 270-273. See Local Government, Municipal Policy, Communal lands : 56, 84, 270 Confraternite : 255 Congregazioni di carita : 223-224 Conservatives. See Moderates Constitutional Left : in 1876-87, 2-3 ; at present, 11-13; in 1898-1900, 100, 104-110; attitude to Extreme Left in 1901, 108-IIO Cooperation : Catholics and, 57, 183, 189, 203 ; Socialists and, 64-66, 83, 204 ; Government attacks on, 85, 97, 205 ; in agriculture, 183-192, 207 ; general character of, 193-196 ; his- tory of, 196 ; strength of, 197 ; co- operative banking, 198-204, 211 ; distributive, 204-206 ; productive, 194, 206-207 ; bakeries, 207; Labour Societies, 207-210 Cooperative Dairies : 186-187 Corn-duty : gain of, to landlords, 8 ; at frontier, 87, 89, 138 ; local, see INDEX 361 Dazio oonsumo; effects on wheat- growing, 158-159 Corruption. See Bribery Cotton : manufacture of, 144 Court party : 7 Orispi, rranoesco [1819] : his character, 3-4 ; in ofBce (1887-91), 5, 41, 52, 223, 319 ; ditto (1893-96), 6, 17, 24, 85-87, 182 ; and the navy, 283 ; his foreign and colonial policy, 294, 304, 306 Crown, power of : 9, 26-28 Cucine economiche : 226 D'Annunzio, Gabriele [1864] : 70, 330- 334 Dazio consvmo: 138, 271-272; pro- posals to abolish, 57, 68, 79> 108, 272 De Amicis, Edoardo [1846] : 100, 342-344 Decreto-legge : of 1899, 101-105, 206 De Marchi, Emilio [1852-1901] : 341- 342 Depretis, Agostino [1813-1887]: policy of, 3; foreign policy of, 291-292, 303 Di Rudini, Marquis Antonio [1839] : character, II ; in office (1891-92), 5, 18 ; ditto (1896-98), 87-88, ICO. See also 116, 283 Dogali : 304 DomioiUo coatto : 24, 85-87 Drought : remedies against, 180 EooLBSiASTiOAL policy. See Church a/nd State Education: Socialists and, 68, 237; defects of elementary, 233-241 ; illiteracy, 234 ; school attendance, 235-237 ; asili infantili, 237 ; holi- day schools, 237 ; equipment and curriculum of schools, 238-240 ; salaries of teachers, 241-242 ; the communes and, 243 ; voluntary schools, 244 ; secondary schools, 244- 246 ; technical schools, 246-247 ; UniverBities, 247-249; middle classes and, 249-250 ; religious, 255-256 Egg trade : 163 Elections: conduct of, 13-15; election petitions, 14, 19; governmental in- fluence at, 16-18; cost of, 21. See Brihery Electrical force : use of in manufactures and railways, 149-150 Emigration: statistics of, 3 13-31 5; effects in Italy, 312-313 ; temporary, 313 ; in United States, 314 ; in South America, 314-3x9 ; abuses of, 319-320 ; Government and, 319-321 Emilia : Catholics in, 58 ; Socialists in, 31, 65, 72 ; peasants of, 134, 190-191 England : English capital invested, 147 ; and Tunis question, 289 ; alliance with, 299-301 ; feeling to- wards recent policy of, 301 ; Malta language question, 302 ; and colonial policy of Italy, 303-304 Erythrsea : missionaries in, 5 1 ; history of, 303-307 ; proposal to withdraw from, 307 ; danger from, 308-309 Exequatur and Placet : 252-253 Extreme Left : want payment of mem- bers, 25; policy of, 76-80; in 1899- igco, 103-110; attitude to Constitu- tional Left in 1901, lo8-ilo; and army, 283-284. See Radicals, Re- publicans, Socialists Paemebs. See Improvement Tenancies, Leaseholders, Mezzaiuoli, Rents Fasci: in Sicily, 83-85 Fatti di maggio : 92-96 Federalism : weakness of movement for, 78, 116-117 Ferraris, Maggiorino : his scheme of Agricultural Unions, 185-186 Einance : 277-287. See Army, Na- tional Debt, Public WorJcs, Railways, Taxation Florence : charities of, 221, 225-226, 228 - 229 ; education at, 237, 239, 247-248 Fogazzaro, Antonio [1S42] : 334-338 Pondo per il cidto : 258-261 Food: 128-137 France : and Temporal Power, 44-45, 289 ; French influence at Vatican, 45 - 46 ; commercial treaties with, 152-153, 188, 291, 293, 295; relations 362 INDEX with, 288-295, 298 ; and Tunis, 289-290 ; rapprochement with, 295- 296 Franchise: parliamentary, 13-14; local, 265 ; proposals to narrow, 9 " Free Church in a Free State " : 251- 252 Free meals for school-children: 131, 227-228 Freethinkers : 30-31 Free Trade : movement towards, 79, ISS French Catholics : 43-4S, 289, 294 Friendly Societies : 193-196, 210-212, 218-219 Fruit : production of, 163, 187 Funds : price of, 286 ; conversion of, 285-287 Genoa : capitalists at, 7 ; Catholics at, 50, 100; local duties at, 138, 272; trade of, 146 ; dock labourers' Union at, 212. See also 109, 222, 247 Germany : influence at Vatican, 46 ; commercial treaty with, 153, 295, 297 ; alliance with, 290-299 ; present feeling towards, 297. See Bismiwck Giolitti, Giovanni [1844] : character, 12; in office (1892-93), 5-6, 84-85; in 1901, 108-110 Graf, Arturo : 351 Guerrini, Olindo [1845] : 328-330 H41L : remedies against, 178, 180-181 Hospitals : 221, 223, 226 Humbert I. [1844-1900] : 26-27, 107, 207, 283 Impkovembnt tenancies : 173 Income-tax: 139-140; communal, 273 Industrial capital : 147-148 Iron and steel : manufacture of, 145- 146 Irredentism : 291, 296 Irrigation : 180 Italian : as a literary language, 239, 302, 322 jBBtriTS : 38 Kassala : occupation of, 301, 30 Land Laws : reform of, 181-182 Land-tax : 140 Landowners: number of, 166-167 ; cul- tivation by, 174-175. See Peaiant- proprietors Law, Italian : tender to property, 55 n. Law of Guarantees : 40-42, 252-254 Leaseholders : 171-174 Left. See Constitutional Left, Extreme Left Lemons and oranges : 162-163 Leo XIII. [1810] : his character and policy, 33-37 ; his social policy, 37 ; and the Temporal Power, 37-38 ; and the Triple Alliance, 45 ; and the non expedit, 47, 52 Leonine City : Papal demand for, 39, 42. See Temporal Power Literature : conditions of, in Italy, 322-323, 352 Local Government: importance of, 263-264 ; law of, 265-268 ; relations of State to, 268-270 ; local finances, 270-273 ; abuses of, 273-274 ; muni- cipalization of services In, 275-276. See Communal Councils, Dazio con- sumo, Provincial Councils Lombardy : Catholics in, 58 ; Socialists in, 62, 64, 72; peasants of, 133-134, 164, 167, 169, 171-172, 184-186, 189, 191 ; iron in, 150 ; Savings Bank in, 197 ; charities of, 230 ; education in, 236-237, 239. See Bergamo, Milan Mafia: 16-17, 119-123 Maize: consumption of, 128, 133-136; and pellagra, 128-129 Malaria: 178-180 Malta : language question in, 302 Manufactures : 144-151 Marches : peasants of, 134-136, 165, 168-169 Martial law : in Sicily and Lunigiana (1894), 85-87 ; in 1898, 97-99 MasBowa : occupation of, 303 Mediterranean : balance of power in 289, 293. See Tripoli, : INDEX 363 MezmiuoU: 168-171, 174 Middle class : Oatholicism among, 30 ; office-hunting among, 24, 250 ; Social- ists among, 7C3-71 ; taxation on, 139 ; education of, 245, 249-250 ; and local government, 273-274 Milan: Catholics at, 30, 58-59 ; Social- ists at, 62, 64, 92 ; social condition of, 90 ; municipal policy of, 91, 275- 276 ; Fatti di maggio at, 92-96 ; municipal elections of 1899, 100 ; Federalist feeling in, 113, 116 ; trade of, 144-146, 149 ; population of , 151 ; cooperation at, 194, 197, 199, 201, 204, 206, 208-209 ; Chamber of Labour at, 214 ; charities of, 222, 224, 226, 230-231 ; free meals for school-ohiluren at, 227-228 ; " Uni- versity Extension " at, 246 n. ; reli- gious teaching at, 256-257 Minghetti, Marco [1817-1886] : 2, 3, 116, 291 Moderates : allied with Catholics, 48- 49. 53-54 ; a* MUan, 91, 96, 275 ; municipal policy of, 275. See Right Monasteries : revival of, 32 Monti di Pietdt : 230-231 Morocco : 296 Municipal Councils. See Communal Councils, Local Govermnent Municipal policy : of Catholics, 57 ; of Socialists, 69 ; at Milan, 91, 275-276 ; of Giolitti, 108 Municipalization : 275-276 Naples: condition of, 117-119, 347; politics at, 15, 23, 115, 274 ; educa- tion at, 247-248 National Debt : 277-278, 280-281, 285-287 Navy : 283, 301 Negri, Ada [1870] : 349-35' Non expedit : 46-49, 52 OBSTEtroiiON in Parliament : 77, 103- 105 Old Age Pensions : 68, 217-220 Olives : 157, 161-162 Palebmo : 121-123, 267, 272, 274, 29s Papacy. See Vatican Parma : cooperation, &c., at, 57, i8g- I9°> 195-197> 199. 200-201, 210. See also 90, 100 Pascoli, Giovanni [1855] : 70, 344-346 Payment of members, &c. : need of, 21, 25 ; of local councillors, 266 n. Feasants : Catholicism among, 31, 57 > Socialist attitude to, 64-66, 170, 172 ; Socialists among, 71-72 ; food of, 128, 133-137 ; taxation on, 140; industry of, 156; different classes among, 164-166 ; peasant-proprie- tors, 166-168 ; land hunger among, 167 ; mezzaiuoli, 1 68-1 7 1 ; tenant- farmers, 171-172; hoari, 174; re- vival of, 177, 191-192 ; and People's Banks, 201-202 ; and Communal Councils, 263 ; and emigration, 312- 313, 317 ; in the novelists, 339, 341-342, 345 Peasant-proprietors : 166-168 Pellagra: 128-129, 185 Pelloux, General Luigi : lo, l8 ; his ministry, 100-106, 284 People's Banks : Catholics and, 57 ; character and work of, 193-203 ; and peasants, 201-202 Peronospora : 160 Phylloxera : 160 Piedmont : Christian Democrats in, 59 ; Socialists in, 72, lOO ; peasants of, 134, 136, 167, 184, 186-187; cooperation in, 199, 204-206, 211 ; poor-relief in, 230 ; education in, 236-237, 244, 256. See Turin Police : in Sicily, 84-86, 122 ; in 1898, 99 Poor Law : 220, 230-231 Population : density of, 311 Poultry and egg trade : 163 Poverty of Italy : 81 Prefects: 16, 17, 87, 109, 266-270 Prohiviri: 213 Protection : history and effects, 115, 152-155. See Corn-duty, Dazio consumo Protestants ; 33 Provincial Councils : 266-269 Public meeting : right of, 101-102 364 INDEX Public Works : used for political bri- bery, 18, 22, 280 ; expense of, 280, 282 Radicals : strength and policy of, 7S~ 76 ; attitude to Zanardelli Cabinet, 108-log. See Extreme Left Railways : electricity on, 150 ; State and, 278-279 ; fares on, 279 Reclamation of waste land : 179 Religious teaching : 255-256 Republicans : weakness of movement, 26-27, 74. 78 ; policy of, 74-75 ; and disturbances of 1898, 91, 94-96 ; societies dissolved by Government, 97. See Extreme Left Rice : 157 ; consumption of, 133 Ricoveri di mendicity : 224, 229 Right: in 1861-76, 1-2 ; at present, 7-10; moderate section of, lo-il, 104 ; in 1900, 104-107 ; in Southern Italy, 7, 114; attacks megalomania, 283, 294. See Di Sudini, Moderates, Pelloux Romagna : Socialists in, 31, 61, 64, 72 ; Republicans in, 74 ; peasants of, 168-169 Rome : Liberals at, 30 ; Papal claims to, 38-42 ; Republicans at, 74; drunken- ness at, 130; industrial future of, 149, 264 ; cooperation at, 209 ; chari- ties at, 225 ; free meals for children at, 227-228 ; not a true metropolis, 263-264 ; municipal government at, 267, 27s, 280 Salaeies : 125, 241, 261 Salt : consumption of, 130 ; tax on, 139 San-Mun : 309 Saracoo, Giuseppe : 106-108, 213 Savings Banks : 193-203 ; Post OfHce, 204; in Friendly Societies, 211; attitude to Old Age Pensions, 219 Scrutim, de liste : 13 Segretariati del Popolo : 214 Senate : 26 ; and civil marriage, 258 Serao, Matilde [1856] : 347-349 Shipping industry : 146 Sicily : elections in, 17 ; Socialists in, 72, 83; riots of 1893-94 in, 83- 86; home rule movement in, 115- n6 ; mafia in, 1 19-123; peasants of, 134-136, 166, 169, 171-172; Orispi's agrarian Bill for, 182 ; local government in, 268, 272, 274 ; Verga's novels and, 339-341 Silk : manufacture of, 144 Social legislation : Catholic programmes of) 5^-57) 59 j Socialist programme of, 68; absence of, 215 Socialists : expose jobbery, 23, 25, 70 ; oppose Catholics, 30-31, 53 ; attitude of Catholics towards, 34-3S, 53 ; early history of, 61-62 ; rise of Marxite school of, 62 ; attitude to cooperation and peasants, 64-66, 170, 172, 204; attitude to other demo- cratic parties, 64, 66-67 > become a Parliamentary party, 67 ; the mini- mum programme, 67-69 ; character of, 69-70, 80; leaders of thought among, 70, 344 ; strength in middle- class, "JO-TI ; ditto among artisans and peasants, 71-72 ; Deputies, 71 ; in army, 72 ; strongest in North, 72 ; poll at last elections, 72 ; hangers-on of, 73, 250 ; relations to Republicans and Radicals, 74, 76, 78-79 ; present political position, 78-79 ; attitude towards State Socialism, 79 ; Govern- ment attacks, 86, 88, 97, 269 ; and disturbances of 1898, 92, 94-96; after Humbert's death, 107 ; attitude to Old Age Pensions, 219; municipal policy of, 69, 275 ; and Irredentism, 296. See Extreme Left Somaliland : 305, 307 Sonnino, Baron Sidney [1849] : 10, 105, 108, 285, 291 Southern Italy: corruption in, 2, 15, 23 ; the Church in, 54 ; Socialists in, 72 ; food-riots in, 89 ; poverty of, III; feudal feeling in, 112; effects of Unity on, n 2-1 15; Northern feeling against, 113-115; signs of progress in, 115; loyalty of, 117; peasants of, 134-135, 165-168, 171, 173; local government in, 272, 274 Statistics: of poverty, 124, 141; of salaries and wages, 125-127 ; of food, INDEX 365 129-130, 133, 136; of taxation, 13 - 139 ; of trade, 143-147 ; of coopera- tion, 197 ; of charities, 221-222 ; literacy, 234-236 ; of finance, 270, 277-278, 281 Taxation : Socialist proposals of, 69 ; on food, 138-139, 271-272 ; on peasants, 140; local, 138-139, 271- 273 ; respecting reduction of, 281- 287 ; graduated succession duty, 281. See Corn-duty, Dazio consumo, In- come-tax, Land-tax Temporal Power ; Leo XIII. and, 37 ; modified claims to, 38-39 ;. Catholic positi on as to, 40-43 ; foreign Catholics and, 43-46 ; Italians and, 43-44, 52 Tithes: 255 . ' Trade : increase of, 143 ; present statistics of, 143-144 ; obstacles to, 146-147'; prospects of, 151 > won't follow the flag, 308, 311 Trade Unions : 2 1 2-2 1 3 ; among agri- cultural labourers, 86, 88, go, 212- 213 Trasformismo ; 3, 20 Travelling teachers of agriculture : 188 Triple Alliance : Leo XIII. and, 45 ; in 1882, 292 ; in 1887, 293 ; in 1891, 29s ; now, 296-297 ; effects of, 297- 299 ; and large army, 299 Tripoli : 290, 296 Tunis : 289-290, 295-296, 313 Turati, Filippo : 62, 92, 98, 100 Turin: Socialists at, 100; cooperation in, 205, 206, 275 ; local government at, 272 Tuscany : Socialists in, 72 ; peasants of, 134, 165, 168-1 9 UooiALLi : treaty of, 305-306 United States : emigration to, 314 Universities : 247-249 " University Extension " : 247 n. Vatican ; policy of, 38-39, 43 ; and foreign intervention, 44-46 ; and the non expedit, 46-47 ; intramsigenti of, 49-50. See Catholics, Leo XIIL Venetia : Catholics in, 58 ; Socialists in, 72 ; peasants of, 133-136, 184- 187 Venice : 100, 146, 149, 247, 256 Verga, Giovanni [1840] : 338-341 Victor Ejamanuel III. [1869! : 27-2S, 107, 'I09'.; •' . " Village Banks : 183-184, 190 ; Catholics • and, 57-58, 189 Villari, Fasquale : 11, 323 Visconti-Venosta, Marquis Emilio [1,829] ; 10, 295 Wages and salaries : 125-127 ; rise of, 141 ; of school-teachers, 241-242 ; of clergy, 260 Wheat : consumption of, 128, 133-136 ; duty on, 138 ; production of, 157- 159 Wine : consumption of, 130, 133-136 J production of, 157, 159-161 ; co- operative wine factories, 187-188 Woollen manufactures : 145 Workmen's Compensation. See Accidents Inswra/iice Zanardelli, Giuseppe [1825] : 2, 109, 272, 281 Zola, fimile ; his Some, 49 n. 12. Printed by Ballahttne, Hanson &' Co. Edinburgh &= London