[24] The Union of Italy, W. J. Stillman, p. 300.
The union of Italy was so triumphant, the efforts which accomplished it so heroic, and the whole tone of Italian history throughout the Risorgimento so romantic and noble, that the period since of necessity looks flat and dull. The Italians themselves had imagined that the union of Italy would be followed by some career, political, moral, or intellectual, that would be comparable to the career of ancient Rome. A reaction was inevitable. No nation could continue at so enthusiastic a pitch. Moreover, the difficulties before it were great.
Chief of these difficulties was the persistent hostility of the Papacy. Pius IX, a kind, lovable, timid man, wholly inadequate to cope with a revolutionary situation, had passed from his early sympathy with the liberal movement to the opposite extreme, and hated it with the hatred of fear. His hatred of liberal ideas may be seen in his conduct with regard to ecclesiastical matters. He insisted upon the extremest conservative dogma, as if it were a shield to protect the Papacy, the papal city, the Papal States, and the whole Catholic world, from all assaults of Satan and his liberal crew. First he proclaimed the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary, next he published the "Syllabus," which is a condemnation of all those doctrines commonly embodied in Bills of Rights. Finally, he convoked the Vatican Council (1869-70), and procured a decree that the Pope is infallible in matters of faith and morals. This decree gave the death-blow to whatever remains of republicanism there were in the Church, and established the Pope as absolute monarch. An Ecumenical Council, representing the Church, had previously been the infallible head of the Church; now the Pope was substituted for the Council.
In this way the Church more and more assumed an attitude of irreconcilable hostility to the ideas that prevailed among the educated classes in Italy. After the occupation of Rome by the Italian government, Pius shut himself up in the Vatican palace and proclaimed himself a prisoner. He first advised and then commanded Catholics to stay away from the polls at national elections, and directed his foreign policy to the end of reëstablishing his Temporal Power. This policy, judged by the popular belief in the divine right of nationality and of majorities, is of course wrong; judged by one who regards the interests of the Church as paramount, it may be defended as an attempt to adhere to the old ways under which the Catholic Church had played its extraordinary part in European history. After the occupation of Rome the Italian government passed the Law of Guarantees (May 10, 1871), which guaranteed to the Pope an annual subsidy of somewhat more than 3,000,000 lire a year, and also the personal and diplomatic rights of a sovereign, such as to maintain his court, to receive ambassadors, to have separate postal and telegraph service, to keep the Vatican and Lateran palaces, etc. Pius IX refused to accept the subsidy.
Another difficulty, which has confronted the government since the union, has been the discord between the North and South. The northern provinces, especially Lombardy and Piedmont, have been making progress in manufactures and in commerce; whereas, on the contrary, the South, very ignorant and very poor, and devoted to agriculture, wine, grain, lemons, oranges, etc., without facilities for manufacture and without capacity for commerce, has made doubtful advance. Special causes have hindered it. In Sicily, in consequence of long-continued poverty, ignorance, and misgovernment, the secret societies, known as the Mafia, have overrun great parts of the island. The original cause of the Mafia was probably self-protection, the lower classes banding together to save themselves from the oppressions of the upper classes who clung to the remains of the feudal system. The landowners, for example, had used their control of the courts to maintain privileges and injustice. As a natural consequence, members of the Mafia deemed it ignoble to revenge wrongs by judicial process, and still more ignoble to give any information to any officers of the government. They settled their own disputes and righted their own wrongs. With the grant of suffrage the Mafia became a political power, and only permitted the election of such candidates as it approved.
In Naples there was also a power behind the scenes which resembled the Mafia, but in reality was totally distinct and individual. This Neapolitan power, a legacy from Bourbon times, was the Camorra, a society of criminals or ruffians on the edge of crime, organized for the purpose of levying tribute by blackmail; it was not unlike the worst municipal rings in this country, and gained its livelihood from the vicious, and from politicians who benefited by its support. Both Camorra and Mafia have been very great obstacles to social progress, and still exist.
The North, conscious of a higher standard of civilization, has wished to educate and reform the South, and also, perhaps, has not been unwilling to let taxation fall more heavily in proportion upon the agricultural produce of the South than on the manufactured products of the North. Resenting this assumption of superiority, and suspicious of unfair treatment, especially with regard to indirect taxation, the South has felt itself aggrieved; and so there have been continual misunderstanding and friction between it and the North.
In its foreign relations the country has also had hard problems. France and Italy ceased to be friends. Italy could not forget that the French had upheld the papal power in Rome, and had defeated Garibaldi at Mentana; and France was indignant that Italy had not come to her rescue in 1870. France also was jealous of a rival in the Mediterranean; while the Italians believed that France favoured a revival of the Temporal Power. This unfriendliness, fostered by the Italian clericals, constituted a most disturbing factor in Italy's foreign relations. The breach was increased by other causes, and Italy in alarm turned to find friends elsewhere. Austria and Germany, who had already made an alliance, were glad to have Italy join, as further security for the peace of Europe against any action by France or Russia. So the three joined and made the Triple Alliance (1882), which was renewed from time to time and still exists. This alliance has given Italy ample security against any attack by France, but has imposed upon her very heavy military burdens in order to keep her army at a certain standard of efficiency.
As time went on the actors of the great age dropped off one by one; Mazzini in 1872, Victor Emmanuel in 1878, Garibaldi in 1882. It is after their departure, their noble desires fulfilled, their noble tasks accomplished, that Italy looks little and inadequate. The parliamentary struggles have certainly been neither noble nor romantic. After the occupation of Rome, the Right, the conservative party, under Marco Minghetti, Quintino Sella, and others, was in power for half a dozen years, and by means of a burdensome taxation succeeded in making receipts equal expenses. But taxes and refusal to extend the suffrage led to its fall from power, and the Left, the progressive party, under Agostino Depretis, assumed the government. Depretis abolished an unpopular tax on grinding corn, made primary education compulsory, and extended the suffrage from 600,000 voters to 2,000,000. After these reforms the dominant party ceased to have a definite programme. There was general confusion, known as Transformism. The deputies split up into little groups under petty leaders and fell to log-rolling. The story is dreary and unimportant.
Depretis, who died in 1887, was succeeded by Francesco Crispi, the most striking political figure since Cavour. Crispi began life as an advocate at Palermo, and took part as a very young man in the early agitations for constitutional reforms. He was successful at the bar, and had moved to Naples to practise before the appellate tribunals there, when the events that led to the uprisings of '48 began to effervesce. Crispi took a leading part. After the uprisings had been suppressed, he lived in exile till the time was ripe to begin again. Then he returned to Sicily and plotted for the revolution which terminated in Garibaldi's expedition. He acquired great influence, took his seat in the Italian parliament, and soon became leader of the radical Left. In spite of vicissitudes and a not unattacked reputation, he was the chief parliamentary figure on the death of Depretis, and dominated Italian politics till 1896. In his youth Crispi had been a follower of Mazzini's republican theories; later, though still a republican in sympathy, he announced the opinion that "the Republic would divide us, the Monarchy unites us," and abandoned his old republican associates. For this reason among others he incurred the animosity of old friends and allies.
During the period of his ascendency the subdivision of the deputies into little groups made government difficult, and for a couple of years he was out of office. In that interval hard times, adding weight to republican and socialist propaganda, caused strikes, riots, and insurrections; and accompanying these disturbances came the "Bank Scandals." Sundry banks, conspicuously the important Banca Romana, had been violating the laws which regulated the government of banks, and had been engaged in most improper dealings with politicians, as, for instance, lending money to deputies on little or no security. These scandals, together with the strikes, wrecked the ministry, and the country called on Crispi, as the one strong man able to take control. He assumed office in December, 1893, and remained till 1896, when he fell with equal suddenness. The cause of his fall requires a separate paragraph.
About 1870 an Italian steamship company established a coaling station on the west coast of the Red Sea, and acquired a certain strip of land which it afterwards ceded to the government (1882). From this beginning the Italian government advanced, upon one pretext or another, to the establishment of a colonial dependency. It occupied Massawa, established the "Colonia Erithrea," and proclaimed a zone of influence along the east coast of Africa. Various battles were fought with the natives; and at last the government sent fifteen thousand men to perform some brilliant exploit for its own political benefit. The Italian troops were badly handled; they walked into a trap set by the Abyssinians, and suffered a terrible rout, losing half their numbers (1896). Crispi fell at once, and the new ministry under Di Rudinì, in spite of cries for revenge, prudently abandoned the colonial policy, and made peace as best it could. Italy renounced her protectorate, and contented herself with a strip of coast by Massawa. Thus ended the scheme of colonial aggrandizement begun in ignorance and folly.
The fall of Crispi removed the last interesting figure of the Risorgimento, and left Italian politics in a confused medley. Since then, various leaders of no marked ability or individuality have struggled with the permanent difficulties of Church and State, North and South, capitalism and socialism, and the shifting difficulties of foreign relations. All this time is too near to present any definite pattern to the casual eye. The century closed sadly with the assassination of King Humbert (1878-1900) by an ignorant workman who called himself a nihilist. Humbert was not a good ruler, but he had a kind heart and many pleasant qualities, which endeared him to the Italian people. He was succeeded by his son Victor Emmanuel III, the present king.
The greatest Italian figure of the last decades of the nineteenth century was not to be found in the service of the State, but of the Church. In 1810 Gioacchino Pecci was born in Carpineto, a dead little village perched on a hillside near Anagni, the town where Boniface VIII was nearly murdered by Sciarra Colonna five hundred years before. His father, Count Lodovico Pecci, had served in Napoleon's army; his mother was said to be descended from Cola di Rienzo. The count was the seigneur of the place, and lived in a somewhat shabby palace which had seen better days. Gioacchino was educated at a Jesuit school in Rome. He soon gave evidence of marked ability, and was taken into the papal service and sent as apostolic delegate to Benevento. Banditti infested the neighbourhood, and the nobility of the town were little better than the banditti. Pecci displayed character. He was promoted, and at the age of thirty-three was sent as papal nuncio to Belgium, with the title of Archbishop of Damietta, an archbishopric that had been in partibus infidelium since the days of St. Louis. In Belgium, where liberal ideas were jostling the old ecclesiastical system, Pecci distinguished himself for tact and address. From Belgium he went to Perugia as bishop, and governed the city for thirty-two years, during the trying time in which (largely at the expense of the Church) Italy was forcing her way to freedom. In 1860 his authority was overthrown by the Piedmontese soldiers, and many tales of brutality and wantonness charged upon the nationalists were brought to his troubled ears, and he unfortunately received a most unfavourable impression of liberals and liberalism. His reputation for ability, character, and diplomacy became so well established, that in the conclave on the death of Pius IX he had no serious competitor. Leo XIII (1878-1903) was already an old man when he was elected Pope, and had had the misfortune to receive his education and training in the narrow school of the old papal régime. Preceded by an incompetent Pope, he found himself confronted by the wreck of the Temporal Power, and by a liberalism which was not only triumphant in Italy, but in nearly all western Europe. He had not far to go to find thoughtful men who expected to see the Papacy collapse and die. Most difficult matters in Germany, in Ireland, in France, in the United States, required delicate and skilful management. It is not too much to say that Leo raised the Papacy higher in the world's regard than it had stood for two hundred years. Had he been a younger man, and trained in a more liberal school, he might, perhaps, have attempted the task of adjusting ecclesiastical conservatism and tradition to the needs of a fast changing world. But he was too old. With a few brilliant exceptions he accepted the conservative policy. He affected to deem himself a prisoner in the Vatican, and claimed the restoration of the Temporal Power; he declared Thomas Aquinas the best teacher for the priesthood, and stood firm on the dogmas of the Council of Trent. Nevertheless, his was a most impressive personality, and he stands in the long list of Popes in a rank inferior only to the highest.
In his old age, as he strolled in the Vatican gardens, meditating Latin verses, or thinking over his encyclical letters, "On the Condition of the Working Classes," "On Christian Democracy," "On the Holy Eucharist," or turning his emaciated, sweet, Voltairean face to the great dome of St. Peter's, he may well have let his mind wander in peace over the outside world, for never since Luther cast off his papal allegiance had the whole Christian world been so united in admiration for a Pope of Rome. All Christians could say amen to the prayer in his last poem, "Suprema Leonis Vota:"—
We have now reached our goal, the end of the nineteenth century, and if we look back and contemplate the vicissitudes of Italy, such as no other nation ever experienced, twice on the throne of Europe, three times crowned with its crown,—Imperial, Ecclesiastical, Intellectual,—and resurvey the three centuries during which foreign tyrant and native priest joined hands to smother and quench the Italian fire, and then read in detail the heroic acts of the men who sacrificed themselves for Italian freedom, we shall feel sure that the dull colours of the present generation are but signs of a time of rest, and that the genius of Italy lives within and will again enrich the world with deeds of men sprung from the "gentle Latin blood."
[25]
Fulfil, O gracious God, my anxious prayer,
That, at the last, one among the citizens of Heaven
I may enjoy Thy Light, Thy Face, forever.
I
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF POPES AND EMPERORS
1 All the Emperors between Romulus Augustulus and Charlemagne reigned at Constantinople.
2 Capitals distinguish the most eminent Popes and Emperors.
3 Two names bracketed together indicate rival claimants.
4 Those in brackets never received the Imperial crown.
5 This Pope skipped No. XX.
6 From 1438 to 1806, with the exception of Francis I of Lorraine, the House of Hapsburg was on the Imperial throne.
7 Ferdinand and his successors took the title Emperor Elect.