to hope for a diminution of land tax under a revised assessment
hastened to complete their survey, while others, in which the
average of the land tax was below a normal assessment,
neglected to comply with the provisions of the scheme. An
important undertaking, known as the Agricultural Inquiry,
brought to light vast quantities of information valuable for
future agrarian legislation. The year 1885 saw the introduction
and adoption of a measure embodying the principle of employers’
liability for accidents to workmen, a principle subsequently
extended and more equitably defined in the spring of 1899.
An effort to encourage the development of the mercantile marine
was made in the same year, and a convention was concluded
with the chief lines of passenger steamers to retain their fastest
vessels as auxiliaries to the fleet in case of war. Sanitation and
public hygiene received a potent impulse from the cholera
epidemic of 1884, many of the unhealthiest quarters in Naples
and other cities being demolished and rebuilt, with funds chiefly
furnished by the state. The movement was strongly supported
by King Humbert, whose intrepidity in visiting the most
dangerous spots at Busca and Naples while the epidemic was
at its height, reassuring the panic-stricken inhabitants by his
presence, excited the enthusiasm of his people and the admiration
of Europe.
During the accomplishment of these and other reforms the condition of parliament underwent profound change. By degrees the administrations of the Left had ceased to rely solely upon the Liberal sections of the Chamber, and had carried their most important bills with the help “Trasformismo.” of the Right. This process of transformation was not exclusively the work of Depretis, but had been initiated as early as 1873, when a portion of the Right under Minghetti had, by joining the Left, overturned the Lanza-Sella cabinet. In 1876 Minghetti himself had fallen a victim to a similar defection of Conservative deputies. The practical annihilation of the old Right in the elections of 1876 opened a new parliamentary era. Reduced in number to less than one hundred, and radically changed in spirit and composition, the Right gave way, if not to despair, at least to a despondency unsuited to an opposition party. Though on more than one occasion personal rancour against the men of the Moderate Left prevented the Right from following Sella’s advice and regaining, by timely coalition with cognate parliamentary elements, a portion of its former influence, the bulk of the party, with singular inconsistency, drew nearer and nearer to the Liberal cabinets. The process was accelerated by Sella’s illness and death (14th March 1884), an event which cast profound discouragement over the more thoughtful of the Conservatives and Moderate Liberals, by whom Sella had been regarded as a supreme political reserve, as a statesman whose experienced vigour and patriotic sagacity might have been trusted to lift Italy from any depth of folly or misfortune. By a strange anomaly the Radical measures brought forward by the Left diminished instead of increasing the distance between it and the Conservatives. Numerically insufficient to reject such measures, and lacking the fibre and the cohesion necessary for the pursuance of a far-sighted policy, the Right thought prudent not to employ its strength in uncompromising opposition, but rather, by supporting the government, to endeavour to modify Radical legislation in a Conservative sense. In every case the calculation proved fallacious. Radical measures were passed unmodified, and the Right was compelled sadly to accept the accomplished fact. Thus it was with the abolition of the grist tax, the reform of the suffrage, the railway conventions and many other bills. When, in course of time, the extended suffrage increased the Republican and Extreme Radical elements in the Chamber, and the Liberal “Pentarchy” (composed of Crispi, Cairoli, Nicotera, Zanardelli and Baccarini) assumed an attitude of bitter hostility to Depretis, the Right, obeying the impulse of Minghetti, rallied openly to Depretis, lending him aid without which his prolonged term of office would have been impossible. The result was parliamentary chaos, baptized trasformismo. In May 1883 this process received official recognition by the elimination of the Radicals Zanardelli and Baccarini from the Depretis cabinet, while in the course of 1884 a Conservative, Signor Biancheri, was elected to the presidency of the Chamber, and another Conservative, General Ricotti, appointed to the War Office. Though Depretis, at the end of his life in 1887, showed signs of repenting of the confusion thus created, he had established a parliamentary system destined largely to sterilize and vitiate the political life of Italy.
Contemporaneously with the vicissitudes of home and foreign policy under the Left there grew up in Italy a marked tendency towards colonial enterprise. The tendency itself dated from 1869, when a congress of the Italian chambers of commerce at Genoa had urged the Lanza cabinet to Colonial policy. establish a commercial depôt on the Red Sea. On the 11th of March 1870 an Italian shipper, Signor Rubattino, had bought the bay of Assab, with the neighbouring island of Darmakieh, from Beheran, sultan of Raheita, for £1880, the funds being furnished by the government. The Egyptian government being unwilling to recognize the sovereignty of Beheran over Assab or his right to sell territory to a foreign power, Visconti-Venosta thought it opportune not then to occupy Assab. No further step was taken until, at the end of 1879, Rubattino prepared to establish a commercial station at Assab. The British government made inquiry as to his intentions, and on the 19th of April 1880 received a formal undertaking from Cairoli that Assab would never be fortified nor be made a military establishment. Meanwhile (January 1880) stores and materials were landed, and Assab was permanently occupied. Eighteen months later a party of Italian sailors and explorers under Lieutenant Biglieri and Signor Giulietti were massacred in Egyptian territory. Egypt, however, refused to make thorough inquiry into the massacre, and was only prevented from occupying Raheita and coming into conflict with Italy by the good offices of Lord Granville, who dissuaded the Egyptian government from enforcing its sovereignty. On the 20th of September 1881 Beheran formally accepted Italian protection, and in the following February an Anglo-Italian convention established the Italian title to Assab on condition that Italy should formally recognise the suzerainty of the Porte and of the khedive over the Red Sea coast, and should prevent the transport of arms and munitions of war through the territory of Assab. This convention was never recognized by the Porte nor by the Egyptian government. A month later (10th March 1882) Rubattino made over his establishment to the Italian government, and on the 12th of June the Chamber adopted a bill constituting Assab an Italian crown colony.
Within four weeks of the adoption of this bill the bombardment of Alexandria by the British fleet (11th July 1882) opened an era destined profoundly to affect the colonial position of Italy. The revolt of Arabi Pasha (September 1881) had led to the meeting of an ambassadorial conference The Egyptian Question. at Constantinople, promoted by Mancini, Italian minister for foreign affairs, in the hope of preventing European intervention in Egypt and the permanent establishment of an Anglo-French condominium to the detriment of Italian influence. At the opening of the conference (23rd June 1882) Italy secured the signature of a self-denying protocol whereby all the great powers undertook to avoid isolated action; but the rapid development of the crisis in Egypt, and the refusal of France to co-operate with Great Britain in the restoration of order, necessitated vigorous action by the latter alone. In view of the French refusal, Lord Granville on the 27th of July invited Italy to join in restoring order in Egypt; but Mancini and Depretis, in spite of the efforts of Crispi, then in London, declined the offer. Financial considerations, lack of proper transports for an expeditionary corps, fear of displeasing France, dislike of a “policy of adventure,” misplaced deference towards the ambassadorial conference in Constantinople, and unwillingness to thwart the current of Italian sentiment in favour of the Egyptian “nationalists,” were the chief motives of the Italian refusal, which had the effect of somewhat estranging Great Britain and Italy. Anglo-Italian relations, however, regained their normal cordiality two years later, and found expression in the support
