spread of Austrian sway on the Adriatic, encouraged them to
begin a series of noisy demonstrations. On the evening of the
signature at Berlin of the clause sanctioning the Austrian occupation
of Bosnia and Herzegovina, an Irredentist riot took place
before the Austrian consulate at Venice. The Italian government
attached little importance to the occurrence, and believed
that a diplomatic expression of regret would suffice to allay
Austrian irritation. Austria, indeed, might easily have been
persuaded to ignore the Irredentist agitation, had not the
equivocal attitude of Cairoli and Zanardelli cast doubt upon the
sincerity of their regret. The former at Pavia (15th October
1878), and the latter at Arco (3rd November), declared publicly
that Irredentist manifestations could not be prevented under
existing laws, but gave no hint of introducing any law to sanction
their prevention. “Repression, not prevention” became the
official formula, the enunciation of which by Cairoli at Pavia
caused Count Corti and two other ministers to resign.
The fall of Cairoli, and the formation of a second Depretis cabinet in 1878, brought no substantial change in the attitude of the government towards Irredentism, nor was the position improved by the return of Cairoli to power in the following July. Though aware of Bismarck’s hostility towards Italy, of the conclusion of the Austro-German alliance of 1879, and of the undisguised ill-will of France, Italy not only made no attempt to crush an agitation as mischievous as it was futile, but granted a state funeral to General Avezzana, president of the Irredentist League. In Bonghi’s mordant phrase, the foreign policy of Italy during this period may be said to have been characterized by “enormous intellectual impotence counterbalanced by equal moral feebleness.” Home affairs were scarcely better managed. Parliament had degenerated into a congeries of personal groups, whose members were eager only to overturn cabinets in order to secure power for the leaders and official favours for themselves. Depretis, who had succeeded Cairoli in December 1878, fell in July 1879, after a vote in which Cairoli and Nicotera joined the Conservative opposition. On 12th July Cairoli formed a new administration, only to resign on 24th November, and to reconstruct his cabinet with the help of Depretis. The administration of finance was as chaotic as the condition of parliament. The £2,400,000 surplus announced by Seismit Doda proved to be a myth. Nevertheless Magliani, who succeeded Seismit Doda, had neither the perspicacity nor the courage to resist the abolition of the grist tax. The first vote of the Chamber for the immediate diminution of the tax, and for its total abolition on 1st January Finance. 1883, had been opposed by the Senate. A second bill was passed by the Chamber on 18th July 1879, providing for the immediate repeal of the grist tax on minor cereals, and for its total abolition on 1st January 1884. While approving the repeal in regard to minor cereals, the Senate (24th January 1880) again rejected the repeal of the tax on grinding wheat as prejudicial to national finance. After the general election of 1880, however, the Ministerialists, aided by a number of factious Conservatives, passed a third bill repealing the grist tax on wheat (10th July 1880), the repeal to take effect from the 1st of January 1884 onwards. The Senate, in which the partisans of the ministry had been increased by numerous appointments ad hoc, finally set the seal of its approval upon the measure. Notwithstanding this prospective loss of revenue, parliament showed great reluctance to vote any new impost, although hardly a year previously it had sanctioned (30th June 1879) Depretis’s scheme for spending during the next eighteen years £43,200,000 in building 5000 kilometres of railway, an expenditure not wholly justified by the importance of the lines, and useful principally as a source of electoral sops for the constituents of ministerial deputies. The unsatisfactory financial condition of the Florence, Rome and Naples municipalities necessitated state help, but the Chamber nevertheless proceeded with a light heart (23rd February 1881) to sanction the issue of a foreign loan for £26,000,000, with a view to the abolition of the forced currency, thus adding to the burdens of the exchequer a load which three years later again dragged Italy into the gulf of chronic deficit.
In no modern country is error or incompetence on the part of administrators more swiftly followed by retribution than in Italy; both at home and abroad she is hemmed in by political and economic conditions which leave little margin for folly, and still less for “mental and moral Tunisia. insufficiency,” such as had been displayed by the Left. Nemesis came in the spring of 1881, in the form of the French invasion of Tunisia. Guiccioli, the biographer of Sella, observes that Italian politicians find it especially hard to resist “the temptation of appearing crafty.” The men of the Left believed themselves subtle enough to retain the confidence and esteem of all foreign powers while coquetting at home with elements which some of these powers had reason to regard with suspicion. Italy, in constant danger from France, needed good relations with Austria and Germany, but could only attain the goodwill of the former by firm treatment of the revolutionary Irredentist agitation, and of the latter by clear demonstration of Italian will and ability to cope with all anti-monarchical forces. Depretis and Cairoli did neither the one nor the other. Hence, when opportunity offered firmly to establish Italian predominance in the central Mediterranean by an occupation of Tunisia, they found themselves deprived of those confidential relations with the central powers, and even with Great Britain, which might have enabled them to use the opportunity to full advantage. The conduct of Italy in declining the suggestions received from Count Andrássy and General Ignatiev on the eve of the Russo-Turkish War—that Italy should seek compensation in Tunisia for the extension of Austrian sway in the Balkans—and in subsequently rejecting the German suggestion to come to an arrangement with Great Britain for the occupation of Tunisia as compensation for the British occupation of Cyprus, was certainly due to fear lest an attempt on Tunisia should lead to a war with France, for which Italy knew herself to be totally unprepared. This very unpreparedness, however, rendered still less excusable her treatment of the Irredentist agitation, which brought her within a hair’s-breadth of a conflict with Austria. Although Cairoli, upon learning of the Anglo-Ottoman convention in regard to Cyprus, had advised Count Corti of the possibility that Great Britain might seek to placate France by conniving at a French occupation of Tunisia, neither he nor Count Corti had any inkling of the verbal arrangement made between Lord Salisbury and Waddington at the instance of Bismarck, that, when convenient, France should occupy Tunisia, an agreement afterwards confirmed (with a reserve as to the eventual attitude of Italy) in despatches exchanged in July and August 1878 between the Quai d’Orsay and Downing Street. Almost up to the moment of the French occupation of Tunisia the Italian government believed that Great Britain, if only out of gratitude for the bearing of Italy in connexion with the Dulcigno demonstration in the autumn of 1880, would prevent French acquisition of the Regency. Ignorant of the assurance conveyed to France by Lord Granville that the Gladstone cabinet would respect the engagements of the Beaconsfield-Salisbury administration, Cairoli, in deference to Italian public opinion, endeavoured to neutralize the activity of the French consul Roustan by the appointment of an equally energetic Italian consul, Macciò. The rivalry between these two officials in Tunisia contributed not a little to strain Franco-Italian relations, but it is doubtful whether France would have precipitated her action had not General Menabrea, Italian ambassador in London, urged his government to purchase the Tunis-Goletta railway from the English company by which it had been constructed. A French attempt to purchase the line was upset in the English courts, and the railway was finally secured by Italy at a price more than eight times its real value. This pertinacity engendered a belief in France that Italy was about to undertake in Tunisia a more aggressive policy than necessary for the protection of her commercial interests. Roustan therefore hastened to extort from the bey concessions calculated to neutralize the advantages which Italy had hoped to secure by the possession of the Tunis-Goletta line, and at the same time the French government prepared at Toulon an expeditionary corps for the occupation of the Regency. In the spring of 1881
