AN ITALIAN SENATOR ON THE PROSPECTS OF ITALY.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume II, Issue 72, 12 September 1874, Page 7

AN ITALIAN SENATOR ON THE PROSPECTS OF ITALY.

Two letters have recently been published in in the Italian papers, written by the Marchese Carlo Alfieri de Sontegno, a member of the Senate, on the occasion of the prorogation of Parliament. The former of these was intended to be a perfectly priT»te letter, in which, writing to his friend, Profossor Sharbaro, of Ancona, he very freely expressed his opinions on tho practical working of the Parliamentary institutions of United Italy. "So one," he says, " can be leas surprised than I am at the ridiculous and unbecoming way in which the Parliament of 1874 has terminated its foolish existence I have very little hope for that which will be elected in the autumn." Government and legislation, he goes on to say, is to a great extent in the hands of the lower middle class, the " small bourgeois," a class, " a body of men who are avaricious, suspicious, and selfish. Some of them come up to the Parliament to attend to the interests of the rest, who live on the public revenue under any pretext — stipends, pensions, public works, State subsidies, and protection to industry and speculation — while owners of property and the common people have to pay and work for them The class which governs Italy has no thought but for its own interests, a:id would have no ambition for power if it were not a means of promoting them. One single passion agitates its mind —hatred of the clergy and ill will towards the nobles. And with this disposition, it can produce nothing useful to the country at large, nothing truly great, nothing calculated to promote the moral and political progress of the nation." Of the future of Italy he naturally takes a very gloomy view. The present state of affairs he describes as one of " half-hearted democracy and Socialism," and he has no doubt that as the Utopian ideas of social reorganisation, now so popular in Italy, pervade all classes, and financial difficulties increase, the result will be a revolution like tk at of 1 848 in France. He concludes by expressing his regret at not being able to hope for a better future fop Italy ; " but," he says, " I have for some time seen things were tending in this direction, aud events only give too much confirmation to- the views I entertain."