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Na little book, at once of personal and public interest, and which deserves to become widely known by all who interest themselves in the politics of the past twenty years, "M. Crispi chez M. de Bismarck," an authentic record of the intercourse between these two great continental statesmen, Bismarck says to Crispi, I have always believed that I was the man most hated in my time, but perhaps I have sinned in presumption, because your Excellency pushes me very hard" (me fait réellement une concurrence sérieuse). "We are certainly,” replied the Minister," the two men whom the French detest the most. But there is between us this difference: in the course of events you have been called on to hurt France, while I, for my part, am still obliged to ask what has obtained for me the hatred of the French, and what has given me the reputation of Gallophobe."

WHY HE IS UNPOPULAR IN FRANCE.

The reply of the Italian statesman has hardly the quality of his habitual frankness, for unless the word "obtained" (procuré) be translated “merited," the unqualified rancor of the French against him is easily explained. The policy of all his predecessors in office has been to pay compliments to their allies and their friends on whose good feeling they thought they could depend, but to make all their acts agreeable to France, whom they recognized to be their enemy, and so "saved the goat and the cabbage;" while Crispi, on arriving at the direction of affairs, was the initiator of another system, and, having been from the beginning one of the most strenuous advocates of the Triple Alliance, now determined to maintain it in its full meaning, and, accordingly, to put the country in a condition to carry out its undertakings, and to submit to no more dictation on the part of France. So sudden a change, and in the opposite direction from all the tendencies of the past, against which Crispi had always protested, could only be accounted for at Paris by the hypothesis of a predetermination to provoke war, and the French journals raised a chorus of denunciation of the "Gallophobe Minister;" and as in general the impression of Italian affairs received through the French journals reaches the English-speaking public, while that of the Italian press, weak, discordant, and rarely actuated by interests beyond those of the various personages to whom the journals belong, has no influence abroad, it is the French public opinion that has prevailed, and, on no better authority than this, Crispi has always been regarded as a firebrand and a man dangerous to the monarchy, if not to society.

MAZZINI'S PROPHECY.

To strengthen this impression a pretended prophecy of Mazzini is quoted to the effect that he had pre

dicted that Crispi would be the last Minister of the House of Savoy. The fact is this: When Crispi, who is by conviction a Republican, became convinced that the unity of Italy would be sacrificed under the republican form of government, even if it could be possible to liberate the entire peninsula under that programme, he declared himself in favor of the House of Savoy, on the ground, as he expressed it in a mot become famous, "that the Republic would divide us, while the Monarchy unites us," Mazzini and he parted company, and the inflexible republican wrote Crispi that his ideas of government and projects of reform would not be accepted until it was too late, and that when the King called him in they could not be carried out, and he would only be the last Minister of the House of Savoy. Neither the one nor the other part of the prediction has been verified. The last of the great public men of the generation of revolution. ists has been called to the head of the government, certainly not too willingly in the first case, and equally true is it that the King was glad to be relieved of him at the end of his first term; but in his second he was not only welcomed by general public opinion but by the King, as the only sure defense against anarchy, "the one strong hand, in a blatant land," and at this moment he seems to rule as securely as if there were no other.

CRISPI'S REAL CREED IN POLITICS.

Crispi is a man born to rule, if any man is. Of inflexible character, and of uncompromising patriotism, his defects are those of strength, not, as is generally the case with Italian public men, of weakness and irresoluteness, if not of corruption; and to the programme he laid down twenty years ago he is still inflexibly tenacious. As the principal objection raised against Crispi has been his supposed tendency to the assumption of dictatorial powers, the quotation of this programme may serve to show his real creed in politics. It is contained in the programme letter of 1865:

Reduction of the bureaucracy by one-third; and to the servants of the state, chosen amongst the intelligent and honest, a living assured with fair pay, and the future guaranteed against arbitrary dismissal.

Emancipation of the public administration from its dependence on the executive power, and conferring on the magistracy that authority which it is deprived of by the government, by the system of transfers and conferring of

honors.

Transfer of the police to the municipalities.

An income tax on all who reside in the kingdom, according to their possessions, only those being exempted who live by the labor of their hands or brains

Organization and arming efficiently of the militia, and when Venice is free, its substitution for the standing army, and abolition of the conscription.

Independence of the universities, and assignment of the primary instruction to the provinces and communes, with free and compulsory instruction.

Together with provisions for the extension of the petty banks and means of communication in the peninsula. This is for internal affairs. For the reform of the central powers he proposed the following:

Absolute separation of the legislative from the executive, and therefore exclusion of the government employes from the Chambers.

Prohibition of the members of Parliament to accept public offices, and ineligibility of all who have taken contracts in which the State is concerned.

A Senate elective, as in Belgium, and not an emanation of the Prince.

The electoral franchise to all Italians of twenty-one who can read and write, and eligibility of all as Deputy at twenty-five, and to the Senate at thirty, with payment for service, to enlarge the accessibility of citizens to the legislature.

DISCIPLINE AND DECENTRALIZATION.

No man who aspired to support such a programme.

dictatorial powers could' People mistook the au

thoritative, which insists on rigid observance of law, for the despotic; and Crispi has the strongest and most invincible devotion to the decentralization of political power, where the public security permits it, but also the most positive views of the necessity of civic discipline and deference to law. No Minister in the history of the kingdom of Italy has done so much to emancipate the people from the abuses of a too centralized government and extend the exercise of political power to the people, but no one has at the same time insisted so rigorously on the maintenance of order and the obedience of the civil servants to the regulations, as Crispi. And as the want of discipline and respect for law is the dominant defect of the Italian character, so the attempt to enforce those qualities develops the greatest antagonism and causes the loudest outcry against Crispi's strong government, which, though the strongest of all that Italy has experienced, is also the most subservient to law and good discipline. No more preposterous accusation was ever brought against a public man than that of aspiring to dictatorship, brought against Crispi. It has no more basis than that of desiring to precipi

SIGNOR CRISPI IN 1862.

tate Italy into a war to cover the financial consequences of his megalomania, for during three years of government, with such a popularity that when he came before the country with an appeal to the constituencies at the end of it, four-fifths of the candidates elected presented themselves as supporters of Crispi, there were not lacking ample provocations on the part of France to declare war if he had desired.

A SON OF THE SOUTH.

Coupled with this authoritative temper, Crispi has the southern quickness of temperament, and there are not wanting cases of ebullition, under grave provocation, the tendency to which has been artfully made use of by his antagonists, to his injury. The most notable case of this was that connected with his fall in 1890, when the united oppositions, consisting of the remnant of the old Right, his hereditary foe; the Radicals, who hated him for his abandonment of the Republican idea; the clericals, who regarded him as the enemy of the Church; the deputies in the pay of the banks, which Crispi proposed to reform; and all the opponents of the reduction of the huge army of employes of the government, combined against him. His position in the Chamber was still too strong to be attacked directly, and it was necessary to provoke him to some indiscretion which should justify an assault. Bonghi was sent to bait him, which he set about doing by insulting the Left and its administration of affairs in the past.

A FAULT OF TEMPER.

Crispi was not in a state to keep that control of his temper which is customary, in spite of his temperament, overworked and physically worn with too constant devotion to public affairs, holding two portfolios, with the presidency of the Council; and Bonghi's insults and the accompaniment of jeers and cries of his fellow conspirators threw Crispi off his guard, and he replied by a vehement defense of the Left, and a retaliating attack on the Right, which had led the country to Custozza and Lissa. In the outcry which followed, a vote was taken, and the Ministry remained in a minority. The King is reported to have become tired of the rigorous government of Crispi, always obnoxious to the Court, and accepted gladly his resignation, making the comparison of his situation with that of the German Emperor before Bismarck. Crispi returned to his law office, and the next day sent out his circular announcement of his resumption of business. From that time till the increasing confusion and financial disaster called him again to the helm, he took part in politics only to oppose or favor and vote on measures which were of importance to the country, taking no share in the combinations of parties or struggles for office which drifted the State toward ruin. Three years later he was called, like Cincinnatus, to what was virtually a dictatorship, if he had cared to make it such, to redeem the government from the consequences of the weakest and worst governments Italy had ever known.

AN HONEST MAN.

Crispi's honesty and official integrity could not escape impeachment in the campaigns of slander and malevolence to which he has been subjected from the time when, as Garibaldi's right hand and sole adviser, he assumed the office of Secretary of State to the dictator in the government of Sicily, in 1860. Being opposed to all Cavour's plans for the unification of Italy, a Republican and Radical, he became the target of all the animosity of the Piedmontese party, and so laid the foundation for the hostility which has never since been allayed. Peculation, official corruption, bribery and all the well-known abuses of Italian politics, have been charged against him as a chief offender. He was accused of having used the funds of the banks for electoral and personal purposes, etc.; and when the great explosion of the Banca Romana took place, and the committee of the Chamber of Deputies was named to search the documents for evidence of official corruption, it was one of the principal motives of the movement to find some evidence against Crispi, and Giolitti caused the most minute examination to be made for this express purpose; but all that was discovered was that before he first entered into the Cabinet of Depretis, he had a debt of between £40,000 and £50,000 with the National Bank, which debt from that time forward has neither increased nor diminished. There is not a public man, with any knowledge of the facts, who does not know that Crispi's honesty is unimpeachable, as his patriotism is unquestionable. There is no man in Italian politics who has so many irreconcilable enemies or so many devoted and unselfish friends, and the one as the other class contributes to his reputation, for the confidence of his friends runs with the silence of his enemies as to all accusations of the kind. Nobody has ever dared make a specific charge of any act of dishonesty against him. His legal business gave him an average income of $30,000; his official salary is $6,000. The man can be hardly accused of venality who passed the best years of his life in exile and poverty, living by keeping accounts for any business man who would employ him, teaching languages, writing for newspapers, dwelling in garrets, and who, when Cavour, who knew his abilities, offered him a position on his own journal, replied, "Do they think a publicist is like a shoemaker, who makes shoes for all feet?" And as a Republican he went into exile from Italy, driven out of France, and found a safe asylum only in England.

"I AM CRISPI !"

Petrucelli della Gattina says of him: "One day I asked Crispi, 'Are you a Mazzinian?' 'No,' he replied. Are you a Garibaldian?' 'No more,' he said. And wh t are you then?' 'I am Crispi !'' This inflexible individuality of the man throws him into a relief of the strongest kind against the indiscriminate mass of the politicians of contemporary Italy. He has been the imitator and follower of nobody. In the Sicilian revolution he was not a follower of Garibaldi, but the organizer of the move

ment and its brain, as Garibaldi was its right hand. Garibaldi's military ability made a military success possible, but the preparation, the political conduct and the final success were due to Crispi. With the single exception of Cavour, there has been no man in modern Italian politics whose individuality was so strong as his. In the Chamber of Deputies he is always alone when not in the government-he forms no party, belongs to none of the groups which take the place of party organization in the politics of the country; half a dozen devoted friends always stand with him, but in any great crisis he has for years been regarded and spoken of by the men of all sections as the only one to face a grave emergency.

"I CALL MYSELF TO-MORROW!"

His tenacity is as remarkable as his individuality, and when we compare him with Cavour, it is to be remembered that the Piedmontese statesman had wind and tide with him, king, court and fortune, while Crispi had to make his way against all of them. Beginning in 1848, he was the life of the Sicilian insurrection, which held its own a year against the indifference of Europe and the perjury of the Bourbons, was the first in the organization and last to leave the island. Republican from the beginning, he only accepted the monarchial formula when he saw that Italy was not ready for a republic, and that it endangered the unity which was more precious than any form of government, and he submitted silently to the persecution of Cavour even when he had so greatly helped to secure the Italianization of Sicily; to all the rancor and hostility of king and court, silently and patiently, knowing that his time must come. One taunted him with his political failure in the days before his day came, and he replied, "Io mi chiamo Domani"-I call myself To-morrow.

HIS SILENCE AND RESERVE.

Silent and secretive, no man has ever had his entire confidence, and any one gets it only as far as the needs of the moment demand. Mayor, who lived in his confidence as far as any one has, says of him that "Whoever has seen much of Crispi knows that secrecy is one of his characteristics, as silence is one of his forces. He resembles in that both Mazzini and Garibaldi. Like Garibaldi, in grave situations Crispi only takes counsel with himself; like Mazzini, he knows how to maintain an absolute silence as to the designs he entertains, or of which he already is urging the execution. When, after ripe reflection, his decision is taken, he does not seek objections, and if he foresees them he is silent. To this is owing that some of his acts seem abrupt, because they have not been anticipated; that blows and parries which seem improvised have been a long time contemplated, and the effect of them has been calculated in advance. Another characteristic Crispi has in common with Mazzini ; he never tells the whole of his mind to any There remains in him always something impenetrable, and it is this something concealed which is felt to be what imposes and disconcerts the most.

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