Agostino Depretis (31 January 181329 July 1887) was an Italian statesman and politician. He served as Prime Minister of Italy for several stretches between 1876 and 1887, and was leader of the Historical Left parliamentary group for more than a decade. He is the fourth-longest-serving prime minister in Italian history, after Benito Mussolini, Giovanni Giolitti and Silvio Berlusconi, and at the time of his death he was the longest-served. Depretis is widely considered one of the most powerful and important politicians in Italian history, having enacted numerous reforms that modernized Italy, such as expanding male suffrage and free education.La dittatura parlamentare di Giolitti
Depretis was a master in the political art of Trasformismo, the method of making a flexible, centrist coalition of government which isolated the extremes of the left and the right in Italian politics after the unification.Killinger, The history of Italy, p. 127–28
Early life and Italian Unification Depretis was born at Bressana Bottarone, near Stradella, which at the time was a province of the French Empire of Napoleon and now is in the province of Pavia, Lombardy.Agostino Depretis – Dizionario Biografico After Napoleon's defeat and restoration of the Kingdom of Sardinia, Depretis graduated in law and started working as lawyer.
From early manhood he was a disciple of Giuseppe Mazzini and affiliated with the La Giovine Italia. He took an active part in the Mazzinian conspiracies and was nearly captured by the Austrians while smuggling arms into Milan. Elected deputy in 1848, he joined the Left and founded the newspaper Il Diritto, but he held no political offices.Depretis Agostino, pages 60-61
In the same period he strongly opposed the policies of the Piedmontese Prime Minister Camillo Benso di Cavour and voted against the main reforms that he presented, including the bill regarding the Piedmontese participation to the Crimean War. Despite their struggles, after the annexation of Lombardy by the Kingdom of Sardinia in 1859, Cavour appointed Depretis governor of Brescia.Il presidente del Consiglio, in Illustrazione Italiana, Anno XII, N. 47, 22 November 1885, p. 322.
In 1860, Giuseppe Garibaldi sailed with his Expedition of the Thousand toward Sicily. The Expedition was formed by corps of volunteers led by Garibaldi in order to conquer the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, ruled by the Bourbons. The project was an ambitious and risky venture aiming to conquer, with a thousand men, a kingdom with a larger regular army and a more powerful navy. The expedition was a success and concluded with a plebiscite that brought Naples and Sicily into the Kingdom of Sardinia, the last territorial conquest before the creation of the Kingdom of Italy on 17 March 1861. Raccolta degli atti del governo dittatoriale e prodittatoriale in Sicilia, 1860, Stabilimento tipografico Francesco Lao, Palermo
The sea venture was the only desired action that was jointly decided by the "four fathers of the nation" Giuseppe Mazzini, Giuseppe Garibaldi, Victor Emmanuel II, and Camillo Cavour, pursuing divergent goals. The various groups participated in the expedition for a variety of reasons: for Garibaldi, it was to achieve a united Italy; to the Sicilian bourgeoisie, an independent Sicily as part of the kingdom of Italy, and for the mass farmers, land distribution and the end of oppression.
In 1860 Depretis went to Sicily on a mission to reconcile the policy of Cavour, who desired the immediate incorporation of the island in the Kingdom of Italy, with that of Garibaldi, who wished to postpone the Sicilian plebiscite until after the liberation of Naples and Rome. Depretis replaced Garibaldi's close councilor Francesco Crispi as pro-dictator (prodittatore) of Sicily, during the dictatorial government; however he failed in his attempt to win round Garibaldi and his comrades to the idea of immediately incorporating Sicily into the new Italian kingdom, and resigned in September 1860.
In government Minister of Public Works After Cavour's death king Victor Emmanuel II gave the task to form a new government firstly to Bettino Ricasoli and then to Urbano Rattazzi; Rattazzi was the leader of the Left and created a cabinet composed by both political groups. On 3 March 1862, Depretis was appointed Minister of Public Works, and served as intermediary in arranging with Garibaldi.
However, in August 1862 the Royal Italian Army defeated Garibaldi's army of volunteers, who were marching from Sicily towards Rome, with the intent of annexing it into the Kingdom of Italy. In the battle, which took place a few kilometers from Gambarie, Garibaldi was wounded and taken as prisoner. Rattazzi's policy of repression towards Garibaldi at Aspromonte, caused lot of public protests and the Prime Minister was forced to resign in September 1862. This work in turn cites:Fulvio Cammarano, Storia dell'Italia liberale, Roma-Bari, Laterza, 2011
Moreover, Francesco Crispi accused Depretis of having mounted the Mazzinian riots in Sarnico in May 1862 to discredit Garibaldi. After the fall of the Rattazzi government, therefore, it was easy to predict the end of Depretis's political career, when Crispi was elected leader of the Left.Christopher Duggan, Creare la nazione. Vita di Francesco Crispi, Roma-Bari, Laterza, 2000 Depretis remained on the sidelines during the 8th legislature (1863–65), but he regularly participated in the parliamentary works, intervening regarding the laws for administrative unification and declaring himself hostile to regionalism. He was particularly active during the electoral campaign of 1865 and at the beginning of the 9th legislature he was elected vice president of the Chamber of Deputies.Biografia di Agostino Depretis
Minister of Navy In 1866, in anticipation of the war with the Austrian Empire, after the signing of the Italo-Prussian alliance, Ricasoli was appointed prime minister by the king to replace General Alfonso Ferrero La Marmora, who would lead the Italian troops during the war. The king wanted to established a government of "national conciliation" that included members both form the Right and the Left.
On 20 June, Depretis was appointed Minister of the Navy, on the same day the Third Italian War of Independence began.Il Risorgimento – Enciclopedia Treccani After the Italian defeat in the Battle of Custoza, Depretis insisted with admiral Carlo Persano on the attack against the island of Lissa, as a revenge for Custoza. But he also refused to give to admiral Persano detailed orders about the expedition in the Adriatic Sea against the fleet led by Wilhelm von Tegetthoff. However the Italian Regia Marina ("Royal Navy") was soundly defeated. To quell the public outcry after the two defeats, Depretis called for process Persano, who was judged by the Italian Senate, condemned for incompetence in 1867 and cashiered from duty.Storia Militare n. 215, Parma 2011, p. 64 However the war ended in an Austrian defeat, with Austria conceding the region of Venetia to Italy. Italy's acquisition of this wealthy and populous territory represented a major step in the process of Italian unification.La Terza Guerra d'Indipendenza
On 17 February 1867, Depretis resigned as minister of the Navy. His tenure as minister was quite controversial; his apologists contend, however, that, as an inexperienced civilian, he could not have made sudden changes in naval arrangements without disorganizing the fleet, and that in view of the impending hostilities he was obliged to accept the dispositions of his predecessors.
Leader of the Left
On 17 February 1867 Depretis was appointed Minister of Finance in the second cabinet of Ricasoli; however after few months, on 10 April, Ricasoli resigned and Depretis returned to be a simple deputy.
Upon the death of Rattazzi in 1873, Depretis became leader of the Left. On 25 June 1873, the conservative government of Giovanni Lanza fell, beaten by a vote that saw the Depretis's moderate Left united with a large part of the Right, no longer in support of the Minister of Finance Quintino Sella; in fact Sella abandoned the proposal of a further fiscal tightening in order to achieve a balanced budget.Giancarlo Giordano, Cilindri e feluche. La politica estera dell'Italia dopo l'Unità, Roma, Aracne, 2008 Victor Emmanuel II then asked the conservative Marco Minghetti to form a new government, inviting him to include also members from the Left. Minghetti accepted the suggestion but his efforts to agree with Depretis were vain.
Minghetti and Sella were involved into an ambitious program of budget which needed a strong majority, for which they tried to oblige the Independents to choose their side, beginning to build a two-party system as in the United Kingdom.La Stampa, Thursday, 5 November 1874 However, in the Italian non-partisan political system, hugely affected by localism and corruption, their bet was equivalent to an all-in that afterwards they lost.La Stampa, Sunday, 8 November 1874
The 1874 election did not give to Minghetti the advantage he was hoping, especially for the high support to Depretis's opposition in Southern Italy.La Stampa, Monday, 16 November 1974 Minghetti's government survived, but the bipolarisation of the Parliament he had imposed, strengthened the Left so that it could take the leadership of the country. Two years later, MPs from Tuscany became dissatisfied with the government after it refused to intervene in the financial problems of Florence. The government was defeated on a vote on nationalising railways on 18 March 1876 and Minghetti was forced to resign.Nohlen & Stöver, p1029 As a result, Depretis became prime minister, with 414 of the 508 MPs supporting the government.Flynn, John T. Pre-Fascist Italy: Tax and Borrow and Spend, Mises Institute The fall of the Minghetti's cabinet was called, by political commentators, the "parliamentary revolution".La rivoluzione parlamentare che segnò la storia d’Italia
Prime Minister of Italy First term
On 25 March 1876, Depretis sworn in as prime minister; his cabinet was the first one to be composed only by members of the Left. Prominent ministers were Giovanni Nicotera, Pasquale Stanislao Mancini, Michele Coppino, Giuseppe Zanardelli and Benedetto Brin.
To strengthen his position, Depretis called for a new election in November. For the first time, the left-wing won an election, gaining almost 70% of votes and taking 414 of the 508 seats, of which 12 were extreme left-wingers. As opposed to the previous right-wing governments, whose members were largely aristocrats representing rentiers from the north of the country, and held moderate political views including loyalty to the crown and low government spending,Nohlen & Stöver, p1028 the left-wing government represented the bourgeoisie of the south of the country and supported low taxation, secularism, a strong foreign policy and public jobs.
The main reform proposed by the government was the school one that took its name from Minister Coppino and was presented on 15 July 1877. The law introduced compulsory, secular and free primary education for children aged six to nine. On the other hand, while maintaining the electoral promises, Depretis raised the minimum exemption for the mobile wealth tax from 250 to 800 lire, granting greater deductions for industrial income. Important, although not very effective, was the decree of 25 August 1876 which regulated the office of the prime minister with the will to contain the monarchical power and above all the conflict of ministers.