The Sun.
London, England, 1861-05-07 00:00:00

7HE ITALIAN PARLIAMENT.

A letter from Turin, dated May 2, says :—Yes-
terday Count Cavour administered a severe, but not
altogether undeserved, rebuke to the Chamber. He
charged the deputies with having done nothing, or
little more than nothing, since the opening of Par-
liament, on the 18th of February, and expressed
his apprehension that they would go on equally
wasting their time to the close of the session. The
reproach is by no means new. The press, both
national and foreign, has not spared what Garibaldi
calls the " Hon. Chamber ;" and there was even a
rash member, as far back as a month ago, who re-
minded his colleagues that, although Parliament
Came from " parlare," the nation expected some-
thing more than mere " talk" from its representa-

Although the authority of Count Cavour may
exercise greater influence than that of other moni-
tors, the evil, great as it is, and acknowledged by
all persons, admits of no ready remedy. In an
assembly where every man has a right to talk it is
no easy matter to induce any one to renounce the
supreme pleasure of hearing his own voice. The
Southern members, especially Neapolitans and Sici-
lians, are each of them a pel feet flood of loquacity.
Manuscripts have been, after a brief experiment,
altogether tabooed in the Chamber, and. written
speeches are coughed down with little mercy, but
these Southerners have the knack of committing
their high-flowing improvisations to memory,
and they deliver them vt ith all the unction and
twang of so many Capuchin preachers. Last year
it was the Tuscans who astounded their soberer
sub-Alpine brethren by their overwhelming volu-
bility of tongue ; this season both the North and
the Centre are driven to the wall, and their new
volcanic colleagues hold possession of the field.
Such a flood of words, such a variety of interpella-
Cons, such a number of Bills of " Parliamentary
initiative," are presented by one or more Deputies
and destined to fall still-born at the first or second
reading! Every man, it seems, has not only his
own vanity to gratify, but his constituency also to
compound with. Municipal interests, "belfry
politics," as the phrase is, are all in all to most
members. Count Cavour said that a Ministerial
speech was often, in reality, a diplomatic note in-
tended less for the Chamber than for all the Euro-
pean Powers. The speech of many a deputy is not
unfrequently neither more nor less than an elec-
pral address aimed at securing the people's vote
against the chances of a dissolution. Honourable
members think less of the effect their words may
have on the Chamber than of the impression they
may make when read in the cafe, the apothecaries'
shops, and other political clubs of the remote petty
community which have raised them to Parliamen-
tary honours.
Although the cacoethes loquendi may come in for
a large share of the blame justly attaching to the
first Italian Parliament, it would, however, be a
great injustice to deny that the loss of time is in a
great measure occasioned by the clumsiness and
pedantry of its original institution—a fault trace-
able to the Piedmontese Parliament in all its stages,
and to the French Chambers, of which it was origi-
nally a servile copy. By the iron rule of the Sar-
dinian Constitution, neither the Upper nor the Lower
House, nor any of the offices or commissions (com-
mittees) appertaining to them, can deliberate unless
at least one-half of the members and one are present.
Senators and deputies are unpaid, and no means
have been found yet to compel their attendance.
It is true no member ought to absent himself with-
out leave, but then, in the first place, there is no
instance of such a leave being refused ; and, in the
second place, most members take their leave with-
out asking; there are many who only show now
and then, many who never appear at all during the
session. In order that the business of the Chamber
may be carried on in all its branches, it is necessary
that an Italian should show ten times as much zeal
and assiduity as an English M.P. One half of the
members, at least, must be permanently at work
from morning till evening ; for, although the sit-
tings of the house itself seldom take up more than
four or five hours of the afternoon, the work in the
and
the committee-rooms
members gwoheos
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no sinecure of it. _ _

The opening of the present Session unfortunately
had to be put off till the promulgation of the elec-
toral law had enabled the Southern provinces to re-
turn their deputies ; the best part of the working
season for Italy, from November to March, had
passed away, and a few weeks brought us to that
early summer in which it has always proved next
to impossible to keep the Chambers together. It
is upon such a Parliament, convoked in such a hur-
ray, for so brief a season, that the task of forming
one State out of five or six States devolved. The
fusion of the laws, of the administration of the
finances, and of all the other branches of Govern-
ment ; the solution of the great problem of unifica-
tion without centralisation; the combination of
unity with liberty ; of central strength with local
self-government, must be achieved by men who
have been already well nigh fagged to death by
preliminary interpeliations and irrelevant Bills.
Parties are by no means organised, the Chamber
not at all disciplined. Every member of every
fraction of the House must be heard on every
particular point, in every measure. No leaders
are acknowledged either in the committee-
room or in the House. Discussion drags on to
.dreary lengths, the same arguments are urged on
again and again, subjects are worn out threadbare.
In so prodigious an amount of talk repetition and
common place must necessarily render the debate
intolerably heavy. The dreariness of the proceed-
ings, of course, has a tendency to thin the House,
and, by a natural law of cause and effect, the
scanty attendance puts off the same topic from day
to day. It is to a Chamber so framed, and labouring
under such inconveniences, that the Home Minister,
Minghetti, proposed his vast scheme for a muni-
cipal, provincial, and regional administration, a
complex of four laws, each of which involves
orgaui,. r..;ricinles of the greatest importance, each
of which would require a iv L io year's deliberation
by a mature and well-ordered assembly, such as,
for instance:the English House of Commons. Of
course, the Minghetti laws have come aground in
the offices during the first stage of their probation,
and are not likely after a six weeks' labour to conic
forward for the deliberation of a special commission,
say nothing of discussion before the Lower House,
the Senate
It for
i s
aunpoonlesssucshlowa acnhdacmobmeprlicthataet exami-
nation.countCavour, as Minister of the Marine, and Fanti, the
man at the head of the War Department, daily
pour in bills for the extension and re-organisation
of the national armament. Before such a Chamber
the Minister of the Public Works, Peruzzi, lays his
grand plans for a system of railways, harbours, and
public works, intended to place the most
regions of this long-trampled Italy on a
obletavliceeklrwwailtilh the freeest and most thriving communi-
ties of Europe.

Of all this immense mass of work the Chamber