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during the next sixty-two years became part of that adventure in
representative government that characterized the continental scene
after 1848. Italy became a constitutional monarchy. It included a
king, a constitution, a chamber of deputies, with a premier responsible
to the King but dependent on the deputies for funds, an aristocratic
senate appointed for life, along with grants of freedom of
discussion and the press which, despite certain legal modifications,
were exercised extensively. It was, in the true sense, not a democracy
any more than any European state was a democracy. The people did
not exercise direct authority and there were extensive limitations
on the right of suffrage. There was a property and literacy test
which, in a country where everyone was poor and two thirds were
illiterate, resulted in a voting registration of only 2 per cent of the
population. This was liberalized in 1882, which brought a registration
of 7 per cent. Universal male suffrage did not come until 1913.
Moreover, Italy, like every European state save Switzerland and
France, recognized the principle of the elite through an aristocratic
senate, which was, however, not so essentially aristocratic as the
British House of Lords, since appointment was for life only.
The term "democratic" has been used rather loosely of late. But
generally it may be said that in these new European states the power
of the people was recognized in fact as the ultimate authority. Their
control over the purse gave them an immense authority and there
was a more or less continuous extension of this power through the
growing place of the parliament in the structure of the state. In
Italy the habits and practices of parliamentary popular government
began slowly to affect the life and thinking of the people. The press
could be limited under special conditions until 1896 when this
power was repealed. However, save on one or two occasions, the
power was used sparingly though it did indeed exist as a background
for restraint. Nevertheless, there was a kind of traditional tolerance
for free speaking which is not easy to define. Mr. G. A. Borgese
describes it best as follows:
There had always been a considerable breath of tolerance in modern Italy,
at least in the large cities and in the conflicts among leaders. The hereditary
dogmatism of the Italian intelligence had found a countercheck in the
equally hereditary and almost instinctive trait of the old nation, which had
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