MINGHETTI, MARCO. - Politician, b. in Bologna on 8 Nov. 1818, d. in Rome on 10 Dec. 1886. He was one of the most significant representatives of the cultivated, well-to-do, conservative and liberal bourgeoisie of nineteenth-century Italy.
By taking part in the Congresses of Scientists at Pisa in 1839 and at Florence in 1841, and by coming into contact in Italy and abroad (especially in Paris and London) with the leading representatives of cultivated and liberal European society, he formed for himself a solid practical and realistic culture through the study of the economic sciences, of which, following the example of Sismondi, he considered above all the social aspect. Already in the writing Intorno alla tendenza agli interessi materiali che è nel secolo presente (1841), as later in Dell'economia pubblica e delle sue attinenze con la morale e col diritto (1858), he maintains the necessity of subordinating political economy to ethical and juridical imperatives: departing therefore from orthodox liberalism, criticizing the concept of the gendarme State and the prevalence of individual and material interests over social and moral ones.
In 1846, by then close to Neo-Guelph ideals, rendered however more adherent to reality by his spirit as an economist expert in current problems, M. promoted and drafted a petition to Pius IX to invoke the faculty for the provincial councils to gather and set forth the wishes of the populations: Pius IX is supported and urged on, in his reforming activity, by the Bolognese moderates (Audinot, Montanari, Berti Pichat, etc.) who looked to the Felsineo, directed by M., who obtained the publication of the acts of the Consulta of State, of which he had been called to be a member. Minister of public works in the Recchi-Antonelli cabinet, he resigned after the allocation of 29 Apr. and went to fight in the Piedmontese army. Elected deputy, he abandoned, in Nov. 1848, the Chamber and Rome in protest against the Galletti ministry, which left the assassins of Pellegrino Rossi unpunished. With the pamphlet Della restaurazione pontificia (1849) he still attempted to save the constitution and the agreement on representative orders. But in the years that followed, his thought changed, especially regarding the problem of relations between State and Church; in the Dodici lettere della libertà religiosa (1855) those liberal and separatist principles are already set forth which would reappear in his intervention on the Law of Guarantees and in Stato e Chiesa (1878) [placed on the Index, decr. 8 Apr. 1878): in it the abandonment of any jurisdictionalism and the incompetence of the State in religious and ecclesiastical matters are upheld. He supported the propaganda of the National Society in the Romagne and was a valuable collaborator of Cavour at the Congress of Paris of 1856. After having vainly attempted in 1857 to bring Pius IX back to the path of constitutional reforms, he moved to Piedmont and became secretary at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. After Villafranca he was president of the Assembly of the Romagne. From 31 Dec. 1860 to 1 Sept. 1861 he held in the Cavour and Ricasoli cabinets the portfolio of the Interior, which he left because of his conflict with the latter over the Roman question and over that of the regions, advocated by M. as administrative circumscriptions governed by a governor.
From 8 Dec. 1862 he directed with Farini the Ministry of Finance, initiating that work of reconstruction which, through his merit and that of Sella, was to lead in 1876 to the balancing of the budget. From March to Sept. 1864 he was president of the Council and obtained, with the Convention of Sept., (v.), the withdrawal of the French troops from Rome on condition of transferring the Italian capital to Florence; which provoked lively and bloody reactions on the part of the democrats and the Torinesi. The ecclesiastical policy implemented by him in this, as in the subsequent ministry (1873-76), was very different from that outlined in his writings: he in fact left the Ministry of Justice to the jurisdictionalist Pisanelli, arrested bishops and took various subversive measures (bill of 18 Jan. 1864 on the religious Orders, etc.). Having become, after the parliamentary revolution of 1876, head of the opposition, he attacked in Parliament the foreign policy of Cairoli and Mancini. In his last years he adhered to the program of Stradella and to trasformist politics.
Among M.'s works, besides those cited, are to be remembered: I partiti politici e la loro ingerenza nella giustizia e nell'amministrazione (1881); Miei ricordi (1888-89); Discorsi parlamentari (8 vols., 1888-90).
Bibliography7 works
Fausto Fonzi