in "L'Originale Miscellanea di Slipperypond."
“Without entering, or wishing to enter, upon the thorny question of modern Italian politics, I may perhaps be allowed to suggest that, on purely historical grounds, the present form of parliamentary government in Italy is unfortunate because it is inconsistent with the ‘indole’ of the Italian people. The House of Savoy is doing its best to govern Italy upon the constitutional lines of which the British Parliament furnished the model: i.e., it is endeavouring to engraft a purely Teuton institution upon a people mainly Latin. That the antipathy of the modern Guelfs to this new form of Ghibellinism is profound and bitter, is but too evident; it will suffice to refer to the unceasing aspiration of the Papacy to recover the temporal power, and to the famous Encyclical ‘Non expedit’; but Italian voters hardly need a Non expedit to make them indifferent to the vote they possess.”
da “The Florentine wool trades in the Middle Ages” communicated by Miss E. Dixon, June 16 in “Transactions of the Royal Historical Society. New Series” vol. 12 (1898), p.160.
