“Italia, Italia, you really have canaglia’”’ runs a German student 
song on Italian bugs and fleas. But apart from the six-legged 
canaglia there are the two-legged sort there as well, and la belle 
Italia insists on showing that in this respect it is not outranked 
either by la belle France with its Panama Affair, or by that chaste 
Germania with its piety, sanctimoniousness and the Guelph 
fund. 

Italy has its paper-money turned out by six banks, two Tuscan, 
one Neapolitan, one Sicilian and two Roman: the Banca Romana 
and the Banca Nazionale. The banknotes of these six privileged 
banks have currency as fully valid legal tender under a law which 
expired some years ago, and was then extended from year to year 
up to December 31, 1892 and finally for three months up to 
March 31, 1893. . 

Back under the Crispi administration in 1889 an investigation 
was ordered into the management of these banks, in view of the 
renewal of this bank privilege which had become necessary, and 
because of the disquieting rumours that were circulating. The 
Banca Nazionale was investigated by Senator Consiglio, the Banca 
Romana by Senator Alvisi, an honourable man, to whom was 
assigned as expert Biagini, a capable official from the Ministry of 
Finance. Nothing is known up to the present as to what Consiglio 
has discovered; after Alvisi’s death a copy of the Alvisi report 
together with all documentary evidence, came into hands generally 
described as unauthorised, and this led to the Panamino, the little 
Panama, as the Italians call it. 

At that time the Crispi administration quietly pigeonholed the 
report. Alvisi referred to the matter in the Senate a few times, 
threatened a scandal, but always allowed himself to be silenced. He 

was silent too when Minister Miceli, who had ordered the 
investigation, presented to the Chamber Commission on the next 
annual prolongation of the Bank Law an enormously white- 
washing report on the Banca Romana; and he implored his friend 
Alvisi not to compromise him and the credit of his country 
through disclosures. Crispi fell, Rudini replaced him; Rudini fell, 
and was succeeded by the Giolitti administration now in power. 
The definitive bank law, which was to reorganise the banks and 
extend their privilege for six years, was still up in the air. Nobody 
wanted to nibble this dangerous bait. As in the children’s game 
“The spark still lives” the glowing spill passed from hand to hand, 
until finally, on December 21, the last spark was crushed out, 
cruelly and without authorisation. 

As recently as December 6, 1892, Giolitti had introduced a bill 
to prolong the bank privilege for six years. But as a result of the 
embarrassing rumours unauthorisedly circulating about gross 
irregularities in bank administration, on December 21 Giolitti was 
quick to demand only a stay of execution for three months—until 
March 31. During the debate Deputy Colajanni took the floor and 
read out, to universal astonishment, various passages from Alvisi’s 
general report on the Banca Romana, and from Biagini’s special 
report on the books and holdings which he had checked. Fine 
things came to light! Nine million francs in illegally issued excess 
banknotes; an intermingling, contrary to the statutes, of the bank 
funds and the gold reserve extremely agreeable to the bank 
governor and cashier; a portfolio full of totally irredeemable 
fictitious bills; 73 million from the bank funds advanced to 179 
privileged persons; 33'/) million of this amount to just 19 persons; 
amongst the bank debtors there figured Tanlongo, the bank 
governor, with over one million and Prince Giulio Torlonia, 
chairman of the board of directors, with 4 million, etc., etc. 
Colajanni gave no further names, but made it clear that he knew 
more than he had said, and demanded a parliamentary investiga- 
tion of the banks. 

Another deputy, Gavazzi, then read out a further passage from 
the report, according to which the Banca Romana had made large 
advances to lawyers, journalists and political figures, and that such 
special clients had received monies up to 12 million, which did not 
figure in the published balance sheets. 

Up jumped Miceli, the ex-minister, who had ordered the 
investigation under Crispi. Up jumped Giolitti, Crispi, Rudini, one 
after another, the three prime ministers involved, to declare that 
these disclosures were fabrications. 

And what a depth of moral indignation they displayed! A 
German commercial traveller, confronted with goods ordered 
from him on sound samples and then delivered in poor quality, 
could not have shown more righteous rage. 

On the same day deputies exchanged banknotes of the Banca 
Romana to the value of over 50,000 francs at the bank counter of 
the Chamber, and the shares (nominal par 1,000 fr.) fell by 
100 francs. But after the heroic ministerial speeches, the stock 
exchange people were on top again that very same evening. 
Impressions were that the scandal was dead and buried. 

II 

But every word uttered by Colajanni was true, and it was 
scarcely one third of what the investigation report contained. 
Tanlongo the governor, Lazzaroni the chief cashier and Torlonia, 
chairman of the board of directors, had quite cosily authorised 
advances up to nine million. According to Tanlongo’s testimony the 
bank was altogether managed “cosily” — patriarcalmente; so cosily 
that the funds which should have guaranteed easier credit for 
commerce and industry had been loaned on bad and practically 
irredeemable mortgages, or to persons whose knowledge of 
industry was confined to a cavalier treatment of every financial 
obligation, against constantly prolonged bills of exchange, or even on 
open current account. It was run so cosily that gradually almost all 
journalists and no fewer than one-hundred-and-fifty members of the 
current Chamber of Deputies, most of them notoriously insolvent, or 
even living solely upon debts, were carried on the books of the bank 
as debtors. A list of these clients was also attached to Alvisi’s report; 
on this list, apart from only one deputy of the right wing, Arbib, 
there figured almost all persuasions of the left with sums of 
500,000-600,000 fr. per head. The bearer of a name honoured 
throughout the world* is amongst them, as are two current 
ministers—Grimaldi and Martini; Grimaldi is even one of the legal 
advisers of the bank with an annual salary of 25,000 fr. That was 
already quite jolly, but that was in 1889, that was just the beginning, 
that was not even a Panamino, it was only a Panaminetto, a very very 
small Panama. 

These delicate matters and others, naturally including exagger- 
ated rumours, spread slowly and bit by bit amongst the public, 

once Colajanni’s speech had started things off. The public began 
to withdraw deposits from the Banca Romana—in a few days 
more than 9 million of the total 14 million deposited—and to 
regard its notes with distrust. The government felt that action 
must now be taken. Something which had been shuffled for years 
from one administration to another—regulation of the banks and 
paper-money—was now to be accomplished helter-skelter. At the 
beginning of January negotiations were initiated on the amalgama- 
tion of the two Roman and the two Tuscan banks as one large 
credit institution, and at the same time the administration ordered 
a new inspection of the banks. The Banca Nazionale, which was to 
constitute the core of the new institution, naturally declined to 
take over the sins of the Banca Romana unseen; it made 
difficulties and low offers. All this got around; distrust grew into 
panic. The city of Rome withdrew from the Banca Romana its 
credit balance of over one million, and the Savings Bank also 
retrieved its deposit of over 500,000 fr. The shares of the Banca 
Romana, which had fallen after Colajanni’s speech to 670, were 
quoted on January 15 at just 504 fr. for 1,000 fr. face value. In 
the north of the country people began refusing to accept the notes 
of this bank. 

And now rumours seeped out to the public about the still more 
astounding results of the new inspection of the Banca Romana. 
Admittedly, Prince Giulio Torlonia had paid off his debt: on 
January 13,4 million, on the 14th a further 600,000 fr., on the 
15th the remaining 2 million. Admittedly, Tanlongo the governor, 
and Lazzaroni the cashier had made over to the bank their entire 
large fortunes against their debts. Admittedly, “a very high- 
ranking person’”—the Corriere di Napoli pointed out with the 
broadest of hints at the king*—had paid the bank debts of 
Minister Grimaldi and the members of his family. Admittedly, the 
constitutional-radical Deputy Fortis had issued a declaration that 
the credit granted him had been sanctioned in his capacity of legal 
adviser to the bank. But what was all this against the news that the 
new inspection had revealed that the Banca Romana, which was 
permitted to issue 70 million in banknotes, had put 133 million in 
circulation; that, in order to conceal this, fake creditors to the tune 
of 49 million figured in the books, and that Governor Tanlongo 
had withdrawn 25 million on a simple receipt dated as recently as 
January 3, 1893 (Secolo, January 21-22). Further it was whispered 
that the gold reserves had, it is true, been found to be in order, 

but only because Baron Michele Lazzaroni, nephew of the chief 
cashier, had borrowed from Swiss business friends sundry millions 
in cash for a few days specially for this purpose, promising he 
would immediately return them in natura after the inspection had 
been made; but this will be somewhat difficult, as the government 
has, in the meantime, impounded all the funds of the Banca 
Romana. And now disclosures came rattling out here, there and 
everywhere; now the names of the 150 deputies circulated with 
greater or lesser accuracy and certainty; now it could no longer be 
denied that at least the last three administrations had known all 
about the business. That they had put the money of the bank 
regularly and in large quantities at the disposal of their supporters 
for election purposes, that they had frequently discussed the 
misappropriations in the Council of Ministers and had intentional- 
ly kept them secret in full knowledge of the responsibility they 
thus incurred—that they had thus assented to their continuation. 
How pale in contrast was Biagini’s report published in the 
Corriere di Napoli, January 19-20. The Panamino was there. 

Ill 

The crisis could no longer be avoided. Amongst the people who 
had cheated with the bank and blown and blued its funds—by 
means of honest tick, of course—one section disposed of public 
power, the other not. It was abundantly clear that as soon as the 
knife was put to their throats, the first section would sacrifice the 
second. One accomplice took the lofty decision to be the hangman 
of the other. Just as in France. There too Rouvier, Floquet, 
Freycinet and Co. similarly sacrificed Lesseps and Fontane; they 
and their accomplices had often enough, as Charles Lesseps said, 
“put the knife to our throats” to squeeze, from Panama, funds for 
political purposes. In exactly the same way Giolitti and Grimaldi 
sacrificed their bosom friend Tanlongo, after they and their 
predecessors had extracted from him bank money for electoral 
and pressure purposes for so long that nothing remained but the 
crash. And when Grimaldi’s debts had been paid off in the 
familiar secretive way, it was he who called loudest for Tanlongo’s 
arrest. 

But Tanlongo is a thoroughly crafty old Italian who knows all 
the tricks of the trade, not a greenhorn in swindling like Charles 
Lesseps and the other puppets, who had to run Panama for 
Reinach and Co. Tanlongo is a pious man who went to mass every 

morning at 4; here he fixed his deals with representatives and 
middlemen—no scandal on me, dear child’—whom he did not 
want to see on his bank premises. Tanlongo was on excellent 
terms with the Vatican, and he is said to have conveved into the 
safety of the Vatican, untouchable to the Italian police, a small 
casket containing those documents which guarantee him against 
his powerful friends and patrons, those documents which he does 
not wish to entrust too hastily to the law. For in Italy with its 
Panamino, just as in France with its Panama, there are strong 
suspicions that the domicilary searches by the law sometimes serve 
not to bring documents to light, but rather to make them 
disappear. And Tanlongo feels that certain documents which are 
to defend him and clarify the real state of affairs are not safe with 
the Italian examining magistrate, but only in the Vatican. 

Enough. Scarcely had the ministry concluded the business of the 
Banca Nazionale, by which the latter takes over the entire assets 
and liabilities of the Banca Romana and pays the shareholders 
450 fr. for each 1,000 fr. share; scarcely did it believe that it had 
thereby protected from publication the names of the political bank 
debtors, than worthy Tanlongo met his fate—the ingratitude 
which is the reward of bourgeois politics. From the evening of 
January 16 his house was watched; on the nineteenth he and chief 
cashier Lazzaroni were arrested. 

This did not hit him unexpectedly. Earlier he had told a 
journalist from the Parlamento. 

“They may lock me up, but they should consider that they will be playing a bad 
card ... if they want to hold me responsible for the sins of other people then I shall 
be forced to create a scandal... They want to ruin me? Then I shall drag into the 
public eye the names of people who demanded from me million upon million. How 
often did I say: I cannot provide them, the only reply was: they are necessary 
(occorrono). And I have the proof of this ... it is always the same; the more I did, the 
more they kicked me in the face; but if I fall then I shall be in good company.” 

And when the sick old man, who had been held in custody until 
then in this palace, was taken to Regina Coeli prison on the 25th, 
he said to the officials who accompanied him: “T shall come, but I 
reserve the right to make disclosures,” and to his family he said: 
“They would like to see me die in prison, but I have strength 
enough to take revenge.” 

He does not look the man to go to pieces in open court session, 
like the Paris Panama directors who, instead of crushing their 
prosecutors with the incriminating facts, ten times as grave, which 

stood at their disposal, begged in silence for a mild sentence. 
Palsied as he is, the newspapers describe him as a large boney 
man, “a real cuirassier of seventy”, and his whole past vouches 
that he knows he can only find salvation in violent combat, in the 
toughest resistance; and so it will surely come that one fine day 
the notorious cassetta d’oro* will find its way from the Vatican to 
the courtroom, and spread its contents on the court table. Bon 
appetit! 

In the meantime the Chambers went into session again on the 
25th, and the scandal has started up there too. Giolitti can only 
shout to his 150 what Rouvier shouted to his 104: If we had not 
taken this money, then you would not be seated here. And that is 
a fact. And Crispi and Rudini can only say the same. But that is 
not the end of the matter. Further revelations are bound to follow, 
both in the Chamber and in the courtroom. The Panamino, like 
the Panama, stands only at the start of its development. 

And what is the moral of the story? That the Panama, and the 
Panamino, and the Guelph funds demonstrate the whole of 
bourgeois politics, both the pleasing squabble between the bourgeois 
parties themselves, and their collective resistance to the pressure of 
the working class, cannot be undertaken without enormous 
volumes of money; that these volumes of money are used for 
purposes which cannot be publicly admitted; and that owing to the 
tight-fistedness of the bourgeoisie governments find themselves 
increasingly constrained to obtain by unutterable means the cash 
for these unutterable ends. “We take the money where we find 
it,” said Bismarck, who must know. And we have just seen “where 
we find it”.