Rassegna storica del Risorgimento

Banche e ferrovie in Piemonte
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inherent in the new situation quickly began to receive the fullest possible development under the guidance of Camillo Cavour, who in the first half of 1S50 began a tenure as Minister of Finance that continued with only scant interruption throughout the decade of the 1850s. Ali requests for joint-stock company charters were submitted to Cavour in his ministerial capacity and under his direction the kingdom's bureaucratic machinery quickly began to develop an efficient and benevolent routine for processing applications.
Parliament and Cavour were both quick to make an impact on the development of the kingdom's banking institutions. A forced loan from the Banca di Genova was decreed in September 1848, accompanied by the temporary suspension of the convertibility of its notes. This was followed by the merger of the Genoese bank with its counterpart in Turin, producing the new Banca Nazionale degli Stati Sardi, which officially began its opera-tions on the first day of 1850.16> In a series of debates and legislative acts which. concluded in the middle of 1852, Parliament asserted its authority over the kingdom's note issue banks. With the government, it agreed to favor the development of a joint-stock banking system with a dominant bank of note issue at its center, complemented by lesser banks of discount and deposit operating with less stringent lending conditions, which could turn to the issue bank for rediscounting. Under Cavour's leadership the idea of a greatly enlarged and elastic money supply was accepted and the Banca Nazionale was required to expand its capital base fourfold, to thirty-two million lire, and to open branch offices in the provinces. The stage was then set for the appearance of new joint-stock banks which, unlike the expanded note issue bank, would Jbe left entirely under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Finance.17) The banking and credit system thereby endorsed and partially established incorporated the lessons of 1847-1849. The contribution of commercial difficulties to the downfall of Louis Philippe and the subsequent experience of revolution and warfare had pointed up throughout Europe the importance of expanded credit facilities, the efficacy of an elastic monetary response to commercial crisis, and the advantages of having a single bank of note issue. In essence, the Kingdom of Sardinia was establishing a kind of system which had been evolving in Britain since the 1830s and was being adopted on the Continent, and especially in France and Belgium, only under the impact of 1848.18)
J6) Di Nardi, p. 16; Bachi, pp. 21-24, 48, 56-63; and Rossi and Nitti, 1:171-180, 235-252.
17) Rossi and Nitti, l:bd-lxxi, 256ff, 327-755, 2:867-1288, 1310-1494, and 3:1525-1781; Romeo, 2:505-509; Pi Nardi, pp. 11-12, 23; Bachi, pp. 72-73; Parnassi, pp. 324-328, 332-339; and Camillo Cavour, Scritti di economia, 1835-1850, ed. Francesco Sirugo (Milan, 1962), pp. 491-499.
18) Bachi, pp. 11-18; Di Nardi, p. 13; Cameron, France, pp. 125-127, 148-149, 160ff, and his articles on France and Belgium in Banking; Rossi and Nitti, 1: lxi-lxvii; and Cavour, Scritti, pp. 356-361, 432441, 491499.