Rassegna storica del Risorgimento

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Paul Martin Howell
host of secondary routes in the Hedmontese and Ligurìan provinces. The government, however was willing to negotiate but reluctant to conclude, and so commercial crisis, then revolution and warfare intervened to prevent the appearance of any private companies to flank the public enterprise in the 1840S.23)
The difficulties which promoters encountered in their attempts to secure concessions rrom Charles Albert's administrative monarchy reflected the divisions within the ranks of the king's closest advisors where sentiment in favor of complete state control of railroads remained strong. The proclamation of the Statuto and the emergence of parliamentary government completely changed the situation as proponents of private enterprise quickly carne to dominate the government and Parliament. In addition, the costs of the first war of Italian independence were so great that even the champions of state enterprise had to acknowledge the financial impracti-cability of excluding private capital and initiative from the development of the kingdom's railroads.
At the same time, the state's railroading enterprise had quickly become firmly established. The administrative monarchy had been slow and ponderous in its decision-making, but once decided it had moved with vigor and efficiency. By the end of 1848 its first trains were running and nearly half of the initial project had been compieteci by the end of 1850, despite the difficulties imposed by revolution and war in Europe generally and in northern Italy in particular. Under the parliamentary regime the state completed the construction of its two basic trunks and continued to operate its lines. By the end of 1854 the state had invested more than 130 rnillion lire in its railroads and it was running trains on some 233 kilometers of its own track and on 96 kilometers belonging to three private companies which had appeared after 1850.24>
Under the impetus of Cavour and Pietro Paleocapa, the Minister of Public Works, the state continued to play an important role in fostering the kingdom's railroad development after 1850, but it did so in new ways. It established priorities for route development; it drew the basic plans for key domestic and international lines; it solicited the appearance of financial combinations to undertake the most vita! roads; and it developed a variety
23) Guderzo, pp. 13-25, 62-68, 74-75; De Biase, 39-45; Romeo, 2:170-171; Luraghi, pp. 178-180; Bulferetti and Luraghi, p. 167; AP, 91:3500-3509; Carlo Ilarione Petitti, Delle strade ferrate italiane e del migliore ordinamento di esse. Cinque discorsi (Capo-lago, Ticino, 1845), pp. 79, 545-558; Franco Arese, Cavour e le strade ferrate, con documenti inediti (Milan, 1953), pp. 30-41, 63-68, 134-139; Mario Einaudi, Le prime ferrovìe piemontesi e il conte di Cavour, in Rivista di storia economica, 3 (1938):2-10, 16-17, 20-21, 24-32; and Camillo Cavour to Emile De La Rue, 15 Oct. 1846, in Camillo Cavour, Nouvelles letlres inédiles, recueitlis et publiées avec notes historiques, ed, Amédée Bert (Rome, Turbi, and Naples, 1889), p. 76.
2*) Giuseppe Felloni, Le spese effettive e il bilancio degli Stati Sabaudi dal 1825 al 1860 , in Archivio Economico dell'Unificazione Italiana, serics 1, 9 (1959): 57; Howell, p. 91n33; Guderzo, pp. 74-77; and AP, 91:3500-3512.