ance. In the effort to
achieve national homogeneity the founders of the kingdom indulged to
excess their propensity for centralization, with the consequence that
Italy has exhibited regularly an admixture of bureaucracy and
liberalism even more confounding than that which prevails in the
French Republic. In theory the administrative system is broadly
democratic and tolerant; in practice it not infrequently lends itself
to the employment of the most arbitrary devices. Abuse arises most
commonly from the powers vested in the administrative officials to
supplement legislation through the promulgation and enforcement of
ordinances. By the constitution it is stipulated that the Executive
shall "make decrees and regulations necessary for the execution of the
laws, without suspending their execution, or granting exemptions from
them."[544] This power, however, in practice, is stretched even
further than is the similar power of the Executive in France, and with
the result not infrequently of the creation of temporary law, or (p. 372)
even the virtual negation of parliamentary enactment. Parliament is
seldom disposed to stand very rigidly upon its rights; indeed, it
sometimes delegates expressly to the ministry the exercise of sweeping
legislative authority. The final text of the great electoral law of
1882, for example, was never considered in the chambers at all. After
debating the subject to their satisfaction, the two houses simply
committed to the Government the task of drawing up a permanent draft
of the measure and of promulgating it by executive decree. The same
procedure has been followed in other fundamental matters. And not
merely the ministers at Rome, but also the local administrative
agents, exercise with freedom the ordinance-making prerogative. "The
preference, indeed," as is observed by Lowell, "for administrative
regulations, which the government can change at any time, over rigid
statutes is deeply implanted in the Latin races, and seems to be
especially marked in Italy."[545]

[Footnote 544: Art. 6. Dodd, Modern Constitutions,
II., 5.]

[Footnote 545: Lowell, Governments and Parties, I.,
166. On the Italian executive see Dupriez, Les
Ministres, I., 281-329. An essay of value is M.
Caudel, Parlementarisme italien, in _Annales des
Sciences Politiques_, Sept., 1900.]

II. P