supported by people on the right.24
Minister B. Cairoli, in a speech delivered at Pavia on October 15, 1878 put it this way: “Government authority should make sure that public order is not disturbed; it should be inexorable in repressing and not arbitrary in preventing”.25 Joseph Zanardelli shared the very same political stance.26
Francesco Crispi, on December 5, 1878, declared that “political authority has the right to prevent crimes just as the judiciary has the right to repress them”. He clarified his statement by emphasising the need of a certain authoritarian discretion to be used by the government in the exercise of acts of prevention. This discretionary prevention consists in using a complex of prudential acts, cautions, secure and moral provisions thanks to which the government can keep the public peace without falling into arbitrariness. It is certainly hard to carry it out. The one who carries it out should not only have foresight but also be guided by a great sense of justice, and by a profound sense of morality”. 27 It is rather interesting that in February 1878, Don Bosco had sent minister Crispi a sketch outline of his Il sistema preventivo nell’educazione (The preventive system in education), while he had promised to send the same to his successor, the minister of the interior, Zanardelli, in July l878.28 One can hardly imagine the impact that the educational use of the terms 'preventive' and 'repressive' might have made on those two men, accustomed to use them in an opposite political sense.29
Following the preparatory work done by two committees, one German the other Austrian, from November 7 to November 29, 1872, a conference was held in Berlin which concluded by favouring repressive measures for social crimes. There were no measures issued for preventive interventions against the danger of subversive socialism.30
2. Social prevention: paupers and beggars
The idea of prevention, foreshadowed in some sectors of society during the 17th and 18th centuries, was positively supported with new vigour more in the social arena than the political, especially in Spain, France and England, and particularly in connection with the widespread phenomenon of ‘pauperism and beggary’, criminality, the required help for children, and education. Particular attention is given to neglected youngsters, runaways, vagrants and beggars.31
24 F. Chabod, Storia della politica estera italiana dal 1870 al 1896, (Bari: Laterza 1962), 435-436. On the whole
problem, cf. 392-454 (La libertà e la legge).
25 B. Cairoli, Discorso pronunciato in Pavia…il 15 ottobre 1878, ( Rome 1878), 6, cited by F.Chabod, Storia della
politica esterna 435, n.1.
26 G. Zanardelli, electoral speech at Iseo, 3 Nov. 1878, and speeches in Chamber on 5th and 6th December 1878, cited by
F. Chabod, Storia della politica estera…
27 Discorsi parlamentari II 313 (5 December 1878), cited by F. Chabod, Storia della politica estera. 436, n.3. Apart from
liberal ideas, F. Crispi was, in political action, decisively authoritarian. “The theory of repression beloved by Zanardelli
and Cairoli, was put aside and replaced by prevention; and even in prevention, Crispi’s manner was quite brusque 28 Letters, February 21 and July 23 1878, E III 298-299 and 366-367
29 However, whether in pedagogy or politics, theory or practice, the boundaries between the two systems were never
strictly defined. Declarations of intent, certainty, was always accompanied by fears and apprehensions followed by
authoritarian and to some extent ‘repressive’ interventions. Even Don Bosco’s preventive system had “a word on
punishments”.
30 Cf. F. Chabod, Storia della politica esetera 445. Count Edward de Lounay, Savoiard, Italy’s minister in Berlin and an
authoritarian, pessimistically commented: “we have come to realise once again how irksome it can be for these high
civil servants and jurists to plan something practical and productive with regard to the measures to be taken either for
prevention or repression… One could also hope that governments will distance themselves from their traditional
routine and openly fight against an association which only has the ruin of society by every reutionary means as its aim,
along with the family”, (cited by F. Chabod, Storia della politica esterna. 450, n.2.)
31 Cf. J.P. Gutton, La société et les Pauvres. L’exemple de la généralité de Lyon, 1534-1789, (Paris: Les Belles Lettres
1971); G. Huton, The Poor of eighteenth-century France, 1750-1789, (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1974); J.P. Gutton,
L’etat et la mendicité dans le première moitié du XVIIIe siècle, Auvergne Beaujolais Forez Lyonais [Feurs], Centre