Giuseppe Zurlo

Giuseppe Zurlo , Neapolitan statesman, born in 1759 in the province of Weakens, gave as of its childhood of the evidence of a great aptitude for work and of a rare activity.

Its eagerness to traverse the various branches of human knowledge harmed so that it acquired a really solid instruction; it will effleura many subjects, but it compensated for what it missed by the speed of the intelligence and the facility of the design. At the age of twenty years, it was made receive lawyer, but this profession did not have an attraction for him. It was towards administration of the public affairs that its inclinations went. The occasion was offered soon an earthquake had, in 1783, caused great devastations in the Calabres; Zurlo was attached at a commission sent in these provinces in order to cure the evils which they had just suffered. Clearness, the precision of the reports/ratios which he addressed were noticed.

On its return to Naples, it was placed in the magistrature; it showed a rare activity there. The weak and clumsy government which directed the Neapolitan businesses then distinguished Zurlo, and, in one critical moment, in 1798, it was in charge of the direction of finances, which were then in a deplorable state; but almost at once the Frenchwomen groups invaded the kingdom; king Ferdinand took refuge in Sicily; the Ministers for Finance are seldom popular the Lazzaroni seized the occasion; the house of Zurlo was plundered, and it would undoubtedly have been cut the throat of, if the municipal authority had not saved it by making it throw in prison and announcing that him his lawsuit would be made. Essence for Zurlo was to save time and to be forgotten. The news République parthénopéenne lived very little; the reverses of the French Armies in the north of the Italy brought the evacuation of Naples; the court returned there, and Zurlo was replaced with the head of the administration of finances.

The circumstances were more difficult; the cases were empty, the destroyed public credit, anarchy reigned everywhere. The minister sought to reorganize this chaos, when the operations of its enemies brought his disgrace. He was again treated as a prisoner of State, shown dilapidations, but the evidence was lacking; it was not long in being slackened. However the public opinion, excited by its adversaries, was too marked so that it was employed derechef. In 1806, Napoleon i announced that it gave the throne of Naples to his brother Joseph Bonaparte; king Ferdinand sought one second time an asylum in Sicily, under the protection of the English vessels; Zurlo still followed it and spent two years to Palermo. Dissatisfied to be left there in the lapse of memory and the inaction, it took the party to return to Naples. Joachim Murat reigned there; it accommodated with eagerness an administrator whose reputation was made and who knew the country well that it act-of directing. Initially placed with the Council of State and charged with the wallet of justice, Zurio was not long in being called with the functions of Minister of Interior Department.

Work to be achieved was immense; it was necessary to install a new system to replace an old destroyed organization; it was necessary to fight against a multitude of secular abuses and prejudices tough. A whole revolution in the civil order was to be achieved in the presence of a civil war always threatening, of a continual foreign war, and in spite of the opposition of the many partisans of the old mode injured in their interests. Zurlo deployed in its functions an extraordinary activity; giving very little time to the sleep and to labié, it could multiply, embrace all the details of the administration, any lira, all to see, all to hear. Its subordinates did not have a moment die leisure. It introduced many useful reforms, but it inevitably attracted itself a multitude of enemies the zeal with which II worked to destroy the feudal mode, of which the roots were secular, caused to him many enmities.

King Joachim granted a full confidence to him and raised it with the dignity of Duc of Altamura. A new revolution, succeeding all those which for fifteen years had upset the Neapolitan territory, made fall from the throne, in 1815, the brother-in-law of Napoleon. Zurlo emigrated; it accompanied with Trieste the queen who had just lost her transitory crown, and it was withdrawn then with Venice. It lived three years in the darkness there, and after having left at time the care to erase the sourness of political resentments, it returned to Naples in 1818. He was forgotten, when in the month of July 1820 a popular rising proclaimed the fall of the absolute monarchy and the establishment of a constitutional system. Old king Ferdinand hastened to subject himself has needs which he hated, and, wanting in these critical moments to be surrounded able men, he called Zurlo and the wallet of the interior gave to him. The minister returned with joy to the capacity, but it was in hillock with the attacks more the sharp; all the acts of its last life which could give place to reproaches were exposed, commented on with hatred, were amplified by calumny.

Zurlo was hated, paralyzed in its operations; and, little time after, the congress of Laybach being joined together to choke the liberal aspirations of southernmost Europe, the ministry announced very awkwardly that the king would go near the sovereigns in order to get along about a new constitution. It was to proclaim the abolition of that which had been promulgated and sworn, it was to announce a future unknown and threatening. Agitation was extreme, the riot thundered, and the ministry gave its resignation precipitately. Its successors, wanting to calm popular anger, sent Zurlo in one of these prisons of State which he had already learned how to know. But, once again, the counter-revolution released it; the Austrian troops, invading the kingdom of Naples without blow to férir, transfer the constitution' to disappear with their approach, and the old minister became again free. King Ferdinand, returning for the third time in the exercise of his authority, did not show himself dissatisfied with Zurlo; he granted to him even a pension of three thousand ducats, but he did not employ it. This statesman, used by tirednesses of an agitated existence, died in Naples the November 14th 1828. He did not leave regrets and the public opinion was severe in its connection. His skill was not disputed; but its ambition, its little of scruple, its facility to be served in turn as the enemy modes, exposed it to reproaches against which it was difficult to defend it.

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