Note (Back) — Chapter XIX
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February 5 the municipality of Turin, voicing a demand in which many of the nobility and high officials of state concurred, petitioned Charles Albert of Piedmont for the grant of a constitution. Three days subsequently, at the conclusion of a series of secret sessions of his council, the sovereign announced that "of his free and entire will" he believed the time to have come for an extension to his subjects of a full-fledged representative system of government, and March 4 there was promulgated a remarkable instrument—the Statuto fondamentale del Regno, modelled on the amended French Charter of 1830—which, with absolutely no modification of text, survives to the present day as the constitution of the Italian kingdom.[530] March 14 there was issued by the Pope an instrument known as the Statuto fondamentale del Governo temporale, by which were constituted two legislative bodies—a high council and a chamber of deputies—and a council of state, composed of ten members and twenty-four advisors, to which was committed the task of preparing measures. Bills passed by the parliament were to be submitted to the Supreme Pontiff, who, after their discussion in consistory, should extend to them, or withhold from them, final approval. Before the year was far advanced the news of the overthrow of Louis Philippe, of the uprising in Germany, and of the fall of Metternich plunged the whole of Italy afresh in insurrection. Under the pressure of popular demand the Pope and the King of Naples sent troops to aid the northern states in the liberation of the peninsula from Austrian despotism, and for a time, under the leadership of the Piedmontese monarch, Charles Albert, all Italy seemed united in a broadly nationalistic movement. July 10 a new and extremely liberal constitution was adopted by a constituent assembly in Naples, and, February 9, 1849, following a breach between the Pope and the Roman parliament, the temporal power of the papacy was once more swept away and Rome, under an appropriate constitution, was proclaimed a republic.[531]