Lanza,_Domenico_Giovanni_Giuseppe_Maria

Lanza, Domenico Giovanni Giuseppe Maria (1810-1882), Italian politician, was born at Casale, Piedmont, on the 15th of February 1810. He studied medicine at Turin, and practised for some years in his native place. He was one of the promoters of the agrarian association in Turin, and took an active part in the rising of 1848. He was elected to the Piedmontese parliament in that year, and attached himself to the party of Cavour, devoting his attention chiefly to questions of economy and finance. He became minister of public instruction in 1855 in the cabinet of Cavour, and in 1858 minister of finance. He followed Cavour into his temporary retirement in July 1859 after the peace of Villafranca, and for a year (1860-1861) was president of the Chamber. He was minister of the interior (1864-1865) in the La Marmora cabinet, and arranged the transference of the capital to Florence. He maintained a resolute opposition to the financial policy of Menabrea, who resigned when Lanza was a second time elected, in 1869, president of the Chamber. Lanza formed a new cabinet in which he was himself minister of the interior. With Quintino Sella as minister of finance he sought to reorganize Italian finance, and resigned office when Sella’s projects were rejected in 1873. His cabinet had seen the accomplishment of Italian unity and the installation of an Italian government in Rome. He died in Rome on the 9th of March 1882.

See Enrico Tavallini, La Vita ed i tempi di Giovanni Lanza (2 vols., Turin and Naples, 1887).