Pellegrino Rossi

Pellegrino Rossi

Pellegrino Luigi Edoardo Rossi (born July 13, 1787 in Carrara , † November 15, 1848 in Rome ) was an Italian lawyer, economist , diplomat and politician. He became a citizen of Geneva in 1820 and of France in 1838 . As Interior, Police and Finance Minister of Pope Pius IX. he was murdered after barely two months in office.

Life

Rossi Jura studied and taught first criminal law at the University of Bologna , as he Joachim Murat General Commissioner for the occupied provinces between Tronto and Po was.

After its decline, Rossi had to leave Italy in 1816 and went to Geneva , where he taught Roman law from 1819 . In 1820 he became a member of the Council of the Canton of Geneva . In 1832 he was sent to the assembly as a Geneva envoy , where he became the rapporteur for the revision commission of the Swiss federal treaty. He developed the draft of a new constitution (→ Federal Constitution of the Swiss Confederation ) commissioned by the Diet of July 17, 1832 in Lucerne , which became known as the Rossi Plan or Federal Document of December 15, 1832.

Sent to Paris by the Diet for the Regulation of Polish Emigrants, he was invited to teach political economy at the Collège de France from 1833 onwards as the successor to Jean-Baptiste Say . He taught constitutional law at the Sorbonne from 1834 and became a member of the Académie des sciences morales et politiques, founded in 1832 . Elevated to Peer of France in 1839 , he resigned his teaching posts and joined the Council of State in 1840, where he dealt with education and later with foreign affairs.

In 1845 he was sent to Rome as the extraordinary envoy of France to the Holy See , in May 1846 he received the rank of ambassador to the Papal States and was appointed Count of France. He took an important part in the reform efforts of Pius IX, whose election he had promoted. After the February Revolution of 1848 he was relieved of his position as French ambassador.

After he had been elected deputy in Bologna, with a lively inclination to the national aspirations of Italy, after the overthrow of Terenzio Mamiani on September 14, 1848 , he took over the Ministry of Interior in the newly formed papal cabinet and provisionally took over the police and finance departments. With this central position as Prime Minister he was given the difficult task of reconciling papal rule with liberal demands.

Two months later, on November 15, 1848, Rossi was murdered at the opening of the Chamber of Deputies on the steps of the Palace of the Cancellaria in Santo Costantini . The attack was the signal for the outbreak of revolution in the Papal States, which was followed by the Pope's flight on November 23. The political murder sparked a storm of indignation, particularly among conservatives across Europe .

Economic Lessons

Following David Ricardo, Rossi advocated a “rational economics” based on abstract deductive reasoning. The opposing teaching of the economists Adam Smith and Jean-Baptiste Say he called "applied" economics. He made a further distinction between “morality and politics”, as he called social policy . Rossi described Ricardo's cost value theory and his basic rent theory in an easily understandable form, but did not delve into his own economic ideas particularly analytically.

Works

• Traité du droit pénal . 4th ed., 2 vol., Paris 1872 (first Paris 1829).
• Traité de droit constitutionnel francais . 2nd edition, 2 vol., Paris 1877 (first Paris 1836).
• Cours d'économie politique . 4th ed., 2 vol., Paris 1865 (first Paris 1839–41).

literature

• Henry d'Ideville: Le Comte Pellegrino Rossi. Sa vie, son oeuvre, sa mort 1787-1848. Paris 1887.
• Alfred Dufour : Homage to Pellegrino Rossi (1787–1848). Genevois et Suisse à vocation européenne. Helbing & Lichtenhahn, Basel / Geneva / Munich 1998, ISBN 3-7190-1764-8 ( Collection genevoise. Les grands jurisconsultes ); the same: Pellegrino Rossi, 1787-1848. In: Citoyens de Genève, citoyens suisses. 1998, pp. 27-35.
• Alfred Dufour: Pellegrino Rossi. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland . November 16, 2010 , accessed April 14, 2020 .
• Joseph Garnier: Notice sur la vie et les travaux de M. Rossi. Paris 1849.
• Luigi Lacchè (ed.): Un liberale europeo: Pellegrino Rossi (1787-1848) , 2001.
• Louis Reybaud: Economistes modern. Paris 1862.
• Storia dell'assassinio di Pellegrino Rossi tratta dai processi e descritta dalla civittà cattolica. Turin / Monaco 1854.

Web links

• Literature by and about Pellegrino Rossi in the catalog of the German National Library
• Alfred Dufour: Rossi Plan. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland . December 3, 2009 , accessed April 14, 2020 .
• Pellegrino Rossi ; Article from: Charles G. Herbermann (Ed.): The Catholic encyclopedia. An international work of reference on the constitution, doctrine, discipline, and history of the Catholic church . 17 vols., Appleton, New York 1907-22.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Raymund de Waha: The national economy in France. Ferdinand Enke, Stuttgart 1910, pp. 17-20.