FEDERIGO SCLOPIS DI SALERANO (1798-1878)  ,

Italian statesman and jurist . While still comparatively young he was appointed attorney-general to the Sardinian senate, and took part in the compilation of the new codes . An advocate of liberal ideas and reform, he proclaimed the necessity for a constitution, and was himself one of the authors of the Statuto, or Sardinian charter of 1848, which is to this day the constitution of the Italian kingdom; the introduction is entirely his work, Sclopis also wrote the proclamation in which Charles Albert announced to the people of Lombardy and Venetia his war against Austria . He was minister in the first Sardinian constitutional ministry under the presidency of Count Balbo, and afterwards president of the senate . In 1871 he was sent to Geneva as Victor Emmanuel's representative on the " Alabama " arbitration, and was chosen president of that tribunal; on his return to Italy the king conferred on him the Order of the Annunziata . The last years of his life were mainly occupied with municipal affairs and charitable administration at Turin . Between 1819 and 1878 he published over seventy works on history, jurisprudence, politics and literature, in Italian, Latin and French . At the age of thirty he was elected member of the Turin Academy of Sciences, of which he became life president in 1864; he was also foreign memberof the Institut de France . His most important work is his Storia della legislaziona Italian dalle origini fino at 1847 (Turin, 1840), issued as a sequel to his Scoria dell' antica legislazione del Piemonte, published in 1833 . Among his other writings we may mention the following: Ricerche sui Longobardi in Italia (1827), Delle relazioni politicize fra la dinastia di Savoia e it governo Britannico dal 1240 at 1815 (1853), Rimembranze sul Conte di Cavour (1876), and Considerazioni storiche sulle aniiche assemblee rappresenlative del Piemonte e della Savoia (1878) . See E . Ricotti, Notizia biografica di F .

Sclopis; A . Manno, Bibliografia degli scritti di F . Sclopis; M .

Ricci, Necrologia di F . Sclopis (in the Archivio storico Italiano, ser. iv. torn. ii. p . 331 seq.) .