«We are all debtors of Italy in the mental order. She it was who trained us up to the modern civilization». Gladstone and some of his Italian contacts

The essay deals with William Gladstone’s political and scholarly contacts with three of the leading public figures of post-unification Italy: Marco Minghetti, Pasquale Villari and Quintino Sella. Gladstone’s short correspondence with them is here published and critically commented. It concerns mainly the relationship between State and Church in Italy and Great Britain. Other topics are also mentioned in these letters, such as financial and economical questions, or the issue of social legislation. They contain some remarks on cultural interests, shared by Gladstone and by his Italian correspondents.