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Tommaso Villa
Tommaso Villa
President of the Chamber of Deputies
	In office; 10 June 1895 – 2 March 1897
Preceded by	Giuseppe Biancheri
Succeeded by	Giuseppe Zanardelli
	In office; 28 June 1900 – 22 February 1902
Preceded by	Nicolò Gallo
Succeeded by	Giuseppe Biancheri
Senator
	In office; 10 March 1909 – 24 July 1915
Minister of Justice
	In office; 25 November 1879 – 29 May 1881
Preceded by	Giovanni Battista Varè
Succeeded by	Giuseppe Zanardelli
Minister of the Interior
	In office; 14 July 1879 – 25 November 1879
Preceded by	Agostino Depretis
Succeeded by	Agostino Depretis

Tommaso Villa (Canale d'Alba, 29 January 1832 – Turin, 24 July 1915) was an Italian lawyer and politician.^[1]^[2]^[3]

Early life and career

He was able to apply for university thanks to the scholarship from the College of the Provinces and in 1849 he enrolled in the faculty of law in Turin, from where he graduated in 1853. While still a student he collaborated with the periodical l'Eco delle provinciale, directed by Agostino Depretis.

As soon as he graduated, he interned at the office of the lawyer Angelo Brofferio, a prominent figure in the Turin political environment, a republican, opponent of Cavour and deputy. The marriage with Brofferio's daughter strengthened the relationship between the two.^[4]^[5]

He combined his activity as a lawyer with that of a political journalist, writing for two republican-area periodicals, Goffredo Mameli and Il Mago.^[4]^[5]

In March 1854 Villa was imprisoned for put up a poster calling for the abolition of the death penalty inside the Royal Palace. However his commitment to politics only took place after the brutal repression of demonstrations in September 1864 against the transfer of the capital from Turin to Florence. Villa provided legal assistance to many people involved in the unrest.^[6]

Deputy and minister

In 1865 he entered politics and ran for election in the constituency of Villanova d'Asti, in opposition to Carlo Bon Compagni di Mombello. His candidacy wss supported by the Permanent Liberal Association, of which he was the founder and one of the most active members. On 22 October 1865 he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies of the Kingdom of Italy, where he was confirmed in 1867 and 1870 and where he aligned himself with the historical Left. He suffered an electoral defeat in November 1874, but in January of the following year he won the by-election held in San Daniele del Friuli to replace Federico Seismit-Doda. The victory of the left in the 1876 elections marked Villa's return to the constituency of Villanova d'Asti, where he would be re-elected until 1904.^[6]

On 8 March 1878 he held the position of Vice President of the Chamber of Deputies for the first time, which he left on 13 July 1879 to join the second Cairoli government, as Minister of the Interior (14 July - 25 November 1879).^[7] The reshuffle which saw the rapprochement of Depretis and Cairoli took him, on 25 November 1879, from the Interior to Justice (25 November 1879-29 May 1881).^[7]^[5] As minister he brought forward unsuccessful bills for the reform of the civil code and the introduction of divorce; he also issued a circular to provincial prefects asking them to curtail the activity of the Jesuits.^[4]^[6]

With the fall of the Government in 1881, Villa's ministerial career ended; However, he remained close to Benedetto Cairoli.^[6]

President of the chamber

On 11 June 1886, with the support of the radical left, he was re-elected vice-president of the Chamber of Deputies, a position he held for three legislatures until 13 January 1895. In the 19th legislature he was elected President of the Assembly on 11 June 1895 and remained in office until 3 March 1897, when the legislature itself ended.^[7]

On 28 June 1900, the electoral victory of Luigi Pelloux's opponents and the rapprochement with Giovanni Giolitti of the Piedmontese delegation, of which Villa was part, brought him back to the Presidency of the Chamber, replacing it:Nicolò Gallo, who had been elected just twelve days earlier but then accepted a government position before taking up the Presidency. Immediately after the election, Villa appointed a commission responsible for drawing up within two days a bill restoring the liberal guarantees eliminated in 1899 and at the same time rationalizing parliamentary work. On 1 July the Chamber approved the new Regulations.^[6]

On 21 February 1902, after two votes in which blank ballots outnumbering preferences for Villa, he was re-elected to the Presidency, but believing that he did not enjoy the full confidence of the Assembly, he immediately resigned.^[6]

He was defeated in the general elections of 7 March 1909 , but on the 10th of the same month he was nominated senator. In the Senate he was a member of the commission for the examination of the bill on Reform of the Code of Criminal Procedure (17 June 1909).^[5]

Legal career and other activities

At the same time as his National political career he served on the municipal and provincial councils of Turin. He also worked as a lawyer and was involved in a number of high-profile court cases, including the trial if the suspects in the murder of it: Raffaele Sonzogno.^[4]^[6] As a member of the Council of the Turin Bar Association, on 9 August 1883 he expressed his opinion in favor of the registration of Lidia Poët, Italy's first woman lawyer.^[8]

In 1905, together with Herbert Asquith and Raymond Poincaré, he drafted a brief for the Cairo District Court in support of a claim by descendants of the Khedive Ismail for a share in the proceeds from the sale of his property.^[9]

A Freemason, he was expelled from the Grand Orient of Italy with it:Edoardo Daneo and others in 1906 "because he had sponsored a liberal-Catholic bloc to stem the advance of the socialists in Turin."^[4]^[10]^[11]

Villa played a leading role in organizing and promoting national and international exhibitions in his later years. These included the General Italian Exhibition held in Turin in 1884,^[12]^[13] General Italian Exhibition of 1898^[14] and the Turin International in 1911.^[15]

Honours

Cavaliere di Gran Croce decorato di Gran Cordone dell'Ordine dei Santi Maurizio e Lazzaro - ribbon for ordinary uniform	Knight Grand Cordon of the Order of Saints Maurice and Lazarus^[5]

Cavaliere di Gran Croce decorato di Gran Cordone dell'Ordine della Corona d'Italia - ribbon for ordinary uniform	Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Crown of Italy ^[5]

References

^ "Villa, Tommaso". treccani. Enciclopedia Italiana. Retrieved 29 September 2023.
^ Moreni, Leonardo (1915). Relazione Statistica dei Lavori Compiuti dalla Corte di Cassazione di Torino nell'anno 1914-1915 (PDF). Turin: Tipografia S. Giuseppe. Retrieved 29 September 2023.
^ "Tommaso Villa". gazzettauffuciale.it. Gazzetta Ufficiale del Regno d’Italia. Retrieved 29 September 2023.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e "Il Presidente Tommaso Villa". camera.it. Camera dei Deputati. Retrieved 29 September 2023.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f "BILLA, Tommaso". senato.it. Senato Della Repubblica. Retrieved 30 September 2023.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g Montaldo, Silvano. "VILLA, Tommaso". treccani.it. Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani. Retrieved 30 September 2023.
^ ^a ^b ^c "Tommaso Villa". storia.camera.it. Camera dei Deputati. Retrieved 30 September 2023.
^ "Lidia Poët, la prima donna Avvocato in Italia era piemontese". 100torri.it. CentoTorri. Retrieved 30 September 2023.
^ Hoyle, Mark S. W. (May 1987). "The Mixed Courts of Egypt, 1906-1915" (PDF). Arab Law Quarterly. 2 (2): 166–184. JSTOR 3381347. Retrieved 29 September 2023.
^ Cordova, Ferdinando (2011). Massoneria e Politica in Italia, 1892-1908. Milan: Carte Scoperte. p. 229.
^ Mola, Alessandro (2018). Storia della Massoneria in Italia dal 1717 al 2018. Florence: Bompiani-Giunti. p. 358.
^ Della Coletta, Cristina (2006). World's Fairs Italian-Style The Great Expositions in Turin and Their Narratives, 1860-1915. Toronto: University of Toronto. p. 46. ISBN 9781442658097. Retrieved 30 September 2023.
^ Onger, Sergio (2010). Verso la modernità. I bresciani e le esposizioni industriali 1800-1915. Milan: Franco Angeli Edizione. p. 329. ISBN 9788856827255. Retrieved 30 September 2023.
^ Bispo, Antonio Alexandre. "Mostra italo-brasiliana na Esposizione nazionale italiana de 1898 em Turim". revista.brasil-europa.37. Revista Brasil-Europa - Correspondência Euro-Brasileira. Retrieved 30 September 2023.
^ "Tommaso Villa (Canale, Cuneo, 1832 - Torino 1915)". museotorino.it. Museo Torino. Retrieved 30 September 2023.