The succeeding Minghetti-Visconti-Venosta cabinet--which held office from the 10th of July 1873 to the 18th of March 1876--continued in essential points the work of the preceding administration. Minghetti's finance, though less clear-sighted and less resolute than that of Sella, was on the whole prudent and beneficial. With the aid of Sella he concluded conventions for the redemption of the chief Italian railways from their French and Austrian proprietors. By dint of expedients he gradually overcame the chronic deficit, and, owing to the normal increase of revenue, ended his term of office with the announcement of a surplus of some £720,000. The question whether this surplus was real or only apparent has been much debated, but there is no reason to doubt its substantial reality. It left out of account a sum of £1,000,000 for railway construction which was covered by credit, but, on the other hand, took no note of £360,000 expended in the redemption of debt. Practically, therefore, the Right, of which the Minghetti cabinet was the last representative administration, left Italian finance with a surplus of £80,000. Outside the all-important domain of finance, the attention of Minghetti and his colleagues was principally absorbed by strife between church and state, army reform and railway redemption. For some time after the occupation of Rome the pope, in order to substantiate the pretence that his spiritual freedom had been diminished, avoided the creation of cardinals and the nomination of bishops. On the 22nd of December 1873, however, he unexpectedly created twelve cardinals, and subsequently proceeded to nominate a number of bishops. Visconti-Venosta, who had retained the portfolio for foreign affairs in the Minghetti cabinet, at once drew the attention of the European powers to this proof of the pope's spiritual freedom and of the imaginary nature of his "imprisonment" in the Vatican. At the same time he assured them that absolute liberty would be guaranteed to the deliberations of a conclave. In relation to the Church in Italy, Minghetti's policy was less perspicacious. He let it be understood that the announcement of the appointment of bishops and the request for the royal _exequatur_ might be made to the government impersonally by the congregation of bishops and regulars, by a municipal council or by any other corporate body--a concession of which the bishops were quick to take advantage, but which so irritated Italian political opinion that, in July 1875, the government was compelled to withdraw the temporalities of ecclesiastics who had neglected to apply for the _exequatur_, and to evict sundry bishops who had taken possession of their palaces without authorization from the state. Parliamentary pressure further obliged Bonghi, minister of public instruction, to compel clerical seminaries either to forgo the instruction of lay pupils or to conform to the laws of the state in regard to inspection and examination, an ordinance which gave rise to conflicts between ecclesiastical and lay authorities, and led to the forcible dissolution of the Mantua seminary and to the suppression of the Catholic university in Rome.