In 1855 an act was passed in the Sardinian states for the disestablishment of all houses of the religious orders not engaged in preaching, teaching or the care of the sick, of all chapters of collegiate churches not having a cure of souls or existing in towns of less than 20,000 inhabitants, and of all private benefices for which no service was paid by the holders. The property and money thus obtained were used to form an ecclesiastical fund (_Cassa Ecclesiastica_) distinct from the finances of the state. This act resulted in the suppression of 274 monasteries with 3733 friars, of 61 nunneries with 1756 nuns and of 2722 chapters and benefices. In 1860 and 1861 the royal commissioners (even before the constitution of the new kingdom of Italy had been formally declared) issued decrees by which there were abolished--(1) in Umbria, 197 monasteries and 102 convents with 1809 male and 2393 female associates, and 836 chapters or benefices; (2) in the Marches, 292 monasteries and 127 convents with 2950 male and 2728 female associates; (3) in the Neapolitan provinces, 747 monasteries and 275 convents with 8787 male and 7493 female associates. There were thus disestablished in seven or eight years 2075 houses of the regular clergy occupied by 31,649 persons; and the confiscated property yielded a revenue of £398,298. And at the same time there had been suppressed 11,889 chapters and benefices of the secular clergy, which yielded an annual income of £199,149. The value of the capital thus potentially freed was estimated at £12,000,000; though hitherto the ecclesiastical possessions in Lombardy, Emilia, Tuscany and Sicily had been untouched. As yet the Cassa Ecclesiastica had no right to dispose of the property thus entrusted to it; but in 1862 an act was passed by which it transferred all its real property to the national domain, and was credited with a corresponding amount by the exchequer. The property could now be disposed of like the other property of the domain; and except in Sicily, where the system of emphyteusis was adopted, the church lands began to be sold by auction. To encourage the poorer classes of the people to become landholders, it was decided that the lots offered for sale should be small, and that the purchaser should be allowed to pay by five or ten yearly instalments. By a new act in 1866 the process of secularization was extended to the whole kingdom. All the members of the suppressed communities received full exercise of all the ordinary political and civil rights of laymen; and annuities were granted to all those who had taken permanent religious vows prior to the 18th of January 1864. To priests and choristers, for example, of the proprietary or endowed orders were assigned £24 per annum if they were upwards of sixty years of age, £16 if upwards of 40, and £14, 8s. if younger. The Cassa Ecclesiastica was abolished, and in its stead was instituted a _Fondo pel Culto_, or public worship fund. From the general confiscation were exempted the buildings actually used for public worship, as episcopal residences or seminaries, &c., or which had been appropriated to the use of schools, poorhouses, hospitals, &c.; as well as the buildings, appurtenances, and movable property of the abbeys of Monte Casino, Della Cava dei Tirreni, San Martino della Scala, Monreale, Certosa near Pavia, and other establishments of the same kind of importance as architectural or historical monuments. An annuity equal to the ascertained revenue of the suppressed institutions was placed to the credit of the fund in the government 5% consols. A fourth of this sum was to be handed to the communes to be employed on works of beneficence or education as soon as a surplus was obtained from that part of the annuity assigned for the payment of monastic pensions; and in Sicily, 209 communes entered on their privileges as soon as the patrimony was liquidated. Another act in 1867 decreed the suppression of certain foundations which had escaped the action of previous measures, put an extraordinary tax of 30% on the whole of the patrimony of the church, and granted the government the right of issuing 5% bonds sufficient to bring into the treasury £16,000,000, which were to be accepted at their nominal value as purchase money for the alienated property. The public worship endowment fund has relieved the state exchequer of the cost of public worship; has gradually furnished to the poorer parish priests an addition to their stipends, raising them to £32 per annum, with the prospect of further raising them to £40; and has contributed to the outlay incurred by the communes for religious purposes.