Thus, most governments were also made up of coalitions, and frequently still are. .
The last problem that the government had to face was the language barrier between the different states, as well as the low literacy rate. Now that Italy was united, they needed a common language: Italian. However, even the great Cavour preferred to speak French or English when addressing the parliament. Cavour himself had had to "learn" to use Italian as his chief medium of expression, the members of his social class having been more accustomed to the use of French among themselves and of the Piedmontese dialect for the more common transactions of everyday life (Albrecht-Carrié 48). For example, the official language in the Papal States was Latin. The government attempted to tackle this problem with standardized education. One problem that arose in that area was that the level of education that the students were receiving was sometimes lower than the previous one. Furthermore, seeing as these were government-run and government-funded schools, many Catholics chose to not send their kids there, or were sometimes not allowed to.
Moving on, Italy was faced with several economic problems. There were differences between the economy in the North and South of Italy, as well as heavy taxation combined with a huge national debt, and a backwards agricultural system. The economies were mainly different between the North and South due to their historical differences. The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and the Papal States, which had taken up practically all of the South part of Italy, were two of the most backward states. According to the historian Nassau Senior, "Agricultural methods were so outdated that cereal production in the South had scarcely increased its output since the days of the Roman Empire " (Morris 385). This caused a problem since the majority of the workforce was employed in agriculture. Only 3 million people were employed in industry when it was the age of the industrial revolution.