Founder of the Partito Nazionale

Fortunato was born in Valletta, the son of Magistrate Francesco Mizzi and Maria Antonia née Galea. He graduated LLD from the UM on 5 August 1865. He was president of various social and voluntary organizations and of the Chamber of Advocates.

Mizzi is best remembered as a politician. He was inspired by the need for a liberal constitution for Malta, the defence of the Roman Catholic Religion, and the assertion of the Latin and European culture of his people.

In 1880 Mizzi founded the Anti-Reformist Party which soon became known as the Partito Nazionale to oppose the Royal Commissions of Sir Penrose Julyan and Patrick Keenan, who inquired into the civil establishment and the educational system respectively. The Mizzi group maintained that the reforms suggested by the commissioners were aimed primarily at safeguarding the interests of the British government.

He successfully contested the elections for the Council of Government held in 1880, 1883 and 1888. Because of his declining health, he retired from politics, but later gave in to a plebiscitary appeal by Gozitans to stand as their candidate in the 1898, 1899, 1900 and 1904.

In 1899 Salvatore Cachia Zammit accompanied Mizzi to London when a petition for constitutional reform was submitted to the British government (A Statement of Claims and Grievances of the Maltese).

In 1905 Mizzi was elected president of the newly-formed Associazione Politica Maltese, which office he held for a short time due to his sudden death.

Mizzi also distinguished himself as a journalist - he had a powerful and penetrating pen. In 1883 he founded the Italian daily Malta.    

Fortunato Mizzi married Maria Sofia Foliero de Luna from Marseilles, France on 22 July 1871. Among their many children, Dr Enrico Mizzi was the most conspicuous as a politican leader, protagonist and Prime Minister during the first half of the twentieth century.

This biography is part of the collection created by Michael Schiavone over a 30-year period. Read more about Schiavone and his initiative here.