leader of the Risorgimento in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, who played a prominent role in the government of united Italy.

As a deputy in the Neapolitan parliament of 1848–49 and as a journalist and lawyer, Mancini fought for democracy and constitutionalism until forced into exile by the reactionary Bourbon government. Accepting a professorship at the University of Turin, he continued to be an active propagandist for national unity; after election to the parliament of Piedmont–Sardinia in 1860, he was sent (1861) to join the council presiding over the territory of his former homeland in the south, newly conquered by the Italian patriot Giuseppe Garibaldi. There he suppressed the religious orders, renounced the concordat with the papacy, and proclaimed the state's right to church property.

Returning to Turin, he sat with the centre in the first parliament of united Italy and served briefly in the cabinet. In 1865 he won a great personal triumph in convincing parliament to put substantial limitations on capital punishment. He served as minister of justice (1876–78) and as acting minister of public worship in 1878, when he gave the assurances necessary for a conclave of cardinals to elect a pope for the first time since Rome became a part of a united Italy (1871). He became minister of foreign affairs (1881) under Agostino Depretis. In an effort to gain support for Italian colonial expansion in Africa, he pursued a policy of rapprochement with Austria, leading to Italy's joining the Triple Alliance with Austria Hungary and Germany in 1882. Public discontent with the lack of immediate gains from his policy led to his resignation in June 1885.