[1] Between 1752 and 1753, during the reign of Charles III of Spain and at the height of Bernardo Tanucci's power, he held two short consecutive posts.

After this he spent decades as the Kingdom of Naples' diplomatic representative across Europe – he was envoy extraordinary to Turin from 1754 to 1764,[1] and then to London from 1764 to 1771,[1] where he became a close friend with Vittorio Alfieri, who became a father-figure to him, "a man of high wisdom and droll wit" and "more than a father in love".

[1] There he came into close contact with the more advanced circles of the French Enlightenment[1] He was remarkably successful, so much so that his friendship was sought by figures as notable as Jacques Necker, Paul Henri Thiry d'Holbach, Claude-Adrien Helvétius and Jean Baptiste d'Alembert.

For various reasons, including the terrible earthquakes that devastated Messina in 1783, he had to give up on what he considered the most important reform – the creation of a class in which at first sight seemed to be described and designated property by its borders, cultures and annuities, a basic and essential preliminary to a taxation feudal and ecclesiastical estates His next and final post was as secretary of state (effectively prime minister) to Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies from 1786 until his death in 1789, succeeding Giuseppe Beccadelli della Sambuca, in the post that had once belonged to his mentor Tanucci,[1] but his reforming policy came into conflict with Sir John Acton's political ascendancy in Naples.

[1] In 1785, at Palermo, he anonymously published Riflessioni su l'economia e l'estrazione dei frumenti della Sicilia fatte in occasione della carestia dell'Indizione terza 1784 e 1785 (Reflections on the economy and the extraction of wheat from Sicily during the famine of the third Convocation in 1784 and 1785), inspired by a moderate 'vincolismo' (interventionism).