The phrase “The Statute is the fundamental, perpetual and irrevocable law of the Monarchy” had wounded the ears of the Democrats. Cavour hastened to interpret it in a relative sense. It is worth while to listen attentively to this paragraph of Cavour. “How is it possible,” he said, “how can it be expected that the legislator would have wished to pledge himself and the nation not to make the slightest direct change, to bring the smallest improvement to a political law? But this would mean the removal from the community of the power of revising the Constitution; it would mean the deprival of the indispensable power of modifying its political form according to new social exigencies; this would be such an absurd idea that no one of those who co-operated in the making of this fundamental law could conceive it. A nation cannot renounce the power of changing by legal means its common law.” After a short time history had to register a first violation of the Statute, which assumed or presumed that, in order to become a member of Parliament, it was necessary to be an Italian citizen. On the 16th of October there was a division between the Right, amongst which there were the Moderates and the Municipals, and the Left, to which belonged the Democrats, called the “burnt heads,” and the Republicans. On the following day these two parties were agreed in unanimously proclaiming above the Statute that all Italians could belong to the Subalpine Parliament. The first to benefit by this violation of the Statute was Alessandro Manzoni; but he declined the mandate by a letter which represents a fine example of correctness and political probity. (Approval.) Nobody, Gentlemen, wishes to overthrow or destroy the Statute, which rests solidly on firm foundations; but the inhabitants of this building from 1848 up to to-day have changed. There are other exigencies, other needs. There is no longer the Piedmontese Italy of 1848! And it is very strange to notice among the defenders of the Statute those who have violated it in its fundamental laws, those who have curtailed the prerogatives of the Crown, those who wanted the Crown to be entirely outside the politics of the nation, and to become a dead institution. (Loud applause.)