I am not, Gentlemen, a despot who remains locked up in a castle protected by strong walls. I circulate freely amongst the people without any concern whatsoever, and I listen to them. (Loud assent.) Well, the Italian people, up to now, have not asked for liberty. (Assent on the Right: comments on the Extreme Left.) At Messina the population which surrounded my carriage said: “Take us out of these wooden huts.” (Assent.) In Sardinia—(you will notice that I am speaking of a region where Fascismo has not tens of thousands of followers as in Lombardy)—in Sardinia, at Arbatax, men came to me with drawn faces; they surrounded me and, pointing out to me a track with a putrid river among the marshy reeds, said to me: “Malaria is killing us!” They did not speak to me of liberty, of the Statute, of the Constitution. It is the emigrants of the Fascista revolution who create this idol which the Italian people, and now, too, foreign public opinion, has largely dismantled. (Loud applause on the Right.) Every day I receive dozens of Committees, and hundreds of applications are flung on my desk, in which one might say that the urgent needs of each of the eight thousand communes of Italy are represented. Well, why should all those not come to me and say: “We suffer because you oppress us”? But there is a reason, a fact to which I wish to draw your attention. You say that the ex-soldiers fought for liberty. How does it happen, then, that these ex-soldiers are in favour of a liberticidal Government? (Applause.) Are force and consent antagonistic elements? Not at all! In force there is already consent, and consent is force in itself and for itself. But tell me, have you found on the face of the earth a Government, of whatsoever kind, which claimed to make happy all the people it governed? But this would mean the squaring of the circle! Whatever Government, be it even directed by men participating in the Divine wisdom, whatever measure it takes, will make some people discontented. And how can you check this discontent? By force! What is the State? It is the police. All your codes of law, the laws themselves, all your doctrines are nothing if, at a given moment, the police by their physical strength do not make felt the indestructible weight of the law. (Comments and assent.) _We do not want to abolish Parliament._ They say that we want to abolish Parliament. No! It is not true. First of all, we do not know what we could substitute for it. (Comment.) Parliaments, the so-called Technical Councils, are still in the embryonic stage. Maybe they represent some principles of life. With such subjects one can never be dogmatic or explicit; but, in the face of to-day’s state of affairs, they represent only attempts. Maybe that in a second stage it may be possible to allot to these Technical Councils a portion of the legislative work.