The economic and social questions could not in any case have been faced, still less dealt with, as long as the nation was not a political reality. Any attempt would have been sterile and perhaps even harmful. First, it would have led the people to believe that under the then present conditions the economic organisation of each little state might have been so planned as to ensure the material well-being of the population, that they could receive a greater share of political importance and therefore of administrative attention from the local governments and thus be better off in the harlequin coat than under the flag of a united Italy. It was, moreover, expedient to hold to the singleness of purpose that was more likely to make action coherent all through the peninsula; only such singleness of aim made it possible to men of so different temperament and breeding as professional men and noblemen, Tuscans and Sicilians, Freemasons and ardent Catholics, to think and therefore to act in positive harmony. When a bullet has hit the bull’s-eye it has fulfilled its purpose, and stays there in helpless immobility or falls to the ground a useless thing. It was meant for that shot, and is bound to be purposeless when it has made its mark. The generations of Carlo Alberto and Mazzini, of Vittorio Emmanuele and Cavour, had certainly hit the mark when Rome had become the capital of Italy. Was it to be expected that men who had identified themselves with the goal should be able to take another goal and fit themselves to a new task? Or could it be that the realisation of the new State should bring, as its immediate consequence, a ready-made generation of statesmen? Indeed, if there is one thing that cannot be produced by a magic wand, it is a body of able and trained political men.