When the days of heroic deeds were over the makers of Italy turned to the government of the new realm and found themselves faced by all the problems of national life. Inspiration and idealism proved out of place, and although theirs was, what would have been called in England or in France, a Conservative government, they had to rely on a very strange electoral body. While they did not extend the vote at once, they found in the middle class a set of Arrivists with an imperative egoism that was to prove the curse of political life in Italy. It is difficult for an English, French, or American citizen to realise the kind of problems with which these men were beset. Above all it is difficult to an Englishman; England has had five or six centuries of political experience, a length of time sufficient to produce electors and mandatories able to realise what are the duties of the executive as well as of the legislature. In Italy, on the other hand, the nineteenth century has seen all stage of political development succeeding one another in a hurly-burly that has a good deal in common with the succession of the events of a man’s life on a cinema film. He passes from childhood to youth, and on to manhood, maturity and old age in a couple of hours. If he actually could crowd all experience into a couple of years the proportion would be better; but he would have no fairer notion of reality and of his own rights and duties at any stage of his life than the Italians could be expected to have when they had to pass in less than fifty years through the political stages successively experienced by the people of other countries in several centuries.