Mazzini, therefore, addressed to the new King a letter in which he called his attention to the enthusiasm with which his accession was greeted. "There is not a heart in Italy whose pulse did not quicken at the news of your accession. There is not an eye in Europe that is not turned to watch your first steps in the career now open to you." He told him that the Italians were ready to believe that his desertion of their cause was the mere result of circumstances; and that, being at last free to act according to his own tendencies, the new King would carry out the promises that he had first made as a Prince. He warned him that a system of terror would only provoke reprisals; and that a system of partial concessions would not only fail to satisfy the wishes of the people, but would have an arbitrary and capricious character which would increase the existing irritation. "The people are no longer to be quieted by a few concessions. They seek the recognition of those rights of humanity which have been withheld from them for ages. They demand laws and liberty, independence and union. Divided, dismembered, and oppressed, they have neither name nor country. They have heard themselves stigmatised by the foreigner as the Helot Nation. They have seen free men visit their country, and declare it the land of the dead. They have drained the cup of slavery to the dregs; but they have sworn never to fill it again." Mazzini then calls on Charles Albert to put himself more definitely at the head of a movement for Italian Independence, and to become the King of a united Italy. The letter concludes with these words: "Sire, I have spoken to you the truth. The men of freedom await your answer in your deeds. Whatever that answer be, rest assured that posterity will either hail your name as the greatest of men, or the last of Italian tyrants. Take your choice." Before we consider Charles Albert's answer, we must call to mind, once more, his position. He came to the throne in the very crisis of a conspiracy against his predecessor, and had hardly been able to realize what had been the intention of the conspirators towards himself. The Duke of Modena, who had plotted to remove him from the succession (a proposal discussed at some length in the Congress of Laybach), had just recovered his own Dukedom by Austrian help, and was no doubt watching with eager eyes any false step which his rival might make. Charles Albert, with all his liberal sympathies, was proud of being a prince of the House of Savoy; and he was surrounded by the courtiers of Charles Felix, who must have persuaded him that the dignity and independence of that House could only be maintained by opposition to the movement for reform.