ocial forces demanded the
right to develop without interference from a law which took no account
of them. This was the historical reason for the overturn of that year;
and with the transference of power from Right to Left begins the
period of growth and development in our nation: economic growth in
industry, commerce, railroads, agriculture; intellectual growth in
science, education. The nation had received its form from above. It
had now to struggle to its new level, giving to a State which already
had its constitution, its administrative and political organization,
its army and its finance, a living content of forces springing from
individual initiative prompted by interests which the _Risorgimento_,
absorbed in its great ideals, had either neglected or altogether
disregarded.

The accomplishment of this constitutes the credit side of the balance
sheet of King Humbert I. It was the error of King Humbert's greatest
minister, Francesco Crispi, not to have understood his age. Crispi
strove vigorously to restore the authority and the prestige of the
State as against an individualism gone rampant, to reassert religious
ideals as against triumphant materialism. He fell, therefore, before
the assaults of so-called democracy.

Crispi was wrong. That was not the moment for re-hoisting the
time-honored banner of idealism. At that time there could be no talk
of wars, of national dignity, of competition with the Great Powers; no
talk of setting limits to personal liberties in the interests of the
abstract entity called "State." The word "God," which Crispi sometimes
used, was singularly out of place. It was a question rather of
bringing the popular classes to prosperity, self-consciousness,
participation in political life. Campaigns against illiteracy, all
kinds of social legislation, the elimination of the clergy from the
public schools, which must be secular and anti-clerical! During this
period Freemasonry became solidly established in the bureaucracy, the
army, the judiciary. The central power of the State was weakened and
made subservient to the fleeting variations of popular will as
reflected in a suffrage absolved from all control from above. The
growth of big industry favored the rise of a socialism of Marxian
stamp as a new kind of moral and political education for our
proletariat. The conception of humanity was not indeed lost from view:
but such moral restraints as were placed on the free individual were
all based o