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and of crises and that they were determined that the governmentdo something about these problems. So deeply rooted were theseconvictions that no man could arrive in power who did not adoptthem as part of his polity.This situation became itself the parent of another settled convictionthat began as a little trickle and finally cut its way deep intothe terrain of Italian public thought. It began to flow as a full currentin the regime of Agostino Depretis, who rose to power asPremier in 1876.From the beginning of united Italy the country had been ruledby the Right, some of them able statesmen and patriots inspired bythe principles of liberation and unity. They were under thedominion of political rather than economic ideas. Meantime taxesrose, centralization became a specter to the liberals, the demand forprivate security through social-welfare measures and public securitythrough preparedness was ignored. The nation's prestige abroad wassaid to be deteriorating. The end of this was a political uprisingagainst the cautious regime. And on the crest of this uprisingDepretis rode into power. He was a journalist-politician who hadallied himself in parliament with the Left. When he came into powerit was as the leader of the Left, and as such he ruled as Prime Minister,save for a brief interlude, for most of the eleven years from1876 to 1887.He promised every sort of reform without regard to the contradictionsamong his promises. He promised to reduce taxation andincrease public works. He promised greater social security andgreater prosperity. When he came to power, he had no program andno settled notion of how he would redeem these pledges. His partywas joined by recruits from every school of political thought. Hefound at his side the representatives of every kind of discontentand every organ of national salvation. The oppressed tenants alongwith the overworked and underpaid craftsmen of the townscrowded around him, beside the most reactionary landowners andemployers, to demand, as one commentator said, the honoring of themany contradictory promissory notes he had issued on his way tooffice.He was supposed to be a man of personal integrity so far as12