“But it has not had the ratification of the persons whom it most concerns.”

“Do you supposed, then, when a great public work is to be accomplished the promoters are to go hat in hand for permission to every peasant resident on the area?”

“A great public work seems to me a large expression:  too large for this case.  The railway is not needed.  The acetylene works are a private speculation.  I venture to recall to your Excellency that these people, whom you would ignore, own the land, or, where they do not own it, have many interests both in the land and the water.”  “Pardon me, your Excellency, but that is a phrase:  it is not a fact.  You could not, if you gave them millions, compensate them for the seizure of their river and their lands.  These belong to them and to their descendants by natural right.  They cannot be deprived of these by Act of Parliament without gross injury and injustice.”  “There must be suffering for the individual in all benefit of the general!”

“And doubtless, sir, when one is not the individual the suffering appears immaterial!”

“What an insolent priest!” thought Giovacchino Gallo, and struck the paper-knife with anger on the table.

“Take my own parishioners alone,” pursued Don Silverio.  “Their small earnings depend entirely upon the Edera water; it gives them their food, their bed, their occupation; it gives them health and strength; it irrigates their little holdings, extra murus, on which they and their families depend for grain and maize and rice.  If you change their river-bed into dry land they will starve.  Are not your own countrymen dearer to you than the members of a foreign syndicate?”

“There will be work for them at the acetylene factory.”

“Are they not free men?  Are they to be driven like slaves to a work which would be hateful to them?  These people are country born and country bred.  They labour in the open air, and have done so for generations.  Pardon me, your Excellency, but every year the King’s Government forces into exile thousands, tens of thousands, of our hard working peasants with their families.  The taxation of the land and of all its products lays waste thousands of square miles in this country.  The country is being depleted and depopulated, and the best of its manhood is being sent out of it by droves to Brazil, to La Plata, to the Argentines, to anywhere and everywhere, where labour is cheap and climate homicidal.  The poor are packed on emigrant ships and sent with less care than crated of fruit receive.  They consent to go because they are famished here.  Is it well for a country to lose its labouring classes, its frugal, willing, and hard-working manhood? to pack them off across the oceans by contract with other states?  The Government has made a contract with a Pacific island for five thousand Italians?  Are they free men or are they slaves?  Can your Excellency call my people free who are allowed no voice against the