Impeachment and Comeback
After his resignation Giolitti was impeached for abuse of power as minister, but the Constitutional Court quashed the impeachment by denying the competence of the ordinary tribunals to judge ministerial acts. For several years he was compelled to play a passive part, having lost all credit. But by keeping in the background and giving public opinion time to forget his past, as well as by parliamentary intrigue, he gradually regained much of his former influence.
He made capital of the Socialist agitation and of the repression to which other statesmen resorted, and gave the agitators to understand that were he premier would remain neutral in labour conflicts. Thus he gained their favour, and on the fall of the Pelloux cabinet in 1900 he made his comeback after eight years. A left-ward shift in parliamentary liberalism after the reactionary crisis of 1898-1900 and he was to dominate Italian politics until the World War I. He became Minister of the Interior in the administration of Giuseppe Zanardelli, of which he was the real head.
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