Despite many forebodings in the south, Cavour convinced himself that compromise would now be undignified, unnecessary and even unwise. Michele Amari's council of state made a report on the special needs and interests of Sicily, and the report was signed by twenty-three respectable and even prominent people; but its suggestions could by no means be accepted, for it was assumed that they threatened to question the whole system of centralized monarchy. Cavour was too busy to have enough time left over for affairs in Sicily, and in any case the absence of the king and some of the ministers in southern Italy for nearly three months meant that no new departure in policy could easily be considered. The prime minister had to concern himself far more with the opposition of those who championed ‘little Piedmont’ than with those who wanted a ‘little Sicily’; and for domestic consumption in Turin he therefore had to gild the merger of Piedmont into greater Italy by stressing that it was just another annexation in the ‘artichoke’ tradition of Piedmontese aggrandizement. Another difficulty was that any special concession to the south might upset the process of levelling out between one region and another, and so might damage the delicate plant of nationalism before it was strong enough to fend for itself. Safer far to graft the new provinces on to the old, imposing on them common institutions and so far as possible a common way of life which had already been found to be both tough and broadly acceptable.