After the fall of the Ricasoli government on March 3, 1862, Bastogi returned to the life of an ordinary deputy, but did not forget the world of business. The unification of Italy meant the overcoming of old regional divisions and the new country’s public works policy opened up new business opportunities for large private firms. The objective of Bastogi’s new venture was to secure public contracts for the building of railways, but this immediately threatened the dominant interest in developing railways across Europe, led by the Rothschilds. By controlling the investment of so much French capital, they had succeeded up till then in preventing rival companies from taking on the construction and operating contracts for the Italian railway network. The Rothschilds' goal was to obtain the concession for the new central and southern railways, with the aim of connecting them with those of Lombardy, Veneto, and southern Austria, which they controlled either directly or through subsidiaries. They were able to persuade the
first Rattazzi government to offer them a renewed the concession of the Lombard and Emilian lines up to Ancona, as well as the contract to complete the Adriatic line and its connection with Naples (16 June 1862). The opposition in the Chamber of Deputies, when they became aware of the offer, argued that the state could have no political or economic interest in entrusting most of the country's railway network to a single, extremely powerful foreign company, particularly one that was also involved in the development of the Austrian railways. On July 31, 1862, as the Chamber of Deputies began discussing the offer, Bastogi sent a letter to the Minister of Public Works
Agostino Depretis declaring that a group of Otaluan businessmen was prepared to invest one hundred million lire to establish a company for the construction and operation of railways in central and southern Italy. The proposal, immediately made known to the press and both houses of Parliament, caused a great stir. Prime Minister Rattazzi and Minister of Public Works Depretis defended the validity of the agreement with the Rothschilds, which still required parliamentary agreement. The Chamber of Deputies, in its sessions of August 3, 4, 5, and 6 1862, voted against the Rothschild agreement and approved Bastogi’s proposal: thus came about the first major enterprise of Italian national capitalism. Construction work began immediately and the Company managed, despite a virulent smear campaign launched by its opponents, to deliver its commitments: by 1865 it completed the Ancona-Brindisi and the Foggia-Naples lines, two of the main arteries of the southern system. Accusations of corruption and profiteering by Bastogi and his associates, fomented by rivals and echoed by opposition newspapers, circulated in Parliament. Eventually, in 1864, the Chamber appointed a commission of inquiry, headed by
Giovanni Lanza, concluded by condemning Bastogi and other deputies. Lanza found confirmed that Susani, a member of the parliamentary commission that had rejected the agreement with the Rothschilds, had been paid one million and one hundred thousand lire by Bastogi. It also found that Bastogi had obtained from all the signatories to his new company a declaration granting him the general contract for the execution of the works at a price of 210,000 lire per kilometer, and that he had then subcontracted the work to three firms at a price of 198,000 lire per kilometer; two-thirds of this 14 million lire margin was apparently pocketed by Bastogi himself. Bastogi immediately resigned his seat in parliament and returned to private life, concerned above all else with safeguarding the interests of the company he had created. In 1868, he was again elected from the
Campobasso constituency, but refused to serve again in the Chamber of Deputies. This did not prevent the electors of
Manfredonia and Livorno from calling him on the same day to represent them in Parliament in 1870, just as later, in 1874 and 1876, the same electors of Livorno repeatedly confirmed his mandate. But Count Bastogi no longer felt drawn to public life, and in 1875 he preferred to resign his seat so that Livorno could assert its rights regarding the railway agreements, in which he was particularly interested, which were about to be discussed in Parliament at that time. After being re-elected in 1870, Bastogi contributed to the fall of the Right from government by voting, together with the Tuscan group, on March 18, 1876, against the government bill on the nationalization of the railways. This allowed the Left, represented by
Agostino Depretis, to form a government. Bastogi remained a member of parliament until 1880. ==Later life, legacy and personal life==