Resigning office, he was sent as Royal Commissioner to Bari in May 1898, where, without recourse to martial law, he succeeded in restoring public order suppressing street demonstrations demanding "bread and work".

The Public Safety Bill for the reform of the police laws, taken over by him from the Rudinì cabinet, and eventually promulgated by royal decree, was fiercely obstructed by the Socialist Party of Italy (PSI) and Extreme Left.

The law made strikes by state employees illegal; gave the executive wide powers to ban public meetings and dissolve subversive organisations; revived the penalties of banishment and preventive arrest for political offences; and tightened control of the press by making authors responsible for their articles and declaring incitement to violence a crime.

[3] The Radicals and Socialist start an obstructionist campaign against the new coercive law using the filibuster: points of order, endless speeches and other procedural delaying tactics.

[4] When Pelloux tried to force the law through Parliament by royal decree in June 1899, more moderate politicians like Giuseppe Zanardelli and Giovanni Giolitti that considered the measure unconstitutional, joined the opposition.