The Roman Question

by Edmond About

CHAPTER XIX.

MATERIAL INTERESTS.

"For my part," said a great fat Neapolitan,

"I don't care the value of a bit of orange-peel for politics. I am willing to believe we've got a bad government, because all the world says we have, and because our King never dare show himself in public. All I can say is, that my grandfather made 20,000 ducats as a manufacturer; that my father doubled his capital in trade; and that I bought an estate which, in my tenants' hands, pays me six per cent. for the investment. I eat four meals a day, I'm in vigorous health, and I weigh fourteen stone. So when I toss off my third glass of old Capri wine at supper, I can't for the life of me help crying, 'Long live the King!'"

A huge hog which happened to cross the street as the Neapolitan reached his climax, gave a grunt in token of approbation.

The "hog" school is not numerous in Italy, whatever superficial travellers may have told you on that head. The most highly-gifted nation in Europe will not easily be persuaded that the great end of human existence is to eat four meals a day.

But let us suppose for an instant that all the Pope's subjects are willing to renounce all liberty,—religious, political, municipal, and even civil,—for the sake of growing sleek and fat, without any higher aim, and are content with the merely animal enjoyments of health and food; do they find in their homes the means of satisfying their wants? Can they, on that score at least, applaud their Government? Are they as well treated as beasts in a cage? Are the people fat and thriving? I answer, No!

In every country in the world the sources of public wealth are three in number: agriculture, manufactures, and commerce. All governments which do their duty, and understand their interests, emulate one another in favouring, by wholesome administrative measures, the farm, the workshop, and the counting-house. Wherever the nation and its rulers are united, trade and manufactures will be found clinging round the government, and increasing even to excess the population of the capital cities; while agriculture works her greatest miracles in the circuit which is the most immediately subject to the influence of authority.

Borne is the least industrious and commercial city in the Pontifical States, and its suburbs resemble a desert. You must travel very far to find any industrial experiment, or any attempt at trade.

Whose fault is this? Industrial pursuits require, above all things, liberty. Now in the States of the Church all the manufactures of any importance constitute privileges bestowed by the government upon its friends. Not only tobacco and salt, but sugar, glass, wax, and stearine, are objects of privilege. Privilege here—privilege there—privilege everywhere. An Insurance Company is established, of course by special privilege. The very baskets used by the cherry-vendors are the monopoly of a privileged basket-maker. The Inspector of the Piazza Navona[14] would seize any refractory basket which had failed to pay its tribute to monopoly. The grocers of Tivoli, the butchers of Frascati, all the retail dealers in the suburbs of Rome, are privileged. The system of privileges and monopolies is universal, and of course commerce shares the common lot.

Commerce cannot flourish without capital, facilities of credit, easy communication, and, above all, personal safety. I have shown you what the roads are as to safety. I have not yet shown you how wretchedly bad and insufficient they are. Now for a few facts.

In June, 1858, I travelled through the Mediterranean provinces, taking notes as I went along. I established the fact that in one township the bread cost nearly three-halfpence a pound, while in another, some twelve miles off, it was to be had for a penny. It follows that the carriage of goods along twelve miles of road cost a farthing a pound. At Sonnino bad wine was sold for sevenpence the litre, while the same quantity of passable wine might be had at Pagliano, thirty miles off, for twopence halfpenny; so the cost of carrying an article weighing some two pounds for thirty miles was fourpence halfpenny. Wherever governments make roads, prices naturally find their level.

I may be told that I explored remote and out-of-the-way districts. If we approach the capital, we find the matters still worse. The nearest villages to Rome have not roads fit for carriages from one to the other. What would be said of the French administration, if people could not get from Versailles to St. Germain without passing through Paris? This, however, has been for centuries the state of things near the Pope's capital. If you want a still more striking instance, here it is. Bologna, the second city in the Pontifical States, is in rapid and frequent communication with the whole world—except Rome. It despatches seven mails a week to foreign countries—only five to Rome. The letters from Paris arrive at Bologna some hours before those from Rome; the letters from Vienna are in advance of those from Rome by a day and a night. The Papal kingdom is not very extensive, but it seems to me even too extensive, when I see distances trebled by the carelessness of the Government and the inadequacy of the public works. As to railways, there are two, one from Rome to Frascati, and one from Rome to Civita Vecchia; but the Adriatic provinces, which are the most populous, the most energetic, and the most interesting in the country, will not hear the whistle of the locomotive and the rush of the train for a long time to come. The nation loudly demands railways. The lay proprietors, instead of absurdly asking fancy prices for their land, eagerly offer it to companies. The convents alone raise barricades, as if they thought the devil was trying to break in at their gates. The erection of a railway station in Rome gave rise to some comical difficulties. Our unfortunate engineers were utterly at a loss for the means of effecting an opening. On all sides the way was blocked up by obstructive friars. Black friars—white friars—grey friars—and brown friars. They began with the Lazarists. The Holy Father personally came to their rescue. "Ah, Mr. Engineer, have mercy on my poor Lazarists! The good souls are given to prayer and meditation; and your locomotives do make such a hideous din!" So Mr. Engineer is fain to try the neighbouring convent. New difficulties there. The next attack is made upon a little nunnery founded by the Princess de Bauffremont. But I have neither time nor space for episodical details. It suffices for our purpose to state that the construction of railways will be a terribly long-winded affair, and that in the meantime trade languishes for want of crossroads. The budget of public works is devoted to the repair of churches, and the building of basilicas. Nearly half-a-million sterling has already been sunk in the erection of a very grey and very ugly edifice on the Ostia road.[15] As much more will be required to finish it, and the commerce of the country will be none the better.

Half a million sterling! Why the entire capital of the bank of Rome is but £400,000; and when merchants go there to have their bills discounted, they can get no money. They are obliged to apply to usurers and monopolists, and the governor of the bank is one. Rome has an Exchange. I discovered its existence by mere chance, in turning over a Roman almanack. This public establishment opens once a week, a fact which gives some idea of the amount of business transacted there.

If trade and manufactures offer but small resources to the subjects of his Holiness, they fortunately find some compensation in agriculture. The natural fertility of the soil, and the stubborn industry of those who cultivate it, will always suffice to keep the nation from starvation. While it pays away a million sterling annually for foreign manufactures, the surplus of its agricultural produce brings back some £800,000. Hemp and corn, oil and wool, wine, silk, and cattle, form its substantial wealth.

How do we find the Government acting in this respect? Its duties are very simple, and may be summed up in three words,—protection, assistance, and encouragement.

The budget is not heavily burdened under the head of encouragement. Some proprietors and land stewards, residing in Rome, ask permission to found an Agricultural Society. The authorities refuse. In order to attain their object, they steal furtively into a Horticultural Society, already established by authority. They organize themselves, raise subscriptions, exhibit to the Romans a good collection of cattle and distribute some gold and silver medals offered by Prince Cesarini. Is it not curious that an exhibition of cattle, in order to be tolerated, is obliged to smuggle itself in under the shelter of camellias and geraniums?

Lay sovereigns not only openly favour agriculture, but they encourage it at a heavy cost, and do not consider their money thrown away. They are well aware that to give a couple of hundred pounds to the inventor of a good plough, is to place a small capital out at a heavy interest. The investment will render their kingdom more prosperous, and their children more wealthy. But the Pope has no children. He prefers sowing in his churches, in order to reap the harvest in Paradise.

Might he not at least assist the unfortunate peasants who furnish the bread he eats?

An able and truthful statistician (the Marchese Pepoli) has proved that in the township of Bologna, the rural proprietors actually pay taxes to the amount of £6. 8s. 4d. upon every £4-worth of taxable income. The fisc is not content with absorbing the entire revenue, but it annually eats into the capital. What think you of such moderation?

In 1855 the vines were diseased everywhere. Lay governments vied with each other in assisting the distressed proprietors. Cardinal Antonelli seized the opportunity to impose a tax of £74,680 upon the vines; and as there were no grapes that year to pay it, the amount was charged upon the different townships. Now which has proved the heaviest scourge—the Oidium or the Cardinal Minister? Certainly not the Oidium, for that has disappeared. The Cardinal remains.

All the corn harvested in the Agro Romano pays a fixed duty of twenty-two pauls per rubbio. The rubbio is worth, on an average, from 80 to 100 pauls; so that the government taxes the harvest to the amount of at least 22 per cent. Here is a moderate tax. Why it is more than double the tithe. So much for the assistance rendered to the growers of corn.

Every description of agricultural produce pays a tax on export. There are governments which give a premium to exporters: one may call that encouraging the national industry. There are others, and they are still more numerous, which allow a free export of the surplus produce of the land: this is not merely to encourage, it is to assist the labourers. The Pope levies an average tax of 22 per thousand on the total amount of exports, 160 per thousand on the value of imports. The Piedmontese government is satisfied with 13 per thousand on exports, and 58 per thousand on imports. Of the two countries, I should prefer farming in Piedmont.

Cattle are subject to vexatious taxes, which add from twenty to thirty per cent. to their cost. They pay when at pasture; they pay nearly twenty-three shillings per head at market; they pay on exportation. And yet the breeding of cattle is one of the most valuable resources of the State, and one of those which ought to be the most assisted.

The horses raised in the country pay five per cent. on their value every time they change hands. By the time a horse has passed through twenty different hands, the Government has pocketed as much as the breeder. When I say the Government, I am wrong; the horse-tax is not included in the Budget. It is an ecclesiastical prebend. Cardinal della Dateria throws it in with general episcopal revenues.

"The good shepherd should shear, and not flay his sheep." These are the words of an Emperor, not a Pope, of Rome.

And now I dare not ask of the Holy Father certain protective measures which could not fail to double the revenue of his crown and the number of his subjects.

According to the statistical returns of 1857, the territorial wealth of the Romans is estimated at £104,400,000. The gross produce of this capital does not reach more than £116,563. 11s. 8d., or about ten per cent. This is little. In Poland, and some other great agricultural countries, the land pays a net revenue of twelve per cent., which represents at least twenty per cent. gross. The Roman soil would produce the same if the Roman government did its duty.

The country is divided into cultivated and uncultivated lands. The former, that is to say those planted with useful trees, enriched by manure, regularly submitted to manual labour, and sown every year, lie chiefly in the provinces of the Adriatic, far beyond the ken of the Pope. In this half of the States of the Church (the most worthy of attention, and the least known) twenty years of French occupation have left excellent traditions. The system of primogeniture is abolished, if not by law, at least in practice. The equality of rights among the children of the same father necessitates the subdivision of property so favourable to agricultural progress. There are some large landed proprietors here, as there are everywhere; but instead of abandoning their estates to the rapacity of an intendant, they divide them into different occupations, which they confide to the best farmers. The landlord supplies the land, the buildings, and the cattle, and pays the property-tax. The tenant supplies the labour, and pays the other taxes, and the produce is equally shared between the landlord and the tenant. The system answers well, and the Adriatic provinces would hardly seem deserving of pity, if it were not for the brigands, the inundations of the Po and the Reno, and the crushing taxation I have described.

These taxes are lighter on the other side of the Apennines. There are even in the neighbourhood of Rome some landowners who pay scarcely any at all. In 1854 the Consulta di Stato valued the privileged lands at £360,000. But we will turn to the subject of the uncultivated lands.

Towards the Mediterranean, north, east, south, and west of Rome, and wherever the Papal benediction extends, the flat country, which covers an immense extent, is at once uninhabited, uncultivated, and unhealthy. Various are the modes in which experienced persons have attempted to account for the wretched condition of this fine country.

One says,

"It is uncultivated because it is uninhabited. How can you cultivate without men? It is uninhabited because it is unwholesome. How can you expect men to inhabit it at the risk of their lives? Make it healthy, and it will populate itself, and the population will cultivate it, for there is not a finer soil in the world."

Another replies,

"You are wrong. You confound cause with effect. The country is unhealthy because it is uncultivated. The decayed vegetable matter accumulated by centuries ferments under the summer sun. The wind blows over it, and raises up a provision of subtle miasma, imperceptible to the smell, and yet destructive to life. If all these plains were ploughed or dug up three or four times, so as to let the air and light penetrate into the depths of the soil, the fever which lies dormant under the rank vegetation would speedily evaporate, and return no more. Hasten then to bring ploughs, and your first crop will be one of health."

A third replies to the two first,

"You are both right. The country is unhealthy because it is uncultivated, and uncultivated because it is unhealthy. The question lies in a vicious circle, from which there is no escape. Let us therefore leave things as they are; and when the fever-season arrives, we can go and inhale the fresh mountain air under the tall trees of Frascati."

The last speaker, if I am not greatly mistaken, is a Prelate. But have a care, Monsignore! Frascati, once so renowned for the purity of its air, now no longer deserves its reputation; and I may say the same of Tivoli. The quarters of Rome most remarkable for healthiness, such for instance as the Pincian, have of late become unhealthy. Fever is gaining ground. It is equally worthy of observation that at the same time the cultivation of the land is diminishing; and that the estates in mortmain—that is to say, delivered into the hands of the priesthood—have been increasing at the yearly rate of from £60,000 to £80,000 a year. Is mortmain indeed the hand which kills?

I submitted this delicate question to a very intelligent, very honourable, and very wealthy man, who farms several thousand acres of Church property. He is one of the Mercanti di Campagna, mentioned in a former chapter (Chap. VI.). The following is the substance of his reply.

"Six-tenths of the Agro Romano are held in mortmain. Three-tenths belong to the princely families, and the remaining tenth to different individuals.

"I hold under a religious community. I have a three-years' lease of the bare land. The live and dead farm-stock is my own property. It represents an enormous capital, which is liable to all sorts of accidents. But in our dear country one must risk a great deal to gain a little.

"If the land, which is almost all of fine quality, were my own, I should bring nearly the whole of it under the plough; but I am expressly forbidden by a clause in my lease to break up the best land, for fear of exhausting it by growing corn. No doubt such would be the result in the course of time, because we apply no manure; but of course the inferior land which I am allowed to break up will be worn out much sooner, and will in the end become almost worthless. The monks knowing this, take care that the best land shall not lose its quality, and oblige me to keep it in pasture for cattle. Thus I grow little corn merely because the good fathers will not let me grow a great deal. I cultivate first one piece of land, then another. On my farm, as throughout the Agro Romano, cultivation is but a passing accident; and so long as this continues, the country will be unhealthy.

"I raise cattle, which, as you will presently see, is sometimes a profitable pursuit, sometimes quite the contrary. On the whole of my farm I have no shelter for my cattle. I asked the monks to build me some sheds, offering to pay an increased rent in proportion to outlay. The monk who acts as the man of business of the convent, shrugged his shoulders. 'What can you be thinking of?' he said; 'you know we have only a life interest in the property. To comply with your request, we must spend our income for the benefit of our successors: and what care we for our successors? No, we look to the present usufruct; the future is no concern of ours—we have no children!' And the friar is right. Well, he went on to say that I was at liberty to build at my own cost as many sheds as I liked, which of course would belong to the convent at the expiration of my lease. I replied that I had no objection to erect the sheds, if the convent would grant me a lease of reasonable length. But just then it occurred to me very opportunely, that the canon law does not recognize leases for more than three years, and that on the very day when my sheds were completed, the pious fathers might find it convenient to pick a quarrel with me. So here the matter dropped. Although our cattle are naturally hardy they are bound to suffer from exposure to the weather. A hundred cows under shelter will yield the same quantity of milk through the winter as five hundred in the open air, at half the cost. A large portion of the hay we strew about the pastures for the cattle, is trodden underfoot and spoilt instead of being eaten; and if rain falls, the whole is spoilt. Calculate the loss of milk, the cost of cartage over a wide range of land, the damage done to the pastures by the trampling of heavy cattle in wet weather, all caused by the want of a few sheds, which it is impossible to have under the present system, and you will appreciate the position of a farmer holding under landlords who are careless as to the future, and merely live from hand to mouth.

"There is another improvement, which I offered to make at my own expense. I asked permission to dam up a little stream, dig some trenches, and irrigate the fields, by which I could have doubled the produce both in quantity and quality. You will hardly imagine the answer I received. The monks declared the extraordinary fertility which would result from the irrigation, would be a sort of violence done to nature, by which in the end the soil could not fail to be impoverished. What could I reply to such reasoning? These good fathers only think of nursing their income. I tax them neither with ignorance nor bad intentions. I only regret that the land should be in their hands."

"Pasture-farming under such conditions as these is a terribly hazardous pursuit. A single year of drought will suffice to ruin a breeder completely. In the years 1854-5 we lost from twenty to forty per cent. of our cattle; in 1856-7 from seventeen to twenty per cent: and bear in mind that every beast, before it died, had been taxed."

A champion of the Pontifical system offered to prove to me by figures that all is for the best even in the ecclesiastical estates.

"We have our reasons," he said,

"for preferring pasture to arable land. Here is a property consisting of a hundred rubbia[16] (not quite three hundred acres). If it were farmed on the proprietor's own account, the cultivation, harvesting, threshing, and storing would amount to the value of 13,550 days' labour. The wages, seed, keep of horses and cattle, the interest of capital invested in stock, cost of superintendence, wear and tear of tools, etc., would stand him in 8,000 scudi, or 80 scudi per rubbio. The earth returns sevenfold on the seed sown. If 100 measures of seed are sown, the return will be 700. The average price of the measure of corn may be taken at 10 scudi. Thus the value of the crop will be 7,000 scudi, whereas the same crop cost to raise 8,000 scudi. Here are 1,000 scudi (about £215) flung clean into the gutter; and all for the pleasure of cultivating 100 rubbia of land. Is it not much better to let the 100 rubbia to a cattle-breeder, who will pay a rent of thirty or forty shillings per rubbio? On one side we have a clear loss of £215, and on the other a clear income of £160 or £184."

This reasoning is founded upon the calculations of Monsignore Nicolai, a prelate of considerable ability[17]: but it proves nothing, because it attempts to prove too much. If the cultivation of corn be really so ruinous an operation, it is strange that farmers should continue to grow it merely to spite the government.

But although it is quite true that the cultivation of a rubbio of land costs 80 scudi, it is false that the earth only yields sevenfold on the seed sown. According to the admission of the farmers themselves—and they are notoriously not in the habit of exaggerating their profits—it yields thirteen-fold on the seed sown. Thirteen measures of corn are worth thirteen times ten scudi, or 130 scudi. Deduct 80, the cost of cultivation, and 50 remain. Multiply by 100, the result is 5,000 scudi (about £1,070), which will be the net income arising from the 100 rubbia cultivated in corn. The same extent of land under pasturage will produce £160 or £180.

Consider, moreover, that it is not the net, but the gross income, which constitutes the wealth of a country. The cultivation of 100 rubbia, before it puts 5,000 scudi into the farmer's pockets, has put some 8,000 scudi in circulation. These eight thousand scudi are distributed among a thousand or fifteen hundred poor creatures who are sadly in want of them. Pasture-farming, on the contrary, is only profitable to three persons, the landlord, the breeder, and the herdsman. Add to this, that in substituting arable for pasture farming, you substitute health for disease, a more important consideration than any other.

But churchmen who hold or administer lands in mortmain, will never consent to such a salutary resolution. It does not profit them directly enough. As long as they have the upper hand, they will prefer their own ease, and the certainty of their income, to the future welfare of the people.

Pius VI., a Pope worthy to have statues erected to him, conceived the heroic project of forcing a change upon them. He decided that 23,000 rubbia should be annually cultivated in the Agro Romano, and that all the land should in turn be subjected to manual labour. Pius VII. did still better. He decided that Rome, the origo mali, should be the first to apply the remedy. He had a circuit of a mile traced round the capital, and ordered the proprietors to cultivate it without further question. A second, and then a third, were to succeed to the first. The result would have been the disappearance, in a few years, of malaria, and the gradual population of the solitudes. The purification of the atmosphere would, too, be further promoted by planting trees round the fields. Excellent measures these, although tinged by despotism. Enlightened despotism repairs the errors of clumsy despotism. But what could the will of two men avail against the passive resistance of a caste? The laws of Pius VI. and Pius VII. were never enforced. Cultivation, which had extended over 16,000 rubbia under the reign of Pius VI., is reduced to an annual average of 5,000 or 6,000 under the paternal inspection of Pius IX. Not only is the planting of young trees abandoned, but the sheep are allowed to nibble down the tender shoots of the old ones. Besides this, speculators are tolerated, who burn down whole forests, for the production of potash.

The estates of the Roman princes are somewhat better cultivated than those of the Church: but they are involved in the same movement, or, more strictly speaking, enchained in the same stagnation. The law, which retains immense domains for ever in the hands of the same family, and custom, which obliges the Roman nobles to spend so large a portion of their incomes upon show, are equally obstacles to the subdivision and to the improvement of the land.

And while the richest plains in Italy are thus lying dormant, a vigorous, indefatigable, and heroic population cultivates with the pickaxe the arid sides of mountains, and exhausts its strength in attempting to extract vegetation from flints.

I have described the small mountain proprietors who form the populations of the towns of 10,000 inhabitants towards the Mediterranean. You have seen with what indomitable resolution they combat the sterility of their meagre domains, without any hope of ever becoming rich. These poor people, who spend their lives in getting their living, would fancy themselves transported to Paradise, if anybody were to give them a long lease of half-a-dozen acres in the country about Rome. Their labour would then have a purpose, their existence an aim, their family a future.

Perhaps you think they would refuse to labour in an unhealthy country. Why, these are the very men who at present cultivate the Roman Campagna to such extent as it is allowed to be cultivated. They it is who, every spring, come down in large companies from their native mountains, to break up the heavy clods with pickaxes, and complete the work of the plough. It is they, too, who return to harvest the crop under the fatal heat of the summer sun. They attack a field waving with golden corn. They reap from dawn to dusk, with no food more nourishing than bread and cheese. They sleep in the open field, regardless of the nocturnal exhalations which float around them—and some of them never rise again. Those who survive ten days of a harvest more destructive than many a battle, return to their native village with some four or five scudi in their pockets.

If these men could obtain a long lease, or merely take the land from year to year, they would make more money, and the dangers to be encountered would be no greater. They might be established between Home and Montepoli, Rome and Civita Castellana, in the valley of Ceprano, on the hills extending round the Castelli of Rome, where they would breathe an air as wholesome as that of their own mountains; for fever does not always spare them even there. In course of time, the colonizing system, advancing slowly and gradually, might realize the dream of Pius VII., and would inevitably drive before it pauperism and disease.

I dare not hope that such a miracle will ever be wrought by a Pope. The resistance to be encountered is too great, and the power is too inert. But if it should ever please Heaven, which has given them ten centuries of clerical government, to accord them, by way of compensation, ten blessed years of lay administration, we should perhaps see the Church property placed in more active and abler hands.

Then, too, we should see the law of primogeniture and the system of entails abolished, large estates divided, and their owners reduced, by the force of circumstances, to the necessity of cultivating their properties. Good laws on exportation, well enforced, would enable spirited farmers to cultivate corn on a large scale. A network of country roads, and main lines of railway, would convey agricultural produce from one end of the country to the other. A national fleet would carry it all over the world. Public works, institutions of credit, police—But why plunge into such a sea of hopes?

Suffice it to say, that the subjects of the Pope will be as prosperous and as happy as any people in Europe—as soon as they cease to be governed by a Pope!