The facilities for carrying on coasting trade have, in some measure, interfered with the development of the inland trade of the country. The construction of railways, however, is gradually bringing about a change. Already five lines of {356} rails cross the Apennines, others are projected, and one of the Italian railways, namely, that which pierces the Alps in the tunnel of Mont Cenis, and finally follows the eastern coast to Rimini, has become a portion of the great European highway to India. Nor must the political importance of these railways be underrated, for they knit together the most distant provinces of Italy, and make the country really one.[124]

[Μ]

Fig. 132.—ROUTES OF COMMERCE OF ITALY.

Scale 1 : 6,000,000.

{357}

The commerce of Italy has increased rapidly of late, but it is still inferior not only to that of England, France, Germany, Austria, and Russia, but likewise to that of much smaller countries, like Belgium and the Netherlands. In 1875 the imports, including transit, were estimated at £48,614,280, the exports at £42,301,800. France participates in this commerce to the extent of 31 per cent., England is represented by 23, Austria by 20, and all the other countries of the world share in the remainder. Recently the commerce with North and South America has assumed considerable proportions, and efforts are being made to obtain a footing in Eastern Asia.

The great scourge of Italy consists in the poverty of its peasantry even in the most fertile provinces, as in Lombardy and the Basilicata. These peasants live in foul hovels, and the united earnings of a whole family are hardly sufficient to procure bread. Chestnuts, and a polenta of maize and paste made of damaged flour, are the principal articles of food, and nothing is left for luxuries, or even comfortable clothing. Rickets and other diseases brought about by an insufficiency of food are common, and, in fact, mortality is very great. Emigration is under these circumstances of immense advantage to the country, for the thousands of Italians who seek work or found new homes in South America, the United States, France, Turkey, Egypt, and elsewhere, not only earn their bread, but also render some assistance to those of their relatives who remain behind. It is said that out of 500,000 Italians living abroad, no less than 100,000 are engaged in art, either as painters, sculptors, or musicians, the latter being frequently mere street-singers or organ-grinders.

Ignorance, the usual companion of poverty, is still very great throughout the peninsula. We might err in condemning the Italians because of their ignorance of the arts of reading and writing, for, as the heirs of an ancient civilisation, they are more polished in their manners than the educated peasants of the North. Still this ignorance is most deplorable, for it precludes all progress. Nearly two-thirds of the population over ten years of age are unable to read, and fifty-nine men and seventy-eight women out of every hundred are unable to sign the marriage registers. There are several thousand parishes without elementary schools, and the number of pupils, instead of amounting to the normal proportion of one to every six or seven inhabitants, is only one to about eleven.[125] Education, however, is making fair progress, but its influence upon the diminution of crimes of violence has hitherto been small. In 1874 Signor Cantelli, the Home Secretary, stated that there occurred annually 3,000 homicides, 4,000 cases of highway robbery, and 30,000 violent assaults.

The permanent confusion of the finances of Italy, attended as it is by heavy and vexatious taxes, must be looked upon as one of the principal causes which retard the development of the country. The national debt may appear a small matter if we compare it with that of France, but it has been raised in the course {358} of a single generation, and is augmenting from year to year. The revenue increases but the expenditure does so likewise, and the additional income resulting from an increase of taxation and the sales of Church property is not sufficient to cover the deficiency. The heavy cost of the army, an absence of sustained efforts in carrying on public works, waste and fraud by public servants, have hitherto prevented the establishment of a balance between income and expenditure, and the paper money issued by Government is nowhere accepted at its nominal value.