liberty; they form indeed the “Pariahs” of Roman society. 

“In other countries,” a Roman once said to me, “you have one man who lives in wealth and a thousand who live in comfort.  Here the one man lives in comfort, and the thousand live in misery.”  I believe this picture is only too true.  The middle classes, who live by trade or mental labour, must have a hard time of it.  The professions of Rome are overstocked and underpaid.  The large class of government officials or “impiegati,” to whom admirers of the Papacy point with such pride as evidence of the secular character of the administration, are paid on the most niggardly scale; while all the lucrative and influential posts are reserved for the priestly administrators.  The avowed venality of the courts of justice is a proof that lawyers are too poorly remunerated to find honesty their best policy, while the extent to which barbers are still employed as surgeons shows that the medical profession is not of sufficient repute to be prosperous.  There is no native patronage for art, no public for literature.  The very theatres, which flourish in other despotic states, are here but losing speculations, owing to the interference of clerical regulations.  There are no commerce and no manufactures in the Eternal city.  In a back street near the Capitol,

over a gloomy, stable-looking door, you may see written up “Borsa di Roma,” but I never could discover any credible evidence of business being transacted on the Roman change.  There is but one private factory in Rome, the Anglo-Roman Gas Company.  What trade there is is huckstering, not commerce.  In fact, so Romans have told me, you may safely conclude that every native you meet walking in the streets here, in a broadcloth coat, lives from hand to mouth, and you may pretty surely guess that his next month’s salary is already overdrawn.  The crowds of respectably-dressed persons, clerks and shopkeepers and artizans, whom you see in the lottery offices the night before the drawing, prove the general existence not only of improvidence but of distress.

The favourite argument in support of the Papal rule in Rome, is that the poor gain immensely by it.  I quite admit that the argument contains a certain amount of truth.  The priests, the churches, and the convents give a great deal of employment to the working classes.  There are probably some 30,000 persons who live on the priests, or rather out of the funds which support them.  Then, too, the system of clerical charity operates favourably for the very poor.  Any Roman

in distress can get from his priest a “buono,” or certificate, that he is in want of food, and on presenting this at one of the convents belonging to the mendicant orders, he will obtain a wholesome meal.  No man in Rome therefore need be reduced to absolute starvation as long as he stands well with his priest; that is, as long as he goes to confession, never talks of politics, and kneels down when the Pope passes.  Now the evil moral effects of such a system, its tendency to destroy independent self-respect and to promote improvidence are obvious enough, and I doubt whether even the positive gain to the poor is unmixed.  The wages paid to the servants of the Church, and the amount given away in charity, must come out of somebody’s pockets.  In fact, the whole country and the poor themselves indirectly, if not directly, are impoverished by supporting these unproductive classes out of the produce of labour.  If prevention is better than cure, work is any day better than charity.  After all, too, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and nowhere are the poor more poverty-stricken and needy than in Rome.  The swarms of beggars which infest the town are almost the first objects that strike a stranger here, though strangers have

no notion of the distress of Rome.  The winter, when visitors are here, is the harvest-time of the Roman poor.  It is the summer, when the strangers are gone and the streets deserted, which is their season of want and misery.

The truth is, that Rome, at the present day, lives upon her visitors, as much or more than Ramsgate or Margate, for I should be disposed to consider the native commerce of either of these bathing-places quite as remunerative as that of the Papal capital.  The Vatican is the quietest and the least showy of European courts; and of itself, whatever it may do by others, causes little money to be spent in the town.  Even if the Pope were removed from Rome, I much doubt, and I know the Romans doubt, whether travellers would cease to come, or even come in diminished numbers.  Rome was famous centuries before Popes were heard of, and will be equally famous centuries after they have passed away.  The churches, the museums, the galleries, the ruins, the climate, and the recollections of Rome, would still remain equally attractive, whether the Pope were at hand or not.  Under a secular government the city would be far more lively and, in many respects, more pleasant for strangers.  An

enterprising vigorous rule could probably do much to check the malaria, to bring the Campagna into cultivation, to render the Tiber navigable, to promote roads and railways, and to develop the internal resources of the Roman States.  The gain accruing from these reforms and improvements would, in Roman estimation, far outweigh any possible loss in the number of visitors, or from the absence of the Papal court.  Moreover, whether rightly or wrongly, all Romans entertain an unshakeable conviction that in an united Italian kingdom, Rome must ultimately be the chief, if not the sole capital of Italy.

These reasons, which rest on abstract considerations, naturally affect only the educated classes who are also biassed by their political predilections.  The small trading and commercial classes are, on somewhat different grounds, equally dissatisfied with the present state of things.  The one boon they desire, is a settled government and the end of this ruinous uncertainty.  Now a priestly government supported by French bayonets can never give Rome either order or prosperity.  For the sake of quiet itself, they wish for change.  With respect to the poor, it is very difficult to judge what their feelings or wishes

may be.  From what I have seen, I doubt, whether in any part of Italy, with the exception of the provinces subject to Austrian oppression, the revolution is, strictly speaking, a popular one.  I suspect that the populace of Rome have no strong desire for Italian unity or, still less for annexation to Sardinia, but I am still more convinced that they have no affection or regard whatever for the existing government; not even the sort of attachment, valueless though it be, which the lazzaroni of Naples have for their Bourbon princes.  It is incredible, if any such a feeling did exist, that it should refuse to give any sign of its existence at such a time as the present.

With respect to the actual pecuniary cost of the Papal government, it is not easy to arrive at any positive information; I have little faith in statistics generally, and in Roman statistics in particular; I have, however, before me the official Government Budget for the year 1858.  Like all Papal documents, it is confused and meagre, but yet some curious conclusions may be arrived at from it.  The year 1858 was as quiet a year, be it remembered, as there has been in Italy for ten years past.  It was only on

new year’s day, in 1859, that Napoleon dropped the first hint of the Italian war.  The