CHAPTER X.

Frank Trevelyan, one morning on opening his eyes, was surprised to

discover his friend, Mr Vernon Wycherley, (whose lameness was by this

time sufficiently amended to permit him to move about with the aid of a

stick,) sitting half dressed by his bedside--a very cool attire for so

chill a morning, and looking very cold and miserable.

"Hallo! old fellow, what on earth brought you here at this time of day?"

asked Frank. "The first morning visit, I believe, you've honoured me

with since we took up our quarters in this neighbourhood."

"I'm very wretched," said the poet in a faltering tone--"very unhappy."

"Unhappy!" reiterated Frank; "why, what on earth have you to make you

so, unless it be the apprehension that you may jump out of your skin for

joy at your splendid prospects! Unhappy indeed!--the notion's too absurd

to obtain a moment's credit."

"Can a man suffering under a hopeless attachment for an object too pure

almost to tread the earth--can a man, whose affections are set upon an

unattainable object, be otherwise than unhappy?" asked Vernon in a

solemn tone, no bad imitation of Macready; indeed the speaker, whilst

uttering these sentiments, thought it sounded very like it; for he had

often seen that eminent tragedian, and greatly admired his style of

acting.

"But how have you ascertained that the object is so unattainable?"

demanded Frank. "Come now--have you ever yet asked the young lady the

question?"

"Asked her!" repeated Vernon, perfectly amazed that his friend could

have supposed such a thing possible--"How could I presume that so

angelic a creature would love such a fellow as me--or, even supposing

such a thing were possible, what would our good friend the squire say to

my ingratitude for his great kindness; and to my presumption--a mere

younger son without a profession, and scarcely a hundred pounds a-year

to call his own, to think of proposing to one of his daughters, who

would be an honour to the noblest and richest peer of the realm?"

"Well, well, Vernon--one thing first--and you shall have my answers to

all. First, then, as to the fair lady liking you--that I must say,

judging from your looks, is what no one would have thought a very

probable circumstance; but then your poetical talents must be taken into

calculation."

"Oh, don't mention them!" said Vernon. "Worse than good-for-nothing.

_She_ esteems such talents very lightly, and I shall even lose the small

solace to my sorrows I had hoped they would have afforded me. Even this

sad consolation is denied me. My Mary is indifferent to poetry--she

holds sonnets upon hopeless love in utter contempt--entertains no higher

opinion of the writers of them--and considers publishing any thing of

the kind as a downright ungentlemanly act; bringing, as she says it

does, a lady's name before the public in the most indelicate and

unwarrantable manner."

"But is she really serious in these sentiments?" asked Frank. Oh, Frank,

Frank, you're a sad fellow to pump and roast your friend in this way!

"Serious," repeated Vernon, and looking very so himself, "serious--ah!

indeed she is--and expressed herself with more warmth upon the subject

than I could have supposed a being so mild and amiable was capable of."

"But how came all this?" asked Frank--"what were you talking about that

could have caused her to make these remarks?" and this he said in a very

grave and quiet tone of voice, trying to entrap his poetic friend into

telling him much more than the latter was inclined to do, who,

therefore, declined entering more fully into the subject.

"Then, if you won't tell me, I have still the privilege of guessing,"

rejoined Frank; "and now I've found you out, Master Vernon; you've been

attempting acrostics after the Petrarch style[15]--a style in which she

didn't approve of being held forth to the admiring notice of the present

and future generations. Vernon blushed to the very tips of his fingers,

and averted his head that his friend might not perceive how very foolish

he was looking, whilst the latter continued--"Very pretty stanzas, I've

no doubt. How nice they would have come out in a neat little 12mo, price

2s. 6d., boards. Let me see--M--O--L, Mol--that's three; L--Y, ly--two

more, makes Molly; and three and two make five. P--O double T--S,

Potts--that's five more, and five and five make ten. But then that's a

couple of letters too many. Petrarch's Lauretta, you know, only made

eight. Yet, after all, if you liked it, you might leave out the Y and

the S at the end of each name, without at all exceeding the usual

poetical license. Let me see, M--O double L, Moll; P--O double T,

Pott--Moll Pott; or you might retain the Y and leave out the last

T--S--or you might"--

Vernon could bear no more; and having risen abruptly with the intention

of making a bolt of it, was in the act of hobbling out of the room as

fast as his lameness would allow him, when Frank entreated him to stay

but one minute; promising to spare his jokes, for that he really wished

to speak seriously with him; and, having succeeded in pacifying the

enraged poet, proceeded to ask him what he actually intended doing.

"To leave this either to-day or to-morrow," replied Vernon in a

tremulous voice, and with a quivering lip.

"But not without breaking your mind to your lady love?"

"Why, alas! should I do so--why pain her by confessing to her my unhappy

attachment, which I know it is hopeless to expect her to return."

"I'll be hanged," said Frank, "if I think you know any thing at all

about the matter."

"Not know, indeed! How, alas! could any one suppose that an angelic

creature like her could love me?"

"Not many, I grant; but then, as old Captain Growler used to say--never

be astonished at any thing a woman does in that way--

'Pan may win where Phoebus woos in vain.'

And so the lovely Miss Moll--I beg your pardon, Mary, I mean--may in

like manner, do so differently from what any one could have suspected,

as to be induced at last to listen to her Vernon's tale of love."

The lover here alluded to hardly knew whether to treat the matter as a

joke or to get very angry; and so he did neither, whilst Frank went

on--"I'm sure you needn't despair either, as far as looks go. There's

pretty, smiling, little Bessie--in my opinion the prettiest girl of the

two"--Vernon shook his head with mournful impatience--"Well, you think

yours prettiest, and I'll think mine," continued Frank; "that's just as

it should be; and as I was about to say, if the lovely Bessie can smile

upon your humble servant when he talked of love, I don't see why her

sister might not be induced to smile upon his companion if he did the

like."

"How! what? Why, you surely don't mean to say that you've told Miss

Bessie that you love her?"

"Yes, I do," replied Frank. "I told her so yesterday afternoon as we

walked home from church, behind the rest of the party, across the

fields. Thought I wouldn't do it then either, as there were so many

people about--never said a word about the matter over two fields--helped

her over the stiles, too, and talked--no, I be hanged if I think we said

a word, either of us--till as I was helping her to jump down the third,

out it bounced, all of a sudden."

"And what did you say?" asked Wycherley.

"Catch a weasel asleep, Mr Vernon," was Frank's reply.

"But the squire, how will you manage with him, do you suppose?"

"Managed with him already," replied Frank; "settled every thing last

night over a glass of port, after you'd bundled your lazy carcass off to

bed. That is, one glass didn't quite complete the business, for it took

two or three to get my courage up to concert pitch. Then another or two

to discuss the matter--and then a bumper to drink success--and then

another glass"--

"Another!" interrupted Vernon; "why, you little drunken rascal, what

pretext could you have for that?"

"I've a great mind not to tell you for your rude question," resumed

Frank laughing; "but never mind, old fellow, you've borne a great deal

from me before now, and there's probably more in store for you yet; so

without further preamble I'll at once answer your question, by informing

you that the pretext for my last glass was to wet a dry discourse about

the affairs of one Mr Vernon Wycherley. Now, hold your tongue, and don't

interrupt me, or swallow me either, which you appear to be meditating.

And so the squire asked me if I had known him long, and about his

principles, religious and moral; his worldly prospects, and so forth. To

all of which I replied by stating, that, with the exception of being

addicted to flirting a little with the Muses, which old women might

consider as only one step removed from absolute profligacy, he was a

well-disposed young man, and would doubtless grow wiser as he increased

in years; but that his fortune was very limited, and that all his

expectations in that way wouldn't fill a nutshell."

"Ah, there's the rub!" interposed Vernon; "how can a poor fellow with my

small pittance pretend to aspire to the hand of one with such splendid

expectations? My poverty, as I've long foreseen, must mar my every hope,

even if every other obstacle could be removed."

"I don't see that exactly," rejoined Frank; "for, when I told the squire

what your circumstances actually were, and that you had managed to live

creditably upon your small income without getting into debt, he said, if

your head wasn't crammed so confoundedly full of poetical nonsense,

which set you always hunting after shadows, instead of grasping

substances, he should be exceedingly rejoiced to have you for a

son-in-law. So, if you could make up your mind to relinquish your love

for writing poetry"--

"The poetry be hanged!" interrupted Vernon with considerable vehemence.

"I'll cast it to the dogs--the winds--send it to Halifax, Jericho, any

where. Oh! my dear Frank, what a happy fellow you've made me!"

"Which just finished the bottle," continued Frank; "and I find that

somehow or other I've got a precious headach this morning. I wonder how

the squire feels to-day. Will you Vernon, that's a good fellow, give me

a glass of water?"

"There's nothing on earth I wouldn't give you now, my dear Frank, except

my dear Mary; but do you think she will ever consent?"

"Yes, to be sure she will," answered Frank. "I know she will, and that

she is by no means best pleased at your hanging fire so long. I know

this to be the fact, though I mustn't tell you how, why, or wherefore;

but if you don't propose soon she'll consider you are acting neither

fairly nor honourably to her."

"I'll do the deed to-day," said Vernon resolutely.

And so he did.

* * * * *

A very few months more had passed away, before our two heroes were on

the same day united to the fair objects of their choice; and the

generous old squire settled a handsome sum upon them both, sufficient to

supply them with all the essential comforts of life.

"And now, friend Frank," said Vernon Wycherley, "I believe, after all,

you will make a convert of me; for I find that the attachment I had

indulged in, until despair of obtaining the loved object made me fancy

myself the most miserable wretch alive, and that I had incurred the

worst evil that could have befallen me, has made me the happiest of

mankind, and has indeed turned out to be ALL FOR THE BEST; nor can I

think of my blundering fall into the lead shaft in any other light; as,

but for that accident, I should probably never have formed the

acquaintance to which I owe all my good fortune."

"Then, for the future," said the worthy squire, "let us put all our

trust in Heaven, and rest assured that whatever may be the will of

Providence, IT'S ALL FOR THE BEST."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 12: _Cornice_--"him."]

[Footnote 13: "Put"--_Cornice_--to take or carry.]

[Footnote 14: Cleverly.]

[Footnote 15: Commencing each line with a letter of the loved one's

name.]

THE ROMAN CAMPAGNA.

There is no district in Europe which is more remarkable, or has more

strongly impressed the minds of men in modern times, than the ROMAN

CAMPAGNA. Independent of the indelible associations with which it is

connected, and the glorious deeds of which it has been the theatre, its

appearance produces an extraordinary impression on the mind of the

beholder. All is silent; the earth seems struck with

sterility--desolation reigns in every direction. A space extending from

Otricoli to Terracina, above sixty miles in length, and on an average

twenty in breadth, between the Apennines and the sea, containing nearly

four thousand square miles, in the finest part of Italy, does not

maintain a single peasant.[16] A few tombs lining the great roads which

issued from the forum of Rome to penetrate to the remotest parts of

their immense empire; the gigantic remains of aqueducts striding across

the plain, which once brought, and some of which still bring, the

pellucid fountains of the Apennines to the Eternal City, alone attest

the former presence of man. Nothing bespeaks his present existence. Not

a field is ploughed, not a blade of corn grows, hardly a house is to be

seen, in this immense and dreary expanse. On entering it, you feel as if

you were suddenly transported from the garden of Europe to the wilds of

Tartary. Shepherds armed with long lances, as on the steppes of the Don,

and mounted on small and hardy horses, alone are occasionally seen

following, or searching in the wilds for the herds of savage buffaloes

and cattle which pasture the district. The few living beings to be met

with at the post-houses, have the squalid melancholy look which attests

permanent wretchedness, and the ravages of an unhealthy atmosphere.

But though the curse of Providence seems to have fallen on the land, so

far as the human race is concerned, it is otherwise with the power of

physical nature. Vegetation yearly springs up with undiminished vigour.

It is undecayed since the days of Cincinnatus and the Sabine farm. Every

spring the expanse is covered with a carpet of flowers, which enamel the

turf and conceal the earth with a profusion of varied beauty. So rich is

the herbage which springs up with the alternate heats and rains of

summer, that it becomes in most places rank, and the enormous herds

which wander over the expanse are unable to keep it down. In autumn this

rich grass becomes russet-brown, and a melancholy hue clothes the slopes

which environ the Eternal City. The Alban Mount, when seen from a

distance, clothed as it is with forests, vineyards, and villas,

resembles a green island rising out of a sombre waste of waters. In the

Pontine marshes, where the air is so poisonous in the warm months that

it is dangerous, and felt as oppressive even by the passing traveller,

the prolific powers of nature are still more remarkable. Vegetation

there springs up with the rapidity, and flourishes with the luxuriance,

of tropical climates. Tall reeds, in which the buffaloes are hid, in

which a rhinoceros might lie concealed, spring up in the numerous pools

or deep ditches with which the dreary flat surface is sprinkled. Wild

grapes of extraordinary fecundity grow in the woods, and ascend in

luxuriant clusters to the tops of the tallest trees. Nearer the sea, a

band of noble chestnuts and evergreen oaks attests the riches of the

soil, which is capable of producing such magnificent specimens of

vegetable life; and over the whole plain the extraordinary richness of

the herbage, and luxuriance of the aquatic plants, bespeaks a region

which, if subjected to a proper culture and improvement, would, like the

Delta of Egypt, reward eighty and an hundred fold the labours of the

husbandman.

It was not thus in former times. The Campagna now so desolate, the

Pontine marshes now so lonely, were then covered with inhabitants. Veiae,

long the rival of Rome, and which was only taken after a siege as

protracted as that of Troy by Camillus at the head of fifty thousand

men, stood only ten miles from the Capitol. The Pontine marshes were

inhabited by thirty nations. The freehold of Cincinnatus, the Sabine

farm, stood in the now desolate plain at the foot of the Alban Mount. So

rich were the harvests, so great the agricultural booty to be gathered

in the plains around Rome, that for two hundred years after the

foundation of the city, it was the great object of their foreign wars to

gain possession of it, and on that account they were generally begun in

autumn. Montesquieu has observed, that it was the long and desperate

wars which the Romans carried on for three centuries with the Sabines,

Latines, Veientes, and other people in their neighbourhood, which by

slow degrees gave them the hardihood and discipline which enabled them

afterwards to subdue the world. The East was an easy conquest, the Gauls

themselves could be repelled, Hannibal in the end overcome, after the

tribes of Latium had been vanquished. But the district in which the

hardy races dwelt, who so long repelled, and maintained a doubtful

conflict with the future masters of the world, is now a desert. It could

not in its whole extent furnish men to fill a Roman cohort. Rome has

emerged from its long decay after the fall of the Western Empire; the

terrors of the Vatican, the shrine of St Peter, have again attracted the

world to the Eternal City; and the most august edifice ever raised by

the hands of man to the purposes of religion, has been reared within its

walls. But the desolate Campagna is still unchanged.

Novelists and romance-writers have for centuries exhausted their

imaginative and descriptive powers in developing the feelings which this

extraordinary phenomenon, in the midst of the classic land of Italy,

awakens. They have spoken of desolation as the fitting shroud of

departed greatness; of the mournful feelings which arise on approaching

the seat of lost empire; of the shades of the dead alone tenanting the

scene of so much glory. Such reflections arise unbidden in the mind; the

most unlettered traveller is struck with the melancholy impression. An

eloquent Italian has described this striking spectacle:--"A vast

solitude, stretching for miles, as far as the eye can reach. No shelter,

no resting-place, no defence for the wearied traveller; a dead silence,

interrupted only by the sound of the wind which sweeps over the plain,

or the trickling of a natural fountain by the wayside; not a cottage nor

the curling of smoke to be seen; only here and there a cross on a

projecting eminence to mark the spot of a murder; and all this in gentle

slopes, dry and fertile plains, and up to the gates of great city."[17]

The sight of the long lines of ruined aqueducts traversing the deserted

Campagna, of the tombs scattered along the lines of the ancient

_chaussees_ across its dreary expanse, of the dome of St Peter's alone

rising in solitary majesty over its lonely hills, forcibly impress the

mind, and produce an impression which no subsequent events or lapse of

time are able to efface. At this moment the features of the scene, the

impression it produces, are as present to the mind of the writer as when

they were first seen thirty years ago.

But striking as these impressions are, the Roman Campagna is fraught

with instruction of a more valuable kind. It stands there, not only a

monument of the past, but a beacon for the future. It is fraught with

instruction, not only to the ancient but the modern world. The most

valuable lessons of political wisdom which antiquity has bequeathed to

modern times, are to be gathered amidst its solitary ruins.

In investigating the causes of this extraordinary desolation of a

district, in ancient times the theatre of such busy industry, and which,

for centuries, maintained so great and flourishing a rural population,

there are several observations to be made on the principle, as logicians

call it, of _exclusion_, in order to clear the ground before the real

cause is arrived at.

The first of these is, that the causes, whatever they are, which

produced the desolation of the Campagna, had begun to operate, and their

blasting effect was felt, in _ancient_ times, and long before a single

squadron of the barbarians had crossed the Alps. In fact, the Campagna

was a scene of active agricultural industry only so long as Rome was

contending with its redoubtable Italian neighbours--the Latins, the

Etruscans, the Samnites, and the Cisalpine Gauls. From the time that, by

the conquest of Carthage, they obtained the mastery of the shore of the

Mediterranean, _agriculture_ in the neighbourhood of Rome began to

decline. Pasturage was found to be a more profitable employment of

estates; and the vast supplies of grain, required for the support of the

citizens of Rome, were obtained by importation from Lybia and Egypt,

where they could be raised at a less expense. "At, Hercule," says

Tacitus, "olim ex Italia legionibus longinquas in provincias commeatus

portabantur; _nec nunc infecunditate laboratur: sed Africam potius et

Egyptum exercemus, navibusque et casibus vita populi Romani permissa

est_."[18] The expense of cultivating grain in a district where

provisions and wages were high because money was plentiful, speedily led

to the abandonment of tillage in the central parts of Italy, when the

unrestrained importation of grain from Egypt and Lybia, where it could

be raised at less expense in consequence of the extension of the Roman

dominions over those regions, took place. "More lately," says Sismondi,

"the gratuitous distributions of grain made to the Roman people,

rendered the cultivation of grain in Italy still more unprofitable: it

then became absolutely impossible for the little proprietors to maintain

themselves in the neighbourhood of Rome; they became insolvent, and

their patrimonies were sold to the rich. Gradually the abandonment of

agriculture extended from one district to another. The true country of

the Romans--central Italy--_had scarcely achieved the conquest of the

globe, when it found itself without an agricultural population_. In the

provinces peasants were no longer to be found to recruit the legions; as

few corn-fields to nourish them. Vast tracts of pasturage, where a few

slave shepherds conducted herds of thousands of horned cattle, had

supplanted the nations who had brought their greatest triumphs to the

Roman people."[19] These great herds of cattle were then, as now, in the

hands of a few great proprietors. This was loudly complained of, and

signalized as the cancer which would ruin the Roman empire, even so

early as the time of Pliny. "Verumque confitentibus," says he,

"_latifunda perdidere Italiam; imo ac provincias_."[20]

All the historians of the decline and fall of the Roman empire, have

concurred in ascribing to these two causes--viz. the decay of

agriculture and ruin of the agricultural population in Italy, and

consequent engrossing of estates in the hands of the rich--the ruin of

its mighty dominion. But it is not generally known how wide-spread had

been the desolation thus produced; how deep and incurable the wounds

inflicted on the vitals of the state--by the simple consequences of its

extension, which enabled the grain growers of the distant provinces of

the empire to supplant the cultivators of its heart by the unrestricted

admission of foreign corn, before the invasion of the northern nations

commenced. In fact, however, the evil was done before they appeared on

the passes of the Alps; it was the weakness thus brought on the central

provinces which rendered them unable to contend with enemies whom they

had often, in former times, repelled and subdued. A few quotations from

historians of authority, will at once establish this important

proposition.

"_Since the age of Tiberius_," says Gibbon, "the decay of agriculture

had been felt in Italy; and it was a just subject of complaint, that the

laws of the Roman people depended on the accidents of the winds and the

waves. In the division and decline of the empire, _the tributary

harvests of Egypt and Africa_ were withdrawn; the numbers of the

inhabitants continually diminished with the means of subsistence; and

the country was exhausted by the irretrievable losses of war, pestilence

and famine. Pope Gelasius was a subject of Odoacer, and he affirms, with

strong exaggeration, that in Emilia, Tuscany, and the adjacent

provinces, the human species was almost extirpated."[21] Again the same

accurate author observes in another place--"Under the emperors the

agriculture of the Roman provinces was _insensibly ruined_; and the

government was obliged to make a merit of remitting tributes which

_their subjects were utterly unable to pay_. Within sixty years of the

death of Constantine, and on the evidence of an actual survey, an

exemption was granted in favour of three hundred and thirty thousand

English acres of desert and uncultivated land _in the fertile and happy

Campania_, which amounted to an eighth of the whole province. As the

footsteps of the barbarians had not yet been seen in Italy, the cause of

_this amazing desolation, which is recorded in the laws_,[22] can be

ascribed only to the administration of the Roman emperors."[23]

The two things which, beyond all question, occasioned this extraordinary

decline of domestic agriculture in Italy before the invasion of the

barbarians commenced, were the weight of _direct taxation_, and the

_decreasing value of agricultural produce_, owing to the constant

importation of grain from Egypt and Lybia, where, owing to the cheapness

of labour and the fertility of the soil in those remote provinces, so

burdensome did the first become, that Gibbon tells us that, in the time

of Constantine, in Gaul it amounted to _nine pounds sterling of gold_ on

every freeman.[24] The periodical distribution of grain to the populace

of Rome, all of which, from its greater cheapness, was brought by the

government from Egypt and Africa, utterly extinguished the market for

corn to the Italian farmers, though Rome, at its capture by Alaric,

still contained 1,200,000 inhabitants. "All the efforts of the Christian

emperors," says Michelet, "to arrest the depopulation of the country,

were as nugatory as those of their heathen predecessors had been.

Sometimes alarmed at the depopulation, they tried to mitigate the lot of

the farmer, to shield him against the landlord; upon this the proprietor

exclaimed, _he could no longer pay the taxes_. At other times they

strove to chain the cultivators to the soil; but they became bankrupts

or fled, and the land became deserted. Pertinax granted an immunity of

taxes to such _cultivators from distant provinces_ as would occupy the

deserted lands of Italy. Aurelian did the same. Probus, Maximian, and

Constantine, were obliged to transport men and oxen from Germany to

cultivate Gaul. But all was in vain. _The desert extended daily._ The

people in the fields surrendered themselves in despair, as a beast of

burden lies down beneath his load and refuses to rise."[25]

Gibbon has told us what it was which occasioned this constant

depopulation of the country, and ruin of agriculture in the Italian

provinces. "The Campagna of Rome," says he, "about the close of the

sixth century, was reduced to a state of _dreary wilderness_, in which

the air was infectious, the land barren, and the waters impure. Yet the

number of citizens still exceeded the measure of subsistence; _their

precarious food was supplied from the harvests of Lybia and Egypt_; and

the frequent recurrence of famine, betrayed the inattention of the

emperor at Constantinople to the wants of a distant province."[26] Nor

was Italy the only province in the heart of the empire which was ruined

by those foreign importations. Greece suffered not less severely under

it. "In the latter stages of the empire," says Michelet, "_Greece was

supported almost entirely by corn raised in the plains of Poland_."[27]

These passages, to which, did our limits permit, innumerable others to

the same purpose might be added, explain the causes of the decay and

ultimate ruin of agriculture in the central provinces of the Roman

empire, as clearly as if one had arisen from the dead to unfold it. It

was the weight of _direct taxation_, and the want of remunerating prices

to the _grain cultivators_, which occasioned the evil. The first arose

from the experienced impossibility of raising additional taxes on

industry by indirect taxation: the unavoidable consequence of the

contraction of the currency, owing to the habits of hoarding which the

frequent incursions of the barbarians produced; and of the free

importation of African grain, which the extension of the empire over its

northern provinces, and the clamours of the Roman populace for cheap

bread, occasioned. The second arose directly from that importation

itself. The Italian cultivator, oppressed with direct taxes, and tilling

a comparatively churlish soil, found himself utterly unable to compete

with the African cultivators, with whom the process of production was so

much cheaper owing to the superior fertility of the soil under the sun

of Lybia, or the fertilizing floods of the Nile. Thence the increasing

weight of direct taxation, the augmented importation of foreign grain,

the disappearance of free cultivators in the central provinces, the

impossibility of recruiting the legions with freemen, and the ruin of

the empire.

And that it was something pressing upon the cultivation of _grain_, not

of agriculture generally, which occasioned these disastrous results, is

decisively proved by the fact, that, down to the fall of the empire, the

cultivation of land _in pasturage_ continued to be a _highly profitable_

employment in Italy. It is recorded by Ammianus Marcellinus, that when

Rome was taken by Alaric, it was inhabited by 1,200,000 persons, who

were maintained almost entirely by the expenditure of 1780 patrician

families holding estates in Italy and Africa, many of whom had above

L160,000 yearly of rent from land. Their estates were almost entirely

managed in pasturage, and conducted by slaves.[28] Here, then, is

decisive evidence, that down to the very close of the empire, the

managing of estates _in pasturage_ was not only profitable, but

eminently so in Italy--though all attempts at raising grain were

hopeless. It is not an unprofitable cultivation which can yield L160,000

a-year, equivalent to above L300,000 annually of our money, to a single

proprietor, and maintain 1700 of them in such affluence that they

maintained, in ease and luxury, a city not then the capital of the

empire, containing 1,200,000 inhabitants, or considerably more than

Paris at this time. It was not slavery, therefore, which ruined Italian

cultivation; for the whole pasture cultivation which yielded such

immense profits was conducted by slaves. It was the Lybian and Egyptian

harvests, freely imported into the Tiber, which occasioned the ruin of

agriculture in the Latian plains; and, with the consequent destruction

of the race of rural freemen, brought on the ruin of the empire. But

this importation could not injure pasturage; for cattle Africa had none,

and therefore estates in grass still continued to yield great returns.

The second circumstance worthy of notice in this inquiry is, that the

cause of the present desolation of the Campagna, whatever it is, is

something which is _peculiar to that district_, and has continued to act

with as great force in _modern_ as in ancient times. It is historically

known, indeed, that the sanguinary contests of the rival houses of

Orsini and Colonna, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, produced

the most dreadful ravages in the Campagna, and extinguished, for the

time at least, any attempts to reclaim or restore to cultivation this

desolate region. But many centuries have elapsed since this desolating

warfare has entirely ceased; and under the shelter of peace and

tranquillity, agricultural industry in other parts of Italy has

flourished to such a degree as to render it the garden of the world:

witness the rich plain of Lombardy, the incomparable terrace cultivation

of the Tuscan hills, the triple harvests of the Terra di Lavoro, near

Naples. The desolation of the Campagna, therefore, must have been owing

to some causes peculiar to the Roman States, or rather to that part of

those states which adjoins the city of Rome; for in other parts of the

ecclesiastical territories, particularly in the vicinity of Ancona, and

the slope of the Apennines towards Bologna, agriculture is in the most

flourishing state. The hills and declivities are there cut out into

terraces, and cultivated with garden husbandry in as perfect style as in

the mountains of Tuscany. The marches of Ancona contain 426,222

inhabitants, spread over 2111 square miles, which is about 200 to the

square mile; but, considering how large a part of the territory is

barren rock, the proportion on the fertile parts is about 300 to the

square mile, while the average of England is only 260. The soil is

cultivated to the depth of two and three feet.[29] It is in vain,

therefore, to say, that it is the oppression of the Papal government,

the indolence of the cardinals, and the evils of an elective monarchy,

which have been the causes of the ruin of agricultural industry in the

vicinity of Rome. These causes operate just as strongly in the other

parts of the Papal States, where cultivation, instead of being in a

languishing, is in the most flourishing condition. In truth, so far from

having neglected agriculture in this blasted district, the Papal

government, for the last two centuries, has made greater efforts to

encourage it than all the other powers of Italy put together. Every

successive Pope has laboured at the Pontine marshes, but in vain.

Nothing can be more clear, than that the causes which have destroyed

agriculture in the Campagna, are some which were known in the days of

the Roman Republic; gradually came into operation with the extension of

the empire; and have continued in modern times to press upon this

particular district of the Papal States, in a much greater degree than

among other provinces of a similar extent in Italy.

The last circumstance which forces itself upon the mind, in the outset

of this inquiry, is, that the desolation of the Campagna is owing to

moral or political, not physical causes. Naturalists and physicians have

exhausted all their energies for centuries in investigating the causes

of the _malaria_, which is now felt with such severity in Rome in the

autumnal months, and renders health so precarious there at that period;

and the soil has been analyzed by the most skillful chemists, to see

whether there is any peculiarity in the earth, from its volcanic

character, which either induces sterility in the crops, or proves fatal

to the cultivators. But nothing has been discovered that in the

slightest degree explains the phenomena. There is no doubt that the

Campagna is extremely unhealthy in the autumnal months, and the Pontine

marshes still more so; but that is no more than is the case with every

low plain on the shores of the Mediterranean: it obtains in Lombardy,

Greece, Sicily, Asia Minor, and Spain, as well as in the Agro Romano. If

any one doubt it, let him lie down to sleep in his cloak in any of these

places in a night of September, and see what state he is in in the

morning. Clarke relates, that intermittent fevers are universal in the

Grecian plains in the autumnal months: in Estremadura, in September

1811, on the banks of the Guadiana, nine thousand men fell sick in

Wellington's army in three days. The savannas of America, where "death

bestrides the evening gale," when first ploughed up, produce

intermittent fevers far more deadly than the malaria of the Roman

Campagna. But the energy of man overcomes the difficulty, and, ere a few

years have passed away, health and salubrity prevail in the regions of

former pestilence. It was the same with the Roman Campagna in the early

days of the Republic; it is the same now with the Campagna of Naples,

and the marshy plains around Parma and Lodi, to the full as unhealthy in

a desert state as the environs of Rome. It would be the same with the

Agro Romano, if moral causes did not step in to prevent the efforts and

industry of man, from here, as elsewhere, correcting the insalubrity of

uncultivated nature.

And for decisive evidence that this desolation of the Campagna is owing

to moral or political, not physical causes, and that, under a different

system of administration, it might be rendered as salubrious and

populous as it was in the early days of the Roman Republic, reference

may be made to the fact, that in many parts of Italy, equally unhealthy

and in this desert state, cultivation has taken place, a dense

population has arisen, and the dangerous qualities of the atmosphere

have disappeared. Within the last twenty years, the district called

Grossete has been reclaimed, in the most pestilential part of the

Maremma of Tuscany, by an industrious population, which has succeeded in

introducing agriculture and banishing the malaria; and the ruins of the

Roman villas on the banks of the Tiber, near the sea, prove that the

Romans went to seek salubrity and the healthful breezes of the sea,

where now they could meet with nothing but pestilence and death. The

rocky and dry slopes of the Campagna are admirably adapted for raising

olives and vines; while the difference of the soil and exposure in

different places, promises a similar variety in their wines. The Pontine

marshes themselves, and the vast plain which extends from them to the

foot of the cluster of hills called the Alban Mount, are not more

oppressed by water, or lower in point of level, than the plains of Pisa;

and yet there the earth yields magnificent crops of grain and succulent

herbs, while the poplars, by which the fields are intersected, support

to their very summits the most luxuriant vines. The Campagna of Naples

is more volcanic and level than that of Rome; the hills and valleys of

Baiae are nothing but the cones and craters of extinguished volcanoes;

and if we would see what such a district becomes when left in a desert

state, we have only to go to the Maremma of Pestum, now as desolate and

unhealthy as the Pontine marshes themselves. But in the Campagna of

Naples an industrious population has overcome all these obstacles, and

rendered the land, tenanted only by wild boars and buffaloes in the

fourth century, the garden of Europe, known over all the world, from its

riches, by the name of the Campagna Felice.

Nay, the Agro Romano itself affords equally decisive proof, that where

circumstances will permit the work of cultivation to be commenced so as

to be carried on at a profit, the malaria and desolation speedily

disappear before the persevering efforts of human industry. In many

parts of the district, the custom of granting perpetual leases at a

fixed rate prevails, the _Emphyteutis_ of the Roman law, the sources of

the prosperity of the cultivators in Upper and Lower Austria, and well

known in Scotland under the name of feus. Sismondi has given the

following account of the effect of the establishment of a permanent

interest in the soil in arresting the effects of the malaria, and

spreading cultivation over the land:--"The Emphyteutic cultivator has a

permanent interest in the soil: he labours, therefore, unceasingly for

the good of his family. He cuts out his slope into terraces, covers it

with trees, fruits, and garden-stuffs: he takes advantage of every

leisure moment, either in himself, his wife, or children, to advance the

common cultivation. Industry and abundance reign around. Whenever you

ascend the volcanic hills of Latium, or visit those ravishing slopes

which so many painters have illustrated, around the lakes of Castel

Gandolfo or Nemi, at L'Aricia, Rocca di Papa, Marino, and Frescati;

whenever you meet with a smiling cultivation, healthy air, and the

marks of general abundance, you may rest assured the cultivator is

proprietor of the fruits of the soil. The bare right of property, or

superiority, as the lawyers term it, belongs to some neighbouring lord;

but the real property, "il miglioramento," belongs to the cultivator. In

this way, in these happy districts, the great estates, the _latifundia_

of Pliny, have been practically distributed among the peasantry; and,

whenever this is the case, you hear no more of the malaria. Agriculture

has caused to arise in those localities a numerous population, which

multiplies with singular rapidity, and for ages has furnished

cultivators not only for the mountains where it has arisen, but bands of

adventurers, who in every age have filled the ranks of the Italian

armies."[30]

But while those examples, to which, did our limits permit, many others

might be added, decisively demonstrate that human industry can

effectually overcome the physical difficulties or dangers of the Roman

Campagna; yet it is clear that some great and overwhelming cause is at

work, which prevents agriculture flourishing, by means of tenants or

_metayers_, in the plains of the Campagna. The plains, it is true, are

in the hands of a few great proprietors, but their tenants are extremely

rich, often more so, Sismondi tells us, than their landlords. What is

it, then, which for so long a period has chained the Campagna to

pasturage, and rendered all attempts to restore it to the plough

abortive? The answer is plain: It is the same cause now which binds it

to pasturage, which did so under the Romans from the time of

Tiberius--_it is more profitable to devote the land to grass than to

raise grain._ And it is so, not because the land will not bear grain

crops, for it would do now even better than it did in the days of the

Etruscans and the Sabines; since so many centuries of intervening

pasturage have added so much to its fertility. It is so, because the

weakness of the Papal government, yielding, like the Imperial in ancient

days, to the cry for cheap bread among the Roman populace, has fed the

people, from time immemorial, with foreign grain, instead of that of its

own territory. The evidence on this subject is as clear and more

detailed in modern, than it was in ancient times; and both throw a broad

and steady light on the final results of that system of policy, which

purchases the present support of the inhabitants of cities, by

sacrificing the only lasting and perennial sources of strength derived

from the industry and population of the country.

During the confusion and disasters consequent on the fall of the Empire,

after the capture of Rome by the Goths, the Campagna remained entirely a

desert; but it continued in the hands of the successors of the great

senatorial families who held it in the last days of the Empire. "The

Agro Romano," says Sismondi, "almost a desert, had been long exposed to

the ravages of the barbarians, who in 846 pillaged the Vatican, which

led Pope Leo IV., in the following year, to enclose that building within

the walls of Rome. For an hundred years almost all the hills which

border the horizon from Rome were crowned with forts; the ancient walls

of the Etruscans were restored, or rebuilt from their ruins; the old

hill strengths, where the Sabines, the Hernici, the Volscians, the

Coriolani, had formerly defended their independence, again offered

asylums to the inhabitants of the plains. But the great estates, the

bequest of ancient Rome, remained undivided. With the first dawn of

history in the middle ages, we see the great house of the Colonna master

of the towns of Palestrina, Genazzano, Zagorole; that of Orsini, of the

territories of the republics of Veiae and Ceres, and holding the

fortresses of Bracciano, Anguetta, and Ceri. The Monte-Savili, near

Albano, still indicates the possessions of the Savili, which

comprehended the whole ancient kingdom of Turnus; the Frangipani were

masters of Antium, Astura, and the sea-coast; the Gaetani, the

Annibaldeschi of the Castles which overlook the Pontine marshes; while

Latium was in the hands of a smaller number of feudal families than it

had formerly numbered republics within its bounds."[31]

But while divided among these great proprietors, the Roman Campagna was

still visited, as in the days of the emperor, with the curse of cheap

grain, imported from the other states bordering on the Mediterranean,

and was in consequence exclusively devoted to the purposes of pasturage.

An authentic document proves that this was the case so far down as the

fifteenth century. In the year 1471, Pope Sextus IV. issued a bull,

which was again enforced by Clement VII. in 1523, and which bore these

remarkable words:--"Considering the frequent famines to which Rome has

been exposed in late years, _arising chiefly from the small amount of

lands which have been sown or laid down in tillage_, and that their

owners _prefer allowing them to remain uncultivated, and pastured only

by cattle_, than to cultivate for the use of men, on the ground _that

the latter mode of management is more profitable than the former_."[32]

The decree ordered the cultivation of a large portion of the Campagna in

grain under heavy penalties.

And that this superior profit of pasturage to tillage has continued to

the present time, and is the real cause of the long-continued and

otherwise inexplicable desolation of this noble region, has been clearly

demonstrated by a series of important and highly interesting official

decrees and investigations, which, within this half century, have taken

place by order of the Papal government. Struck with the continued

desolation of so large and important a portion of their territory, the

popes have both issued innumerable edicts to enforce tillage, and set on

foot the most minute inquiries to ascertain the causes of their failure.

It is only necessary to mention one. Pius VI., in 1783, took a new and

most accurate survey or _cadastre_ of the Agro Romano, and ordained the

proprietors to sow annually 17,000 _rubbi_ (85,000 acres) with

grain.[33] This decree, however, like those which had preceded it, was

not carried into execution. "The proprietors and farmers," says Nicolai,

"equally opposed themselves to its execution; the former declaring that

they must have a higher rent for the land if laid down in tillage, than

the latter professed themselves able to pay."[34]

To ascertain the cause of this universal and insurmountable resistance

of all concerned to the cultivation of the Campagna, the Papal

government in 1790 issued a commission to inquire into the matter, and

the proprietors prescribe to two memoirs on the subject, which at once

explained the whole difficulty. The one set forth the cost and returns

of 100 rubbi (500 acres) in grain tillage in the Roman Campagna; the

other, the cost and returns of a flock of 2500 sheep in the same

circumstances. The result of the whole was, that while the grain

cultivation would with difficulty, on an expenditure of 8000 crowns

(L2000,) bring in a clear profit _of thirty crowns_ (L7, 10s.) to the

farmer, and nothing at all to the landlord, the other would yield

between them a profit _of 1972 crowns_, (L496.)[35] Well may Sismondi

exclaim:--"These two reports are of the very highest importance. They

explain the constant invincible resistance which the proprietors and

farmers of the Roman Campagna have opposed to the extension of grain

cultivation; they put in a clear light the opposite interest of great

capitalists and the interest of the state; they give in authentic

details, which I have personally verified, and found to be still

entirely applicable and correct, on the causes which have reduced the

noble district of the Roman Campagna to its desolate state, and still

retain it in that condition. Incredible as the statements may appear,

they are amply borne out by everyday experience. In effect, all the

farmers whom I have consulted, affirm, that they invariably lose by

grain cultivation, and that they never resort to it, but to prevent the

land from being overgrown by brushwood or forests, and rendered unfit

for profitable pasturage."[36]

Extraordinary as these facts are, as to the difference between the

profits of pasturage and tillage in the Agro Romano, it is only by the

most rigid economy, and reducing the shepherds to the lowest amount of

subsistence consistent with the support of life, that the former yields

any profits at all. The wages of the shepherds are only fifty-three

francs (L2) for the winter season, and as much for the summer; the

proprietors, in addition, furnishing them with twenty ounces of bread

a-day, a half-pound of salt meat, a little oil and salt a-week. As to

wine, vinegar, or fermented liquors, they never taste any of them from

one year's end to another. Such as it is, their food is all brought to

them from Rome; for in the whole Campagna there is not an oven, a

kitchen, or a kitchen-garden, to furnish an ounce of vegetables or

fruits. The clothing of these shepherds is as wretched as their fare. It

consists of sheep-skin, with the wool outside; a few rags on their legs

and thighs, complete their vesture. Lodging or houses they have none;

they sleep in the open air, or nestle into some sheltered nook among the

ruined tombs or aqueducts which are to be met with in the wilderness, in

some of the caverns, which are so common in that volcanic region, or

beneath the arches of the ancient catacombs. A few spoons and coarse

jars form their whole furniture; the cost of that belonging to

twenty-nine shepherds, required for the 2500 sheep, is only 159 francs

(L7.) The sum total of the expense of the whole twenty-nine persons,

including wages, food, and every thing, is only 1038 crowns, or L250

a-year; being about L8, 10s. a-head annually. The produce of the flock

is estimated at 7122 crowns (L1780) annually, and the annual profit 1972

crowns, or L493.[37]

The other table given by Nicolai, exhibits, on a similar expenditure of

capital, the profit of tillage; and it is so inconsiderable, as rarely,

and that only in the most favourable situations, to cover the expense of

cultivation. The labourers, who almost all come from the neighbouring

hills, above the level of the malaria, are obliged to be brought from a

distance at high wages for the time of their employment; sometimes in

harvest wages are as high as five francs, or four shillings a-day. The

wages paid to the labourers on a grain farm on which L2000 has been

expended on 500 acres, amount to no less than 4320 crowns, or L1080

sterling, annually; being above four times the cost of the shepherds for

a similar expenditure of capital, though they wander over ten times the

surface of ground. The labourers never remain in the fields; they set

off to the hills when their grain is sown, and only return in autumn to

cut it down. They do not work above twenty or thirty days in the year;

and therefore, though their wages for that period are so high, they are

in misery all the rest of the season. But though so little is done for

the land, the price received for the produce is so low, that cultivation

in grain brings no profit, and is usually carried on at a loss. The

peasants who conduct it never go to Rome--have often never seen it; they

make no purchases there; and _the most profitable of all trades in a

nation, that between the town and the country, is unknown in the Roman

States_.[38]

Here, then, the real cause of the desolation of the Campagna stands

revealed in the clearest light, and on the most irrefragable evidence.

It is not cultivated for grain crops, because remunerating prices for

that species of produce cannot be obtained. It is exclusively kept in

pasturage, because it is in that way only that a profit can be obtained

from the land. And that it is this cause, and not any deficiency of

capital or skill on the part of the tenantry, which occasions the

phenomenon, is further rendered apparent by the wealth, enterprize, and

information on agricultural subjects, of the great farmers in whose

lands the land is vested. "The conductors," says Sismondi, "of rural

labour in the Roman States, called _Mercanti di Tenute_ or _di

Campagne_, are men possessed of great capital, and who have received the

very best education. Such, indeed, is their opulence, that it is

probable they will, erelong, acquire the property of the land of which

at present they are tenants. Their number, however, does not exceed

eighty. They are acquainted with the most approved methods of

agriculture in Italy and other countries; they have at their disposal

all the resources of science, art, and immense capital; have availed

themselves of all the boasted advantages of centralization, of a

thorough division of labour, of a most accurate system of accounts, and

checking of inferior functionaries. The system of great farms has been

carried to perfection in their hands. But, with all these advantages,

they cannot in the Agro Romano, _once so populous, still so fertile,

raise grain to a profit_. The labourers cost more than they are worth,

more than their produce is worth; while on a soil not richer, and under

the same climate and government, in the marches of Ancona, agriculture

maintains two hundred souls the square mile, in comfort and

opulence."[39]

What, then, is the explanation which is to be given of this

extraordinary impossibility of raising grain with a profit in the Roman

Campagna; while in a similar climate, and under greater physical

disadvantages, it is in the neighbouring plains of Pisa, and the

Campagna Felice of Naples, the most profitable of all species of

cultivation, and therefore universally resorted to? The answer is

obvious--It is the cry for cheap bread in Rome, the fatal bequest of the

strength of the Imperial, to the weakness of the Papal government, which

is the cause. It is the necessity under which the ecclesiastical

government felt itself, of yielding every thing to _the clamour for a

constant supply of cheap bread for the people of the town_ which has

done the whole. It is the ceaseless importation of foreign grain into

the Tiber by government, to provide cheap food for the people, which has

reduced the Campagna to a wilderness, and rendered Rome in modern, not

less than Tadmor in ancient times, a city in the desert.

It has been already noticed, that in the middle of the fifteenth century

Sextus IV. issued a decree, ordaining the proprietors of lands in the

Campana to lay down a third of their estates yearly in tillage. But the

Papal government, not resting on the proprietors of the soil, but

mainly, in so far as temporal power went, on the populace of Rome, was

under the necessity of making at the same time extraordinary efforts to

obtain supplies of foreign grain. A free trade in grain was permitted to

the Tiber, or rather the government purchased foreign grain wherever

they could find it cheapest, as the emperors had from a similar

apprehension done in ancient times, and retailed it at a moderate price

to the people. They became themselves the great corn-merchant. This

system, of course, prevented the cultivation of the Campagna, and

rendered the decree of Sextus IV. nugatory; for no human laws can make

men continue a course of labour at a loss to themselves. Thence the

citizens of Rome came to depend entirely on foreign supplies of grain

for their daily food; and the consumption of the capital had no more

influence on the agriculture of the adjoining provinces, than it had on

that of Hindostan or China. Again, as in the days of Tacitus, the lives

of the Roman people were exposed to the chances of the winds and the

waves. As this proved a fluctuating and precarious source of supply, a

special board, styled the _Casa Annonaria_, was constituted by

government for the regular importation of foreign grain, and retailing

of it at a fixed and low price to the people. This board has been in

operation for nearly two hundred and fifty years; and it is the system

it has pursued which has prevented all attempts to cultivate the

Campagna, by rendering it impossible to do so at a profit. The details

of the proceedings of this board--this "_chamber of commerce_" of Rome,

are so extremely curious and instructive, that we must give them in the

authentic words of Sismondi.

"Having failed in all their attempts to bring about the cultivation of

the Campagna, the popes of the 17th and 18th centuries endeavoured to

secure abundance in the markets by other means. The motive was

legitimate and praiseworthy; but the means taken failed in producing the

desired effect, because they sacrificed the future to the present, and,

_in the anxiety to secure the subsistence of the people, compromised

those who raised food for them_. Pope Pius VI., who reigned from 1600 to

1621, instituted the _Casa Annonaria_ of the apostolic chamber, which

was charged with the duty of providing subsistence for the inhabitants

of Rome. This board being desirous, above all things, of avoiding

seditions and discontent, established it as a principle, that whatever

the cost of production was, or the price in a particular year, bread

should be sold at certain public bake-houses at a certain price. This

price was fixed at a Roman baiocco, a tenth more than the sous of

France, (1/2 d. English,) for eight ounces of bread. _This price has now

been maintained constantly the same for two hundred years_; and it is

still kept at the same level, with the difference only of a slight

diminution in the weight of the bread sold for the _baiocco_ in years of

scarcity.

"As a necessary consequence of this regulation, the apostolic chamber

soon found itself under the necessity of taking entire possession of the

commerce of grain. It not only bought up the whole which was to be

obtained in the country, but provided for the public wants _by large

importation_. Regulations for the import and export of grain were made

by it; sometimes, it was said, through the influence of those who

solicited exemptions. Whether this was the case or not is uncertain, and

not very material. What is certain is, that the rule by which the

chamber was invariably regulated, viz. _that of consulting no other

interest but that of the poor consumer_, is as vicious and ruinous as

the one so much approved of now-a-days, of attending only to the

interest of the proprietors and producers. Government, doubtless, should

attend to the vital matter of the subsistence of the people; but it

should do so with a view to the interest of all, not a single section of

society.

"At what price soever bread was bought by them, the _Casa Annonaria_

sold it to the bakers at seven Roman crowns (30 f.) the _rubbio_, which

weighs 640 kilograms, (1540 lbs.) That price was not much different from

the average one; and the apostolic chamber sustained no great loss till

1763, by its extensive operations in the purchase and sale of grain. But

at that period the price of wheat began to rise, and it went on

continually advancing to the end of the century. Notwithstanding its

annual losses, however, the apostolic chamber was too much afraid of

public clamour to raise the price of bread. It went on constantly

retailing it at the same price to the people; and the consequence was,

that its losses in 1797, when the pontifical government was overturned,

had accumulated to no less than 17,457,485 francs, or L685,000."[40]

It might naturally have been imagined, that after so long an experience

of the effects of a forcible reduction of the price of grain below the

level at which it could be raised at a profit by home cultivators, the

ecclesiastical government would have seen what was the root of the evil,

and applied themselves to remedy it, by giving some protection to native

industry. But though the evil of the desolation of the Campagna was felt

in its full extent by government in subsequent times; yet as the first

step in the right course, viz. protecting native industry by stopping

the sales of bread by government at lower prices than it could be raised

at home, was likely to occasion great discontent, it was never

attempted. Such a step, dangerous in the firmest and best established,

was impossible in an elective monarchy of old Popes, feeble cardinals,

and a despicable soldiery. They went on deploring the evil, but never

once ventured to face the remedy. In 1802, Pius VII., a most

public-spirited and active pontiff, issued an edict, in which he

declared, "We are firmly persuaded that if we cannot succeed in applying

a remedy the abandonment and depopulation of the Campagna will go on

increasing, till the country becomes a fearful desert. _Fatal experience

leaves no doubt on that point._ We see around us, above all in the

Campagna, a number of estates entirely depopulated and abandoned to

grass, which, in the memory of man, were rich in agricultural

productions, and crowded with inhabitants, as is clearly established by

the seignorial rights attached to them. Population had been introduced

into these domains by agriculture, which employed a multitude of hands,

being in a flourishing state. But now the obstacles opposed to the

interior commerce of grain, _and the forced prices fixed by government,

have caused agriculture to perish_. Pasturage has come every where to

supplant it; and the great proprietors and farmers living in Rome, have

abandoned all thought of dividing their possessions among cultivators,

and sought only to diminish the cost of the flocks to which they have

devoted their estates. But if that system has proved profitable to them,

it has been fatal to the state, which it has deprived of its true

riches, the produce of agriculture, and of the industry of the rural

population."[41] But it was all in vain. The measures adopted by Pius

VII. to resuscitate agriculture in the Campagna, have proved all

nugatory like those of all his predecessors; the importation of foreign

grain into the Tiber, the forced prices at which it was sold by the

government at Rome, rendered it impossible to prosecute agriculture to a

profit; and the Campagna has become, and still continues, a desert.[42]

Here, then, the real cause of the long-continued desolation of the Agro

Romano, both in ancient and modern times, becomes perfectly apparent. It

is the cry for cheap bread in Rome which has done the whole. To stifle

this cry in the dreaded populace of the Eternal City, the emperors

imported grain largely from Egypt and Lybia, and distributed it at an

elusory price, or gratuitously, to the people. The unrestricted

importation of foreign grain, in consequence of those provinces becoming

parts of the empire, enabled the cultivators and merchants of Africa to

deluge the Italian harbours with corn at a far cheaper rate than it

could be raised in Italy itself, where labour bore a much higher price,

in consequence of money being more plentiful in the centre than the

extremities of the empire. Thus the market of its towns was lost to the

Italian cultivators, and gained to those of Egypt and Lybia, where a

vertical sun, or the floods of the Nile, almost superseded the expense

of cultivation. Pasturage became the only way in which land could be

managed to advantage in the Italian fields; because live animals and

dairy produce do not admit of being transported from a distance by sea,

with a profit to the importer, and the sunburnt shores of Africa yielded

no herbage for their support. Agriculture disappeared in Italy, and with

it the free and robust arms which conducted it; pasturage succeeded, and

yielded large rentals to the great proprietors, into whose hands, on the

ruin of the little freeholders by foreign importation, the land had

fallen. But pasturage could not nourish a bold peasantry to defend the

state; it could only produce the riches which might attract its enemies.

Hence the constant complaint, that Italy had ceased to be able to

furnish soldiers to the legionary armies; hence the entrusting the

defence of the frontier to mercenary barbarians, and the ruin of the

empire.

In modern times the same ruinous system has been continued, and hence

the continued desolation of the Campagna, so pregnant with weakness and

evil to the Roman states. The people never forgot the distribution of

grain by government in the time of the emperors; the Papal authorities

never had strength sufficient to withstand the menacing cry for cheap

bread. Anxious to keep the peace in Rome, and depending little on the

barons of the country, the ecclesiastical government saw no resource but

to import grain themselves from any countries where they could get it

cheapest, and sell it at a fixed price to the people. This price, down

to 1763, was just the price at which _it could be imported with a fair

profit_; as is proved by the fact, that down to that period the _Casa

Annonaria_ sustained no loss. But it was lower than the rate at which it

could be raised even in the fertile plains of the Campagna, where labour

was dearer and taxes heavier than in Egypt and the Ukraine, from whence

the grain was imported by government; and consequently cultivation could

not be carried on in the Agro Romano but at a loss. It of course ceased

altogether; and the land, as in ancient times, has been entirely devoted

to pasturage, to the extinction of the rural population, and the

infinite injury of the state.

And this explains how it has happened, that in other parts of the Papal

states, particularly in the marches on the other side of the Apennines,

between Bologna and Ancona, agriculture is not only noways depressed,

but flourishing; and the same is the case with the slopes of the Alban

Mount, even in the Agro Romano. In the first situation, the necessity of

bending to the cry for cheap bread in the urban population was not felt,

as the marches contained no great towns, and the weight of influence was

in the rural inhabitants. There was no _Casa Annonaria_, or fixed price

of bread there; and therefore agriculture flourished as it did in

Lombardy, the Campagna Felice of Naples, the plain of Pisa, or any other

prosperous part of Italy. In the latter, it was in _garden cultivation_

that the little proprietors, as in nearly the whole slopes of the

Apennines, were engaged. The enchanting shores of the lakes of Gandolfo

and Nemi, the hills around L'Aricia and Marino, are all laid out in the

cultivation of grapes, olives, fruits, vegetables, and chestnuts. No

competition from without was to be dreaded by them, as at least, until

the introduction of steam, it was impossible to bring such productions

by distant sea voyages, so as to compete with those raised in equally

favourable situations within a few miles of the market at home. In these

places, therefore, the peculiar evil which blasted all attempts at grain

cultivation in the Campagna was not felt; and hence, though in the Roman

states, and subject, in other respects, to precisely the same government

as the Agro Romano, they exhibit not merely a good, but the most

admirable cultivation.

If any doubt could exist on the subject, it would be removed by two

other facts connected with agriculture on the shores of the

Mediterranean; one in ancient and one in modern times.

The first of these is that while agriculture declined _in Italy_, as has

been shown from the time of Tiberius, until at length nearly the whole

plains of that peninsula were turned into grass, it, from the same date,

took an extraordinary start in Spain and Lybia. And to such a length had

the improvement of Africa, under the fostering influence of the market

of Rome and Italy gone, that it contained, at the time of its invasion

by the Vandals under Genseric, in the year 430 of the Christian era,

twenty millions of inhabitants, and had come to be regarded with reason

as the garden of the human race. "The long and narrow tract," says

Gibbon, "of the African coast was filled, when the Vandals approached

its shores, with frequent monuments of Roman art and magnificence; and

the respective degrees of improvement might be accurately measured by

the distance from Carthage and the Mediterranean. A simple reflection

will impress every thinking mind with the clearest idea of its fertility

and cultivation. The country was extremely populous; the inhabitants

reserved a liberal supply for their own use; _and the annual

exportation_, PARTICULARLY OF WHEAT, _was so regular and plentiful, that

Africa deserved the name of the common granary of Rome and of

mankind_."[43] Nor had Spain flourished less during the long

tranquillity and protection of the legions. In the year 409 after

Christ, when it was first invaded by the barbarians, its situation is

thus described by the great historian of the _Decline and Fall of the

Roman Empire_. "The situation of Spain, separated on all sides from the

enemies of Rome by the sea, by the mountains, and by intermediate

provinces, had secured the long tranquillity of that remote and

sequestered country; and we may observe, as a sure symptom of _domestic

happiness_, that in a period of 400 years, Spain furnished very few

materials to the history of the Roman empire. The cities of Merida,

Cordova, Seville, and Tarragona, were numbered with the most illustrious

of the Roman world. The various plenty of the animal, _vegetable_, and

mineral kingdoms was improved and manufactured by the skill of an

industrious people, and the peculiar advantages of naval stores

contributed to support an extensive and profitable trade." And he adds,

in a note, many particulars relative to the _fertility_ and trade of

Spain, may be found in Huet's _Commerce des Anciens_, c. 40, p. 228.[44]

These facts are very remarkable, and worthy of the most profound

attention; for they point in a decisive manner, they afford the

_experimentum crucis_ as to the real cause of the long-continued and

frightful decay of Italian agriculture during the reign of the emperors.

For here, it appears, that during the four hundred years that the

Western Empire endured, while the cultivation of grain in Italy was

constantly declining, and at last wholly ceased, insomuch that the

country relapsed entirely into a state of nature, or was devoted to the

mere raising of grass for sheep and cattle, _agriculture was flourishing

in the highest degree in the remoter provinces of the Empire_; and the

exportation of grain from Africa had become so great and regular, that

it had come to be regarded as the granaries of Rome and of the world!

The government was the same, the slavery was the same, in Africa as in

Italy. Yet in the one country agriculture rose, during four centuries,

to the highest point of elevation; while in the other, during the same

period, it sunk to the lowest depression, until it became wellnigh

extinct, so far as the raising of grain was concerned. How did this come

to pass? It could not have been that the labour of slaves was too costly

to raise grain; for it was raised at a great profit, and to a prodigious

extent, _almost entirely by slaves_, in Egypt and Lybia. What was it,

then, which destroyed agriculture in Italy and Greece, while, under

circumstances precisely similar in all respects _but one_, it was, at

the very same time, rising to the very highest prosperity in Egypt,

Lybia, and Spain? Evidently _that one circumstance_, and that was--that

Italy and Greece were the heart of the empire, the theatre of

long-established civilization, the abode of opulence, the seat of

wealth, the centre to which riches flowed from the extremities of the

empire. Pounds were plentiful there, and, consequently, labour was dear;

in the provinces pence were few, and, therefore, it was cheap. It was

impossible, under a free trade in grain, for the one to compete with the

other. It is for the same reason that agricultural labour is now

sixpence a-day in Poland, tenpence in Ireland, and two shillings in

Great Britain.

The peculiar conformation of the Roman empire, while it facilitated in

many respects its growth and final settlement under the dominion of the

Capitol, led by a process not less certain, and still more rapid, to its

ruin, when that empire was fully extended. If any one will look at the

map, he will see that the Roman empire spread outwards from the shores

of the Mediterranean. It embraced all the monarchies and republics

which, in the preceding ages of the world, had grown up around that

inland sea. Water, therefore, afforded the regular, certain, and cheap

means of conveying goods and troops from one part of the empire to the

other. Nature had spread out a vast system of internal navigation,

which brought foreign trade in a manner to every man's door. The legions

combated alternately on the plains of Germany, in the Caledonian woods,

on the banks of the Euphrates, and at the foot of Mount Atlas. But much

as this singular and apparently providential circumstance aided the

growth, and for a season increased the strength of the empire, it

secretly but certainly undermined its resources, and in the end proved

its ruin. The free trade in grain which it necessarily brought with it,

when the same dominion stretched over all Spain and Africa, and

long-continued peace had brought their crops to compete with the Italian

in the supply of the Roman, or the Grecian in that of the

Constantinopolitan markets, destroyed the fabric the legions had reared.

Italy could not compete with Lybia, Greece with Poland. Rome was

supplied by the former, Constantinople by the latter. If the

Mediterranean wafted the legions out in the rise of the empire, _it

wafted foreign grain in_ in its later stages, and the last undid all

that the former had done. The race of _agricultural freemen_ in Italy,

the bone and muscle of the legions which had conquered the world, became

extinct; the rabble of towns were unfit for the labours, and averse to

the dangers of war; mercenaries became the only resource.

The fact in modern times, which illustrates and confirms the same view

of the chief cause of the ruin of the Roman empire, is, that a similar

effect has taken place, and is at this moment in full operation in

Romelia, and all the environs of Constantinople. Every traveller in the

East knows that desolation as complete as that of the Campagna of Rome

pervades the whole environs of Constantinople; that the moment you

emerge from the gates of that noble city, you find yourself in a

wilderness, and that the grass comes up to our horse's girths all the

way to Adrianople. "Romelia," says Slade, "if cultivated, would become

the granary of the East;" _whereas Constantinople depends on Odessa for

daily bread_. The burial-grounds, choked with weeds and underwood,

constantly occurring in every traveller's route, far remote from

habitations, are eloquent testimonials of continued depopulation. The

living, too, are far apart; a town about every fifty miles; _a village

every ten miles_, is deemed close; and horsemen meeting on the highway

regard each other as objects of curiosity.[45] This is the Agro Romano

over again. Nor will it do to say, that it is the oppression of the

Turkish government which occasions this desolation and destruction of

the rural population; for many parts of Turkey are not only well

cultivated but most densely peopled; as, for example, the broad tract of

Mount Hoemus, where agriculture is in as admirable a state as in the

mountains of Tuscany or Switzerland. "No peasantry in the world," says

Slade, "are so well off as those of Bulgaria; the lowest of them has

abundance of every thing--meat, poultry, eggs, milk, rice, cheese, wine,

bread, good clothing, a warm dwelling, and a horse to ride; where is the

tyranny under which the Christian subjects of the Porte are generally

supposed to dwell? Among the Bulgarians certainly. I wish that, in every

country, a traveller could pass from one end to the other, and find a

good supper and warm fire in every cottage, as he can in this part of

European Turkey."[46] Clarke gives the same account of the peasantry of

Parnassus and Olympia; and it is true generally of almost all the

_mountain_ districts of Turkey. How, then, does it happen that the rich

and level plains of Romelia, at the gates of Constantinople, and thence

over a breadth of an hundred and twenty miles to Adrianople, is a

desert? Slade has explained it in a word. "_Constantinople depends on

Odessa for its daily bread._" The cry for cheap bread in Constantinople,

its noble harbour, and ready communication by water with Egypt on the

one hand, and the Ukraine on the other, have done the whole. Romelia,

like the Campagna of Rome, is a desert, because the market of

Constantinople is lost to the Turkish cultivators; because grain can be

brought cheaper from the Nile and the Wolga than raised at home, in

consequence of the cheapness of labour in those remote provinces; and

because the Turkish government, dreading an insurrection in the capital,

have done nothing to protect native industry.

There are many countries to whom the most unlimited freedom in the

importation of corn can do no injury. There are, in the first place, the

great grain countries, such as Poland and the Ukraine: they have no more

reason to dread the importation of grain than Newcastle that of coals,

or the Scotch Highlands that of moor-game. In the next place, countries

which _are poor_ need never fear the importation of corn from abroad;

for they have no money to pay for it; and, if they had, it would not be

brought in at a profit, because currency being scarce, of course the

price will be low. Lastly, Countries which have vast inland tracts, like

Russia, Austria, France, and America, especially if no extensive system

of water communication exists in their interior, have little reason to

apprehend injury from the most unrestricted commerce in grain; because

the cost of inland carriage on so bulky and heavy an article as corn is

so considerable, that the produce of foreign harvests can never

penetrate far into the interior, or come to supply a large portion of

the population with food.

The countries which have reason to apprehend injury, and in the end

destruction, to their native agriculture, from the unrestricted

admission of foreign corn, are those which, though they may possess a

territory in many places well adapted for the raising of grain crops,

are yet rich, far advanced in civilization, with a narrow territory, and

their principal towns on the sea-coast. They have every thing to dread

from foreign importation; because both the plenty of currency, which

opulence brings in its train, and the heavy public burdens with which it

is invariably attended, render labour dear at home, by lowering the

value of money, and raising the weight of taxation. If long continued,

an unrestricted foreign importation cannot fail to ruin agriculture, and

destroy domestic strength in such a state. Italy and Greece stood

eminently in such a situation; for all their great towns were upon the

sea-coast, their territory was narrow, and being successively the seats

of empire, and the centres of long-continued opulence, money was more

plentiful, and therefore production dearer than in those remote and

poorer states from which grain might be brought to their great towns by

sea carriage. In the present circumstances of this country, we would do

well to bear in mind the following reflections of Sismondi, "It is not

to no purpose that we have entered into the foregoing details concerning

the state of agriculture in the neighbourhood of Rome; for we are

persuaded that a universal tendency in Europe _menaces us with the same

calamities_, even in those countries which at present seem to adopt an

entirely opposite system; _only the Romans have gone through the career,

while we are only entering upon it_."[47]

The times are past, indeed, when gratuitous distributions of grain will

be made to an idle population, as under the Roman emperors, or bread be

sold for centuries by government at a fixed and low price, as under

their papal successors. But the same causes which produced these effects

are still in full operation. The cry for cheap bread in a popular state,

is as menacing as it was to the emperors or popes of Rome. The only

difference is, the sacrifice of domestic industry is now more disguised.

The thing is done, but it is done not openly by public deliveries of the

foreign grain at low prices, but indirectly under the specious guise of

free trade. Government does not say, "We will import Polish grain, and

sell it permanently at thirty-six or forty shillings a quarter;" but it

says, "we will open our harbours to the Polish farmers who can do so. We

will admit grain duty free from a country where wages are sixpence

a-day, and rents half-a-crown an acre." They thus force down the price

of grain to the foreign level, augmented only by the cost and profit of

importations, as effectually as ever did the emperors or _Casa

Annonaria_of Rome.

And what has Rome--the urban population of Rome--for whose supposed

interests, and in obedience to whose menacing cry, the Roman market has

for eighteen centuries been supplied with foreign bread--what have they

gained by this long continuation of government to their wishes? Sismondi

has told us in one word--"In Rome there _is no commerce between the town

and the country_." They would have foreign grain with its consequences,

and _they have had foreign grain with its consequences_. And what have

been these consequences? Why, that the Eternal City, which, even when

taken by the Goths, had 1,200,000 inhabitants within its walls, can now

scarcely number 170,000, and they almost entirely in poverty, and mainly

supported by the influx and expenditure of foreigners. The Campagna,

once so fruitful and so peopled, has become a desert. No inhabitant of

the Roman states buys any thing in Rome. Their glory is departed--it has

gone to other people and other lands. And what would have been the

result if this wretched concession to the blind and unforeseeing popular

clamour had not taken place? Why, that Rome would have been what

Naples--where domestic industry is protected--has become; it would have

numbered 400,000 busy and active citizens within its walls. The Campagna

would have been what the marches of Ancona now are. Between Rome and the

Campagna, a million of happy and industrious human beings would have

existed in the Agro Romano, independent of all the world, mutually

nourishing and supporting each other; instead of an hundred and seventy

thousand indolent and inactive citizens of a town, painfully dependent

on foreign supplies for bread, and on foreign gold for the means of

purchasing it.

Disastrous as have been the consequences of a free trade in grain to the

Roman States, alike in ancient and modern times, it was introduced by

its rulers in antiquity under the influence of noble and enlightened

principles. The whole civilized world was then one state; the banks of

the Nile and the plains of Lybia acknowledged the sway of the emperors,

as much as the shores of the Tiber or the fields of the Campagna. When

the Roman government, ruling so mighty a dominion, permitted the

harvests of Africa and the Ukraine to supplant those of Italy and

Greece, they did no more than justice to their varied subjects.

Magnanimously overlooking local interests and desires, they extended

their vision over the whole civilized world, and

"View'd with equal eyes, as lords of all,"

their subjects, whether in Italy, Spain, Egypt, or Lybia. Though the

seat of government was locally on the Tiber, they administered for the

interest of the whole civilized world, alike far and near. If the

Campagna was ruined, the Delta of Egypt flourished! If the plains of

Umbria were desolate, those of Lybia and Spain, equally parts of the

empire, were waving with grain. But can the same be said of England, now

proclaiming a free trade in grain, not merely with her colonies or

distant provinces, but with her rivals or her enemies? Not merely with

Canada and Hindostan, but with Russia and America? With countries

jealous of her power, envious of her fame, covetous of her riches. What

should we have said of the wisdom of the Romans, if they had sacrificed

Italian to African agriculture in the days of Hannibal? If they had put

it into the power of the Carthaginian Senate to have said, "We will not

arm our galleys; we will not levy armies; we will prohibit the

importation of African grain, and starve you into submission?" How is

England to maintain her independence, if the autocrat of Russia, by

issuing his orders from St Petersburg, can at any moment stop the

importation of ten millions of quarters of foreign grain, that is, a

sixth of our whole annual consumption? And are we to render penniless

our home customers, not in order to promote the interest of the distant

parts of our empire, but in order to enrich and vivify our enemies?

It is said public opinion runs in favour of such a change; that the

manufacturing has become the dominant interest in the state; that wages

must at all hazards be beat down to the continental level; and that,

right or wrong, the thing must be done. Whether this is the case or not,

time, and possibly a general election, will show. Sometimes those who

are the most noisy, are not the most numerous. Certain it is, that in

1841 a vast majority both of the electors and the people were unanimous

in favour of protection. But, be the present opinion of the majority

what it may, that will not alter the nature of things--It will not

render that wise which is unwise. Public opinion in Athens, in the time

of Demosthenes, was nearly unanimous to apply the public funds to the

support of the theatres instead of the army, and they got the battle of

Chaeronea, and subjection by Philip, for their reward. Public opinion in

Europe was unanimous in favour of the Crusades, and millions of brave

men left their bones in Asia in consequence. The Senate of Carthage,

yielding to the wishes of the majority of their democratic community,

refused to send succours to Hannibal in Italy; and they brought, in

consequence, the legions of Scipio Africanus round their walls. Public

opinion in France was unanimous in favour of the expedition to Moscow.

"They regarded it," says Segur, "as a mere hunting party of six months;"

but that did not hinder it from bringing the Cossacks to Paris. The old

Romans were unanimous in their cry for cheap bread, and they brought the

Gothic trumpet to their gates from its effects. A vast majority of the

electors of Great Britain in 1831, were in favour of Reform: out of 101,

98 county members were returned in the liberal interest; and now they

have got their reward, in seeing the Reformed Parliament preparing to

abolish all protection to native industry. All the greatest and most

destructive calamities recorded in history have been brought about, not

only with the concurrence, but in obedience to the fierce demand of the

majority. Protection to domestic industry, at home or colonial, is the

unseen but strongly felt bond which unites together the far distant

provinces of the British empire by the firm bond of mutual interest.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 16: The Agro Romano, the Sabina, the Campagna Maritima, and

the Patrimonio di San Pietro, which make up the Campagna of Rome,

contain 3881 square miles, or about 3,000,000 acres.--Sismondi's

_Essais_, ii, 10.]

[Footnote 17: Barbieri a Sismondi.--Sismondi's _Essais_, li. 11.]

[Footnote 18: Tacitus, _Annal_. xii. 43. But, by Hercules, formerly

provisions were sent for the legions from Italy into distant provinces;

nor even now is it afflicted by sterility: but we prefer purchasing it

from Africa and Egypt, and the lives of the Roman people have been

committed to ships and the chances of the waves.]

[Footnote 19: Sismondi, _Essais_, ii. 25.]

[Footnote 20: To confess the truth, the great estates have ruined Italy;

ay, and the provinces too.--_Plin_. 1. xviii. c. 6.]

[Footnote 21: Gibbon, vi. c. 36.]

[Footnote 22: "Quingena viginti millia quadringenti duo jugera quae

Campania provincia, juxta inspectorum relationem, in desertis et

squalidis locis habere dignoscitur, eisdem provinciabilibus

concessum."--_Cod. Theod._ ix. c. 38, c. 2.]

[Footnote 23: Gibbon, iii. c. 18.]

[Footnote 24: _Ibid._ iii. 88. c. 17.]

[Footnote 25: Michelet, _Histoire de France_, i. 104-108.]

[Footnote 26: Gibbon, VIII. c. xiv.]

[Footnote 27: Michelet's _Histoire de France_, i. 277.]

[Footnote 28: Ammianus Marcellinus, c. xvi; see also Gibbon, vi. 264.]

[Footnote 29: Sismondi's _Essais_, ii. 57.]

[Footnote 30: Sismondi's _Essais_, ii. 33.]

[Footnote 31: Sismondi's _Essais_, ii. 29, 30.]

[Footnote 32: Nicolai, _dell' Agro Romano_, ii. 30, 31.]

[Footnote 33: The rubbi is equal to two French hectares, or five English

acres.]

[Footnote 34: Nicolai, iii 133.]

[Footnote 35: _Ibid._, c. in. 167. _Et subseq_.]

[Footnote 36: Sismondi's _Essais_, ii, 46, 47.]

[Footnote 37: Nicolai, _dell' Agro Romano_, iii. 167, 175.]

[Footnote 38: Nicolai, iii. 174, 178.]

[Footnote 39: Sismondi's _Essais_, ii, 56, 57.]

[Footnote 40: Nicolai, _del' Agro Romano_, iii. 153. Sismondi's

_Essais_, ii. 44.]

[Footnote 41: Motu proprio de Pius VII.--Nicolai, ii. 163, 185.]

[Footnote 42: Sismondi's _Essais_, ii. 71.]

[Footnote 43: Gibbon, chap. 33, Vol. vi. p. 20.]

[Footnote 44: Gibbon, c. 31, Vol. v. p. 351.]

[Footnote 45: Slade's _Travels in the East_, ii 15.]

[Footnote 46: Slade, ii. 97.]

[Footnote 47: Sismondi's _Essais_, ii. 71.]

MR BROOKE OF BORNEO.

[48]On the 19th of August last, some twenty boats belonging to her

Majesty's ships, _Agincourt_, _Vestal_, _Daedalus_, _Wolverine_,

_Cruiser_, and _Vixen_, and containing about five hundred men, attacked

and destroyed in the _Malladu_, a river of the Eastern Archipelago, the

forts of Seriff Housman, a notorious and daring pirate, whose crimes had

paralysed the commerce of the seas of Borneo, and finally rendered

British interference absolutely necessary for the security of British

life and property. The action was one of the many that the suppression

of piracy in these regions has demanded--was gallantly fought, and full

reported in the journals of the time;--a narrow river, with two forts

mounting eleven or twelve heavy guns, (and defended by from five hundred

to one thousand fighting men,) protected by a strong and well-contrived

boom, was the position of the enemy. The English boats took the bull by

the horns--cut away part of the boom under a heavy fire; advanced and

carried the place in a fight protracted for fifty minutes. The enemy

fought well, and stood manfully to their guns. The mate of the

_Wolverine_ fell mortally wounded whilst working at the boom, axe in

hand; but his death was avenged by a wholesale slaughter of the pirates.

At two minutes to nine, those who had remained on board the _Vixen_

heard the report of the first heavy gun, and the first column of black

smoke proclaimed that the village was fired. On the evening of the 19th,

a detachment of ten boats, with fresh men and officers, quitted the

_Vixen_, and arrived at the forts shortly after daylight. The work of

destruction was complete. The boom, above spoken of, was ingeniously

fastened with the chain-cable of a vessel of three hundred or four

hundred tons; other chains, for darker purposes, were discovered in the

town; a ship's long-boat; two ship's bells, one ornamented with grapes

and vine leaves, and marked "_Wilhelm Ludwig, Bremen_," and every other

description of ship's furniture. Some piratical boats were burned,

twenty-four brass guns captured; the other guns spiked or otherwise

destroyed. Malladu ceased to exist; the power of Seriff Housman was

extinguished in a day.

Small wars, as well as great, have their episodes of touching

tenderness. Twenty-four hours after the action, a poor woman, with her

child of two years of age, was discovered in a small canoe; her arm was

shattered at the elbow by a grape-shot, and the poor creature lay dying

for want of water, in an agony of pain, with her child playing around

her, and endeavouring to derive the sustenance which the mother could no

longer give. The unfortunate woman was taken on board the _Vixen_, and

in the evening her arm was amputated. On board the _Vixen_ she met with

one who offered to convey her to the Borneon town of _Sar[=a]wak_, where

she would find protection. To have left her where she was, would have

been to leave her to die. To the stranger's kind offers she had but one

answer to give. "If you please to take me, I shall go. I am a woman, and

not a man; I am a slave, and not a free woman--do as you like." The

woman recovered, was grateful for the kindness shown her, and was

deposited faithfully and well in the town already named, by the stranger

already introduced.

Let us state at once that the object of this article is to bring to

public notice, as shortly as we may, the history of this stranger, and

to demand for it the reader's warmest sympathy. Full accounts of the

doings of her Majesty's ship Dido will no doubt be reported elsewhere,

with the several engagements which Mr Keppel's book so graphically

describes. Let them receive the attention that they merit. We cannot

afford to meddle with them now. "Metal more attractive" lies in the

adventures of a man who has devoted his fortune and energies to the

cause of humanity, and has purchased with both the amelioration of a

large portion of his suffering fellow-creatures.

We know not when, since our boyhood, we have met with an adventurer more

ardent and daring, a companion more fascinating and agreeable, than MR

BROOKE, the Rajah or Governor of <sc>Sar[=a]wak</sc>. Essentially British, in as

much as he practises our national virtues when circumstances call them

into action, he reminds us at all times of those Eastern men, famous in

their generation, who delighted us many years ago, and secured our

wonder by their devoted love of enterprise, and the moral ascendency

that waited on their efforts. In truth, Mr Brooke belongs not to the

present generation. His energy, his perseverance, which nothing can

subdue, his courage which no dangers can appal, his simplicity which no

possession of power and authority can taint, his integrity and honest

mind, all belong to a more masculine and primitive age, and constitute a

rare exception for our respect and gratitude in this. We take the

earliest opportunity afforded us to pay our humble tribute to worth that

cannot be questioned, to heroic virtue that cannot be surpassed.

Whatsoever humanity and civilisation may gain in the extermination of

odious crimes upon the shores of BORNEO, whatsoever advantages England

may hereafter obtain from British settlements in the island, and from a

peaceful trade carried on around it, to Mr Brooke, and to that gentleman

alone, will belong the glory and the honour of such acquisitions.

Inspired by his vigorous nature, but more by the dictates of true

benevolence, unaided and unprotected, save by his own active spirit and

the blessing of Providence, he undertook a mission on behalf of mankind,

with perils before him which the stoutest could not but feel, and

achieved a success which the most sanguine could hardly have

anticipated.

Mr Brooke was born on the 29th of April 1803, and is therefore now in

his 43d year. He is the second son of the late Thomas Brooke, Esq., who

held an appointment in the civil service of the East India Company. At

an early age he went out to India as a cadet, served with distinction in

the Burmese war, was wounded, and returned to England for the recovery

of his health. In the year 1830, Mr Brooke relinquished the service

altogether, and quitted Calcutta for China, again in search of health.

During his voyage, he saw, for the first time, the islands of the

Asiatic Archipelago; almost unknown, even at that recent period, to

Europeans generally. Such information as was before the world he

obtained, and carefully considered; and the result of his reflections

was a determination to carry to Borneo, an island of some magnitude, and

terribly afflicted in more respects than one, such knowledge and

instruction as might help to elevate its people from the depravity in

which they lived, and the horrors to which they were hourly subjected.

This was in 1830. In the year 1838, he quitted England to fulfil his

purpose. For eight years he had patiently and steadily worked towards

his object, and gathered about him all that was necessary for its

accomplishment. Nothing had been omitted to insure success. A man of

fortune, he had been prodigal of his wealth; free from professional and

other ties, he had given up his time wholly to the cause. One year was

passed in the Mediterranean, that his vessel, _The Royalist_, might be

put to the severest tests. Three years were spent in educating a crew

worthy of an undertaking that promised so little sudden prosperity, that

exacted so much immediate self-denial, threatened so many hardships. The

men were happy and contented, cheerful and willing. The vessel belonged

to the royal yacht squadron, was a fast sailer, armed with six

six-pounders, a number of swivels and small arms, carried four boats,

and provisions for as many months. On the 27th of October 1838, the

adventurous company left the river. A fortunate passage carried them in

safety to Rio Janeiro, and on the 29th of March 1839, they were sailing

from the Cape of Good Hope. A six weeks' passage brought them to Java

Head, and on the 1st of June they reached that "pivot of the liberal

system in the Archipelago," the island of Singapore. It was not until

the 27th of July that Mr Brooke quitted Singapore. Five days afterwards,

the _Royalist_ was anchored off the coast of Borneo!

At the period of Mr Brooke's arrival, Borneo Proper,[49] once the seat

of piracy, which few vessels could approach with safety, was under the

government of the rajah MUDA HASSIM. Report spoke favourably of this

rajah's character. A vessel had been wrecked on his coast, and the crew,

who had been saved with difficulty, had taken shelter in the jungle.

Muda Hassim, hearing of their fate, caused them to be brought to his

town of Sar[=a]wak, collected as much as could be saved from the wreck,

clothed the sufferers, fed them, and sent then free of expense to

Singapore. Moreover, for reasons known to himself, the rajah was well

disposed towards the English. These important circumstances were borne

in mind by Mr Brooke. The rajah was now at Sar[=a]wak, and the

adventurer determined to enter the river of that name, and to proceed as

far as the town. He was well supplied with presents; gaudy silks of

Surat, scarlet cloth, stamped velvet, gunpowder, confectionery, sweets,

ginger, jams, dates, and syrups for the governor, and a huge box of

China toys for the governor's children. From Mr Brooke's own diary, we

extract the following account of his position and feelings at this

interesting moment of his still doubtful undertaking:--

"_August 1st._--I am, then, at length, anchored off the coast of

Borneo! not under very pleasant circumstances, for the night is

pitchy dark, with thunder, lightning, rain, and squalls of wind.

"_2d._--Squally bad night. This morning, the clouds clearing away,

was delightful, and offered for our view the majestic scenery of

Borneo. At nine got under weigh, and ran in on an east-by-south

course four and a half or five miles towards Tanjong Api. Came to

an anchor about five miles from the land, and dispatched the boat

to take sights ashore, in order to form a base line for

triangulation. The scenery may really be called majestic. The low

and wooded coast about Tanjong Api is backed by a mountain called

Gunong Palo, some 2000 feet in height, which slopes down behind the

point, and terminates in a number of hummocks, showing from a

distance like islands.

"The coast, unknown, and represented to abound in shoals and reefs,

is the harbour for pirates of every description. Here every man's

hand is raised against his brother man; and here sometimes the

climate wars upon the excitable European, and lays many a white

face and gallant heart low on the distant strand.

"_3d._--Beating between Points Api and Datu. The bay, as far as we

have seen, is free from danger; the beach is lined by a feathery

row of beautiful casuarinas, and behind is a tangled jungle,

without fine timber; game is plentiful, from the traces we saw on

the sand; hogs in great numbers; troops of monkeys, and the print

of an animal with cleft hoofs, either a large deer, tapir, or cow.

We saw no game save a tribe of monkeys, one of which, a female, I

shot, and another quite young, which we managed to capture alive.

The captive, though the young of the black monkey, is greyish, with

the exception of the extremities, and a stripe of black down his

back and tail.

"We witnessed, at the same time, an extraordinary and fatal leap

made by one of these monkeys. Alarmed by our approach, he sprang

from the summit of a high tree at the branch of one lower, and at

some distance. He leaped short, and came clattering down sixty or

seventy feet amid the jungle. We were unable to penetrate to the

spot, on account of a deep swamp, to ascertain his fate.

"A river flows into the sea not far from where we landed--the water

is sweet, and of that clear brown colour so common in Ireland. This

coast is evidently the haunt of native _prahns_, whether piratical

or other. Print of men's feet were numerous and fresh, and traces

of huts, fires, and parts of boots, some of them ornamented after

their rude fashion. A long pull of five miles closed the day.