THE PATRIMONY OF THE TEMPORAL POWER.
The Papal States have no natural limits: they are carved out on the
map as the chance of passing events has made them, and as the
good-nature of Europe has left them. An imaginary line separates them
from Tuscany and Modena. The most southerly point enters into the
kingdom of Naples; the province of Benevento is enclosed within the
states of King Ferdinand, as formerly was the Comtat-Venaissin within
the French territory. The Pope, in his turn, shuts in that Ghetto of
democracy, the republic of San Marino.
I never cast my eyes over this poor map of Italy, capriciously rent
into unequal fragments, without one consoling reflection.
Nature, which has done everything for the Italians, has taken care to
surround their country with magnificent barriers. The Alps and the sea
protect it on all sides, isolate it, bind it together as a distinct
body, and seem to design it for an individual existence. To crown all,
no internal barrier condemns the Italians to form separate nations.
The Apennines are so easily crossed, that the people on either side
can speedily join hands. All the existing boundaries are entirely
arbitrary, traced by the brutality of the Middle Ages, or the shaky
hand of diplomacy, which undoes to-morrow what it does to-day. A
single race covers the soil; the same language is spoken from north to
south; the people are all united in a common bond by the glory of
their ancestors, and the recollections of Roman conquest, fresher and
more vivid than the hatreds of the fourteenth century.
These considerations induce me to believe that the people of Italy
will one day be independent of all others, and united among themselves
by the force of geography and history, two powers more invincible than
Austria.
But I return _à mes moutons_, and to their shepherd, the Pope.
The kingdom possessed by a few priests, covers an extent, in round
numbers, of six millions of acres, according to the statistics
published in 1857 by Monsignor, now Cardinal, Milesi.
No country in Europe is more richly gifted, or possesses greater
advantages, whether for agriculture, manufacture, or commerce.
Traversed by the Apennines, which divide it about equally, the Papal
dominions incline gently, on one side to the Adriatic, on the other to
the Mediterranean. In each of these seas they possess an excellent
port: to the east, Ancona; to the west, Civita Vecchia. If Panurge had
had Ancona and Civita Vecchia in his Salmagundian kingdom, he would
infallibly have built himself a navy. The Phoenicians and the
Carthaginians were not so well off.
A river, tolerably well known under the name of the Tiber, waters
nearly the whole country to the west. In former days it ministered to
the wants of internal commerce. Roman historians describe it as
navigable up to Perugia. At the present time it is hardly so as far as
Rome; but if its bed were cleared out, and filth not allowed to be
thrown in, it would render greater service, and would not overflow so
often. The country on the other side is watered by small rivers,
which, with a little government assistance, might be rendered very
serviceable.
In the level country the land is of prodigious fertility. More than a
fourth of it will grow corn. Wheat yields a return of fifteen for one
on the best land, thirteen on middling, and nine on the worst. Fields
thrown out of cultivation become admirable natural pastures. The hemp
is of very fine quality when cultivated with care. The vine and the
mulberry thrive wherever they are planted. The finest olive-trees and
the best olives in Europe grow in the mountains. A variable, but
generally mild climate, brings to maturity the products of extreme
latitudes. Half the country is favourable to the palm and the orange.
Numerous and thriving flocks roam across the plains in winter, and
ascend to the mountains in summer. Horses, cows, and sheep live and
multiply in the open air, without need of shelter. Indian buffaloes
swarm in the marshes. Every species of produce requisite for the food
and clothing of man grows easily, and as it were joyfully, in this
privileged land. If men in the midst of it are in want of bread or
shirts, Nature has no cause to reproach herself, and Providence washes
its hands of the evil.
In all the three states raw material exists in incredible abundance.
Here are hemp, for ropemakers, spinners, and weavers; wine, for
distillers; olives, for oil and soap makers; wool, for cloth and
carpet manufacturers; hides and skins, for tanners, shoemakers, and
glovers; and silk in any quantity for manufactures of luxury. The iron
ore is of middling quality, but the island of Elba, in which the very
best is found, is near at hand. The copper and lead mines, which the
ancients worked profitably, are perhaps not exhausted. Fuel is
supplied by a million or two of acres of forest land; besides which,
there is the sea, always open for the transport of coal from
Newcastle. The volcanic soil of several provinces produces enormous
quantities of sulphur, and the alum of Tolfi is the best in the world.
The quartz of Civita Vecchia will give us kaolin for porcelain. The
quarries contain building materials, such as marble and pozzolana,
which is Roman cement almost ready-made.
In 1847, the country lands subject to the Pope were valued at about
£34,800,000 sterling. The province of Benevento was not included, and
the Minister of Commerce and Public Works admitted that the property
was not estimated at above a third of its real value. If capital
returned its proper interest, if activity and industry caused trade
and manufactures to increase the national income as ought to be the
case, it would be the Rothschilds who would borrow money of the Pope
at six per cent. interest.
But stay! I have not yet completed the catalogue of possessions. To
the present munificence of nature must be added the inheritance of the
past. The poor Pagans of great Rome left all their property to the
Pope who damns them.
They left him gigantic aqueducts, prodigious sewers, and roads which
we find still in use, after twenty centuries of traffic. They left him
the Coliseum, for his Capuchins to preach in. They left him an example
of an administration without an equal in history. But the heritage was
accepted without the responsibilities attached to it.
I will no longer conceal from you that this magnificent territory
appeared to me in the first place most unworthily cultivated. From
Civita Vecchia to Rome, a distance of some sixteen leagues,
cultivation struck me in the light of a very rare accident, to which
the soil was but little accustomed. Some pasture fields, some land in
fallow, plenty of brambles, and, at long intervals, a field with oxen
at plough, this is what the traveller will see in April. He will not
even meet with the occasional forest which he finds in the most desert
regions of Turkey. It seems as if man had swept across the land to
destroy everything, and the soil had been then taken possession of by
flocks and herds.
The country round Rome resembles the road from Civita Vecchia. The
capital is girt by a belt of uncultivated, but not unfertile land. I
used to walk in every direction, and sometimes for a long distance;
the belt seemed very wide. However, in proportion as I receded from
the city, I found the fields better cultivated. One would suppose that
at a certain distance from St. Peter's the peasants worked with
greater relish. The roads, which near Rome are detestable, became
gradually better; they were more frequented, and the people I met
seemed more cheerful. The inns became habitable, by comparison, in an
astonishing degree. Still, so long as I remained in that part of the
country towards the Mediterranean, of which Rome is the centre, and
which is more directly subject to its influence, I found that the
appearance of the land always left something to be desired. I
sometimes fancied that these honest labourers worked as if they were
afraid to make a noise, lest, by smiting the soil too deeply and too
boldly, they should wake up the dead of past ages.
But when once I had crossed the Apennines, when I was beyond the reach
of the breeze which blew over the capital, I began to inhale an
atmosphere of labour and goodwill that cheered my heart. The fields
were not only dug, but manured, and, still better, planted and sown.
The smell of manure was quite new to me. I had never met with it on
the other side of the Apennines. I was delighted at the sight of
trees. There were rows of vines twining around elms planted in fields
of hemp, wheat, or clover. In some places the vines and elms were
replaced by mulberry-trees. What mingled riches were here lavished by
nature! How bounteous is the earth! Here were mingled together, in
rich profusion, bread, wine, shirts, silk gowns, and forage for the
cattle. St. Peter's is a noble church, but, in its way, a
well-cultivated field is a beautiful sight!
I travelled slowly to Bologna; the sight of the country I passed
through, and the fruitfulness of honest human labour, made me happy. I
retraced my steps towards St. Peter's; my melancholy returned when I
found myself again amidst the desolation of the Roman Campagna.
As I reflected on what I had seen, a disquieting idea forced itself
upon me in a geometrical form. It seemed to me that the activity and
prosperity of the subjects of the Pope were in exact proportion to the
square of the distance which separated them from Rome: in other words,
that the shade of the monuments of the eternal city was noxious to the
cultivation of the country. Rabelais says the shade of monasteries is
fruitful; but he speaks in another sense.
I submitted my doubts to a venerable ecclesiastic, who hastened to
undeceive me. "The country is not uncultivated," he said; "or if it be
so, the fault is with the subjects of the Pope. This people is
indolent by nature, although 21,415 monks are always preaching
activity and industry to them!"