THE MIDDLE CLASSES.
The middle class is, in every clime and every age, the foundation of
the strength of States. It represents not only the wealth and
independence, but the capacity and the morality of a people. Between
the aristocracy, which boasts of doing nothing, and the lower orders
who only work that they may not die of hunger, the middle class
advances boldly to a future of wealth and consideration. Sometimes the
upper class is hostile to progress, through fear of its results; too
often the lower class is indifferent to it, from ignorance of the
benefits it confers. The middle class has never ceased to tend towards
progress, with all its strength, by an irresistible impulse, and even
at the peril of its dearest interests. A great statesman who must be
judged by his doctrines, and not by the chance of circumstances, M.
Guizot, has shown us that the Roman Empire perished from the want of a
middle class in the fifth century of our era, and we ourselves know
with what impetuosity France has advanced in progress since the middle
class revolution of 1789.
The middle class has not only the privilege of bringing about useful
revolutions, it also claims the honour of repressing popular
outbreaks, and opposing itself as a barrier to the overflow of evil
passions.
It is to be desired, then, that this honourable class should become as
numerous and as powerful as possible in the country we are now
studying; because, while on the one hand it is the lawful heir of the
temporal power of the Popes, on the other, it is the natural adversary
of Mazzinist insurrection.
But the ecclesiastical caste, which sets this fatal principle of
temporal power above the highest interests of society, can conceive
nothing more prudent or efficacious than to vilify and abuse the
middle class. It obliges this class to support the heaviest share of
the budget, without being admitted to a share in the benefits. It
takes from the small proprietor not only his whole income, but a part
of his capital, while the people and the nobility are allowed all
sorts of immunities. It demands heavy concessions in exchange for the
humblest official posts. It omits no opportunity of depriving the
liberal professions of all the importance they enjoy in other
countries. It does its best to accelerate the decline of science and
art. It imagines that nothing else can be abased, without its being
proportionately elevated.
This system has succeeded (according to priestly notions) tolerably
well at Home and in the Mediterranean provinces, but very badly at
Bologna, and in the Apennine provinces. In the metropolis of the
country the middle class is reduced, impoverished, and submissive; in
the second capital it is much more numerous, wealthy, and independent.
But evil passions, far more fatal to society than the rational
resistance of parties, have progressed in an inverse direction. They
predominate but little at Bologna, where the middle class is strong
enough to keep them under; they triumph at Home, where the middle
class has been destroyed. Thence it follows that Bologna is a city of
opposition, and Rome a socialist city; and that the revolution will be
moderate at Bologna, sanguinary at Rome. This is what the clerical
party has gained.
Nothing can equal the disdain with which the prelates the princes, the
foreigners of condition, and even the footmen at Rome, judge the
middle class, of _mezzo ceto_.
The prelate has his reasons. If he be a minister, he sees in his
offices some hundred clerks, belonging to the middle class. He knows
that these active and intelligent, but underpaid men, are for the most
part obliged to eke out a livelihood by secretly following some other
occupation: one keeps the books of a land-steward, another those of a
Jew. Whose fault is it? They well know that neither excellence of
character nor length of service are carried to the credit of the civil
functionary, and that, after having earned advancement, he will be
obliged either to ask it himself as a favour, or to employ the
intercession of his wife. It is not these poor men whom we should
despise, but the dignitaries in violet stockings who impose the burden
upon them.
Should Monsignore be a judge of a superior tribunal, of the _Sacra
Rota_ for instance, he need know nothing about the law. His secretary,
or assistant, has by dint of patient study made himself an
accomplished lawyer, as indeed a man must be who can thread his way
through the dark labyrinths of Roman legislation. But Monsignore, who
makes use of his assistant's ability for his own particular profit,
thinks he has a right to despise him, because he is ill paid, lives
humbly, and has no future to look forward to. Which of the two is in
the wrong?
If the same prelate be a Judge of Appeal, he will profess a most
profound contempt for advocates. I must confess they are to be pitied,
these unfortunate Princes of the Bar, who write for the blind, and
speak to the deaf, and who wear out their shoes in treading the
interminable paths of Rotal procedure. But assuredly they are not men
to be despised. They have always knowledge, often eloquence.
Marchetti, Rossi, and Lunati might no doubt have written good sermons,
if they had not preferred doing something else.
Between ourselves, I think the prelates affect to despise them, in
order that they may not have to fear them. They have condemned some of
them to exile, others to silence and want. Hear what Cardinal
Antonelli said to M. de Gramont:--
"The advocates used to be one of our sores; we are beginning to be
cured of it. If we could but get rid of the clerks in the offices, all
would go well."
Let us hope that, among modern inventions, a bureaucratic machine may
be made by which the labour of men in offices may be superseded.
The Roman princes affect to regard the middle class with contempt. The
advocate who pleads their causes, and generally gains them, belongs to
the middle class. The physician who attends them, and generally cures
them, belongs to the middle class. But as these professional men have
fixed salaries, and as salaries resemble wages, contempt is thrown
into the bargain. Still the contempt is a magnanimous sort of
contempt--that of a patron for his client. At Paris, when an advocate
pleads a prince's cause, it is the prince who is the client: at Rome,
it is the advocate.
But the individual who is visited by the most withering contempt of
the Roman princes is the farmer, or _mercante di campagna_; and I
don't wonder at it.
The _mercante di campagna_ is an obscure individual, usually very
honest, very intelligent, very active, and very rich. He undertakes to
farm several thousand acres of land, pasture or arable as may be,
which the prince would never be able to farm himself, because he
neither knows how, nor has the means to do so. Upon this princely
territory the farmer lets loose, in the most disrespectful manner,
droves of bullocks, and cows, and horses, and flocks of sheep. Should
his lease permit him, he cultivates a square league or so, and sows it
with wheat. When harvest-time arrives, down from the mountains troop a
thousand or twelve hundred peasants, who overrun the prince's land in
the farmer's service. The corn is reaped, threshed in the open field,
put into sacks, and carted away. The prince sees it go by, as he
stands on his princely balcony. He learns that a man of the _mezzo
ceto_, a man who passes his life on horseback, has harvested on his
land so many sacks of corn, which have produced him so much money. The
_mercante di campagna_ comes, and confirms the intelligence, and then
pays the rent agreed upon to the uttermost baioccho. Sometimes he even
pays down a year or two in advance. What prince could forgive such
aggravated insolence? It is the more atrocious, since the farmer is
polite, well-mannered, and much better educated than the prince; he
can give his daughters much larger fortunes, and could buy the entire
principality for his own son, if by chance the prince were obliged to
sell it. The cultivation of estates by means of these people is, in
the eyes of the Roman princes, an attack upon the rights of property.
Their passion for incessant work is a disturbance of the delightful
Roman tranquillity. The fortunes they acquire by personal exertion,
energy, and activity, are a reproach by inference to that stagnant
wealth which is the foundation of the State, and the admiration of the
Government.
This is not all: the _mercante di campagna_, who is not nobly born,
who is not a priest, who has a wife and children, thinks he has a
right to share in the management of the affairs of his country, upon
the ground that he manages his own well. He points out abuses; he
demands reforms. What audacity! The priests would cast him forth as
they would a mere advocate, were it not that his occupation is the
most necessary of all occupations, and that by turning out a man they
might starve a district.
But the insolence of these agricultural contractors goes still
further. They presume to be grand in their ideas. One of them, in
1848, under the reign of Mazzini, when the public works were suspended
for want of money, finished the bridge of Lariccia, one of the finest
constructions of our time, at his own expense. He certainly knew not
whether the Pope would ever return to Rome to repay him. He acted like
a real prince; but his audacity in assuming a part which was not
intended for his caste, merited something more than contempt.
I, who have not the honour to be a prince, have no reason to despise
the _mercanti di campagna_. Quite the contrary. I have solid ones for
esteeming them highly. I have found them full of intelligence,
kindness, and cordiality: middle-class men in the best sense of the
term. My sole regret is that their numbers are so few, and that their
scope of action is so limited.
If there were but two thousand of them, and the Government allowed
them to follow their own course, the Roman Campagna would soon assume
another aspect, and fever and ague take themselves off.
The foreigners who have inhabited Rome for any length of time, speak
of the middle-class as contemptuously as the princes. I once made the
same mistake as they do, so my testimony on the subject is the more
worthy of acceptation.
Perhaps the foreigners in question have lived in furnished lodgings,
and have found the landlady a little less than cruel. No doubt
adventures of this kind are of daily occurrence elsewhere than in
Rome; but is the middle-class to be held responsible for the light
conduct of some few poor and uneducated women?
Or they may have had to do with the trade of Rome, and have found it
extremely limited. This is because there is no capital, nor any
extension of public credit. They are shocked to see the shopkeepers,
during the Carnival, riding in carriages, and occupying the best boxes
at the theatres; but this foolish love of show, so hurtful to the
middle-class, is taught them by the universal example of those above
them.
Perhaps they have sent to the chemist's for a doctor, and have fallen
upon an ignorant professor of the healing art. This is unlucky, but it
may happen anywhere. The medical body is not recruited exclusively
among the eagles of science. For one Baroni, who is an honour at once
to Rome, to Italy, and to Europe, you naturally expect to find many
blockheads. If these are more plentiful at Rome than at Paris or
Bologna, it is because the priests meddle with medical instruction, as
with everything else. I never shall forget how I laughed when I
entered the amphitheatre of Santo Spirito, to see a vine-leaf on 'the
subject' on which the professor was going to lecture to the students.
In this land of chastity, where the modest vine is entwined with every
branch of science, a doctor in surgery, attached to an hospital, once
told me he had never seen the bosom of a woman. "We have," he said,
"two degrees of Doctor to take; one theoretical, the other
practical. Between the first and the second, we practise in
the hospitals, as you see. But the prelates who control our
studies, will not allow a doctor to be present at a
confinement until he has passed his second, or practical
examination. They are afraid of our being scandalized. We
obtain our practical knowledge of midwifery by practising
upon dolls. In six months I shall have taken all my degrees,
and I may be called in to act as accoucheur to any number of
women, without ever having witnessed a single accouchement!"
The Roman artists would endow the middle-class with both fame and
money, if they were differently treated. The Italian race has not
degenerated, whatever its enemies and its masters may say: it is as
naturally capable of distinction in all the arts as ever it was. Put a
paint-brush into the hands of a child, and he will acquire the
practice of painting in no time. An apprenticeship of three or four
years enables him to gain a livelihood. The misfortune is, that they
seldom get beyond this. I think, nay, I am almost sure, they are not
less richly gifted than the pupils of Raphael; and they reach the same
point as the pupils of M. Galimard. Is it their fault? No. I accuse
but the medium into which their birth has cast them. It may be, that
if they were at Paris, they would produce masterpieces. Give them
parts to play in the world, competition, exhibitions, the support of a
government, the encouragement of a public, the counsels of an
enlightened criticism. All these benefits which we enjoy abundantly,
are wholly denied to them, and are only known to them by hearsay.
Their sole motive for work is hunger, their sole encouragement the
flying visits of foreigners. Their work is always done in a hurry;
they knock off a copy in a week, and when it is sold, they begin
another.
If some one, more ambitious than his fellows, undertakes an original
work, whose opinion can he obtain as to its merits or demerits? The
men of the reigning class know nothing about it, and the princes very
little. The owner of the finest gallery in Rome said last year, in the
salon of an Ambassador, "I admire nothing but what you French call
_chic_" Prince Piombino gave the painter Gagliardi an order to paint
him a ceiling, and proposed to pay him by the day. The Government has
plenty to attend to without encouraging the arts: the four little
newspapers which circulate at remote periods amuse themselves by
puffing their particular friends in the silliest manner.
The foreigners who come and go are often men of taste, but they do not
make a public. In Paris, Munich, Düsseldorf, and London, the public
has an individuality; it is a man of a thousand heads. When it has
marked a rising artist, it notes his progress, encourages him, blames
him, urges him on, checks him. It takes such a one into its favour, is
extremely wroth with such another. It is, of course, sometimes in the
wrong; it is subject to ridiculous infatuations, and unjust revulsions
of feeling; yet it lives, and it vivifies, and it is worth working
for.
If I wonder at anything, it is that under the present system such
artists are to be found at Home as Tenerani and Podesti, in statuary
and painting; Castellani, in gold-working; Calamatta and Mercuri, in
engraving, with some others. It is a melancholy truth, however, that
the majority of Roman artists are doomed, by the absence of
encouragement, to a monotonous and humiliating round of taskwork and
trade; occupied half their time in re-copying copies, and the
remainder in recommending their goods to the foreign purchaser.
In truth, I had myself quitted Rome with no very favourable idea of
the middle class. A few distinguished artists, a few advocates of
talent and courage, some able medical men, some wealthy and skilful
farmers, were insufficient, in my opinion, to constitute a middle
class. I regarded them as so many exceptions to a rule. And as it is
certain that there can be no nation without a middle class, I dreaded
lest I should be forced to admit that there is no Italian nation.
The middle class appeared to me to thrive no better in the
Mediterranean provinces than at Rome. Half citizen, half clown, the
people representing it are plunged in a crass ignorance. Having just
sufficient means to live without working, they lounge away their time
in homes comfortless and half-furnished, the very walls of which seem
to reek with _ennui_. Rumours of what is passing in Europe, which
might possibly rouse them from their torpor, are stopped at the
frontier. New ideas, which might somewhat fertilize their minds, are
intercepted by the Custom House. If they read anything, it is the
Almanack, or by way of a higher order of literature, the _Giornale di
Roma_, wherein the daily rides of the Pope are pompously chronicled.
The existence of these people consists, in short, of a round of
eating, drinking, sleeping, and reproducing their kind, until death
arrive.
But beyond the Apennines matters are far otherwise. There, instead of
the citizen descending to the level of the peasant, it is the peasant
who rises to that of the citizen. Unremitting labour is continually
improving both the soil and man. A smuggling of ideas which daily
becomes more active, sets custom-houses and customs officers at
defiance. Patriotism is stimulated and kept alive by the presence of
the Austrians. Common sense is outraged by the weight of taxation. The
different fractions of the middle class--advocates, physicians,
merchants, farmers, artists--freely express among one another their
discontent and their hatred, their ideas and their hopes. The
Apennines, which form a barrier between them and the Pope, bring them
nearer to Europe and liberty. I have never failed, after conversing
with one of the middle class in the Legations, to inscribe in my
tablets, _There is an Italian Nation_!
I travelled from Bologna to Florence with a young man whom I at first
took, from the simple elegance of his dress, for an Englishman. But we
fell so naturally into conversation, and my companion expressed
himself so fluently in French, that I supposed him to be a
fellow-countryman. When, however, I discovered how thoroughly he was
versed in the state of the agriculture, manufactures, commerce, laws,
the administration, and the politics of Italy, I could no longer doubt
that he was an Italian and a Bolognese. What I chiefly admired in him
was not so much the extent and variety of his knowledge, or the
clearness and rectitude of his understanding, as the elevation of his
character, and the moderation of his language. Every word he uttered
was characterized by a profound sense of the dignity of his country, a
bitter regret at the disesteem and neglect into which that country had
fallen, and a firm hope in the justice of Europe in general and of one
great prince in particular, and a certain combination of pride,
melancholy, and sweetness which possessed an irresistible attraction
for me. He nourished no hatred either against the Pope or any other
person; he admitted the system of the priests, although utterly
intolerable to the country, to be perfectly logical in itself. His
dream was not of vengeance, but deliverance.
I learnt, some time afterwards, that my delightful travelling
companion was a man of the _mezzo ceto_, and that there are many more
such as he in Bologna.
But already had I inscribed in my tablets these words, thrice
repeated, dated from the Court of the Posts, Piazza del Gran' Duca,
Florence:--
_"There is an Italian Nation! There is an Italian Nation! There is an
Italian Nation!"_