who live by trade or mental labour, must have a hard time of it. The
professions of Rome are overstocked and underpaid. The large class of
government officials or "impiegati," to whom admirers of the Papacy point
with such pride as evidence of the secular character of the
administration, are paid on the most niggardly scale; while all the
lucrative and influential posts are reserved for the priestly
administrators. The avowed venality of the courts of justice is a proof
that lawyers are too poorly remunerated to find honesty their best
policy, while the extent to which barbers are still employed as surgeons
shows that the medical profession is not of sufficient repute to be
prosperous. There is no native patronage for art, no public for
literature. The very theatres, which flourish in other despotic states,
are here but losing speculations, owing to the interference of clerical
regulations. There are no commerce and no manufactures in the Eternal
city. In a back street near the Capitol, over a gloomy, stable-looking
door, you may see written up "Borsa di Roma," but I never could discover
any credible evidence of business being transacted on the Roman change.
There is but one private factory in Rome, the Anglo-Roman Gas Company.
What trade there is is huckstering, not commerce. In fact, so Romans
have told me, you may safely conclude that every native you meet walking
in the streets here, in a broadcloth coat, lives from hand to mouth, and
you may pretty surely guess that his next month's salary is already
overdrawn. The crowds of respectably-dressed persons, clerks and
shopkeepers and artizans, whom you see in the lottery offices the night
before the drawing, prove the general existence not only of improvidence
but of distress.

The favourite argument in support of the Papal rule in Rome, is that the
poor gain immensely by it. I quite admit that the argument contains a
certain amount of truth. The priests, the churches, and the convents