nation, are the expenses of the Currency, Census and Public Works,
amounting altogether to 785198 scudi, or not a twelfth of the net income
raised by taxation. Commercially speaking, whatever may be the case
theologically, I am afraid the Papal system can hardly be said to pay.




CHAPTER III. THE MORALITY OF ROME.


We all know the story of "Boccaccio's" Jew, who went to Rome an
unbeliever, and came back a Christian. There is no need for alarm; it is
not my intention to repeat the story. Indeed the only reason for my
alluding to it, is to introduce the remark that, at the present day, the
Jew would have returned from Rome hardened in heart and unconverted. The
flagrant profligacy, the open immorality, which in the Hebrew's judgment
supplied the strongest testimony to the truth of a religion that survived
such scandals, exist no longer. Rome is, externally, the most moral and
decorous of European cities. In reality, she may be only a whited
sepulchre, but at any rate, the whitewash is laid on very thick, and the
plaster looks uncommonly like stone. From various motives, this feature
is, I think, but seldom brought prominently forward in descriptions of
the Papal city. Protestant and liberal writers slur over the facts,
because, however erroneously, they are deemed inconsistent with the
assumed iniquity of the Government and the corruptions of the Papacy.
Catholic narrators know perhaps too much of what goes on behind the
scenes to relish calling too close an attention to the apparent
proprieties of Rome. Be the cause what it may, the moral aspect of the
Papal city seems to me to be but little dwelt upon, and yet on many