improve the general condition of the Roman peasantry will put these
remedies more and more within their reach, and will therefore tend to
check the ravages of the malaria. Thus, the inefficient and obstructive
Government of the Vatican, which checks all material as well as all moral
progress, increases indirectly the virulence of the fever-plague; but
this, I think, is the most that can fairly be stated.

I trust that, considering the importance of the subject, this digression,
unsatisfactory as it is, may be pardoned; and I now turn to the third
curse, which eats up the wages of the working man at Rome--a curse even
greater, I think, than the "festas" or the malaria--I mean, the
universality of the middle-man system. If you require any work done,
from stone carving to digging, you seldom or never deal with the actual
workman. If you are a farmer and want your harvest got in, you contract
months beforehand with an agent, who agrees to supply you with harvest-
men in certain numbers, at a certain price, out of which price he pockets
as large a percentage as he can, and has probably commissions to pay
himself to some sub-contractor. If you are a sculptor and wish a block
of marble chiselled in the rough, the man you contract with to hew the
block at certain day-wages brings a boy to do the work at half the above
amount or less, and only looks in from time to time to see how the work
is proceeding. It is the same in every branch of trade or business. If
you wish to make a purchase, or effect a sale, or hire a servant, you
have a whole series of commissions or brokerages to pay before you come
into contact with the principal.

If you inquire why this system is not broken through, why the employer
does not deal directly with his workmen, you are told that the custom of
the country is against any other method; that amongst the workmen
themselves there is so much terrorism and intimidation and _espionnage_,