The Roman Question Part 17

I have described the small mountain proprietors who form the populations of the towns of 10,000 inhabitants towards the Mediterranean. You have seen with what indomitable resolution they combat the sterility of their meagre domains, without any hope of ever becoming rich. These poor people, who spend their lives in getting their living, would fancy themselves transported to Paradise, if anybody were to give them a long lease of half-a-dozen acres in the country about Rome. Their labour would then have a purpose, their existence an aim, their family a future.

Perhaps you think they would refuse to labour in an unhealthy country.

Why, these are the very men who at present cultivate the Roman Campagna to such extent as it is allowed to be cultivated. They it is who, every spring, come down in large companies from their native mountains, to break up the heavy clods with pickaxes, and complete the work of the plough. It is they, too, who return to harvest the crop under the fatal heat of the summer sun. They attack a field waving with golden corn. They reap from dawn to dusk, with no food more nouris.h.i.+ng than bread and cheese. They sleep in the open field, regardless of the nocturnal exhalations which float around them--and some of them never rise again. Those who survive ten days of a harvest more destructive than many a battle, return to their native village with some four or five scudi in their pockets.

If these men could obtain a long lease, or merely take the land from year to year, they would make more money, and the dangers to be encountered would be no greater. They might be established between Home and Montepoli, Rome and Civita Castellana, in the valley of Ceprano, on the hills extending round the _Castelli_ of Rome, where they would breathe an air as wholesome as that of their own mountains; for fever does not always spare them even there. In course of time, the colonizing system, advancing slowly and gradually, might realize the dream of Pius VII., and would inevitably drive before it pauperism and disease.

I dare not hope that such a miracle will ever be wrought by a Pope.

The resistance to be encountered is too great, and the power is too inert. But if it should ever please Heaven, which has given them ten centuries of clerical government, to accord them, by way of compensation, ten blessed years of lay administration, we should perhaps see the Church property placed in more active and abler hands.

Then, too, we should see the law of primogeniture and the system of entails abolished, large estates divided, and their owners reduced, by the force of circ.u.mstances, to the necessity of cultivating their properties. Good laws on exportation, well enforced, would enable spirited farmers to cultivate corn on a large scale. A network of country roads, and main lines of railway, would convey agricultural produce from one end of the country to the other. A national fleet would carry it all over the world. Public works, inst.i.tutions of credit, police--But why plunge into such a sea of hopes?

Suffice it to say, that the subjects of the Pope will be as prosperous and as happy as any people in Europe--as soon as they cease to be governed by a Pope!

CHAPTER XX.

FINANCES.

"The subjects of the Pope are necessarily poor--but then they pay hardly any taxes. The one condition is a compensation for the other!"

This is what both you and I have often heard said. Now and then, too, it is put forth upon the faith of some statistical return or another of the Golden Age, that they are governed at the rate of 7s. 6d. per head.

This calculation is a mere fable, as I can easily prove. But supposing it to be correct, the Romans would not be the less deserving of pity.

It is a miserable consolation to people who have nothing, to be told that their taxes are low. For my part, I would much rather have heavy taxes to pay, and a good deal to pay them with, like the English. What would be thought of the Queen's government, if after having ruined trade, manufactures, and agriculture, and exhausted all the sources of public prosperity, it were to say to the people, "Rejoice, good people, for henceforth your taxes will not exceed 7s. 6d. a head all round!" The English people would answer with great reason, that they would much prefer to pay 40 a head, and be able to make 400.

It is not this or that particular sum per head on a population which const.i.tutes moderate or excessive taxation; but the relation which the sum annually taken for the service of the State bears to the revenues of the nation. It is just to take much from him who has much; monstrous to attempt to take anything--be it never so little--from him who has nothing. If you examine the question from this common sense point of view, you will agree with me that taxation at the rate of 7s.

6,d. a head, is pretty heavy for the poor Romans.

But 7s. 6,d. a head is _not_ the rate at which they are taxed; nor even double that amount. The Budget of Rome is 2,800,000, which is to be a.s.sessed upon three million taxpayers.

a.s.sessed, moreover, not according to the laws of reason, justice, and humanity, but in such a manner that the heaviest burdens fall upon the most useful, laborious, and interesting cla.s.s of the nation, the small proprietors.

And I do not allude here to the taxes paid directly to the State, and admitted in the budget. Besides these, there are the provincial and munic.i.p.al charges, which, under the t.i.tle of additional per-centage, amount to more than double the direct taxes. The province of Bologna pays 80,900 of property-tax, and 96,812 of provincial and munic.i.p.al charges, making together 177,712. This sum distributed over the whole population of 370,107, brings the taxation to a fraction under 10s. a head. But observe, that instead of being borne by the whole population, it is borne by no more than 23,022 proprietors.

But mark a further injustice! It does not bear equally upon the proprietors of the towns and those of the country. The former has a great advantage over the latter. A town property in the province of Bologna pays 2s. 3d. per cent., a country property of the same value 5s. 3d. per cent., not upon the income, but the capital.

In the towns, it is not the palaces, but the houses of the middle cla.s.s that are the most heavily rated. Take the palace of a n.o.bleman in Bologna, and a small house belonging to a citizen, which adjoins it. The palace is valued at the trifling sum of 1,100, on the ground that the apartments inhabited by the owner are not included in the income. The actual rent of which the owner is in the receipt for the part left off is about 280 a year: his taxes are 18 a year. The small house adjoining is valued at 200. The rent derived from it is 10 a year, and the taxes paid on it are 3. 7s. 6d. Thus we find the palace paying something like 5s. 6d. per cent. on its income, and the small house 1 7s.

The Lombards justly excite our compa.s.sion. But the proprietors of the province of Bologna are taxed to the annual amount of 1,400 more than those of the province of Milan.

To this crus.h.i.+ng taxation are added heavy duties on articles of consumption. All the necessaries of life are liable to these taxes, such as flour, vegetables, rice, bread, etc. They are heavier than in almost any other European city. Meat is charged at the same rate as in Paris. Hay, straw, and wood, at still higher rates.

The town dues of Lille amount to 10s. per head on the population; those of Florence, about the same; and those of Lyons 12s. 6d. At Bologna they are 14s. 2d. Observe, town dues alone. We are already a long way from the 7s. 6d. of the Golden Age!

I am bound in justice to admit that the nation has not always been so hardly dealt with. It was not till the reign of Pius IX. that the taxation became insupportable. The budget of Bologna was more than doubled between 1846 and 1858.

Something might be said, if at least the money taken from the nation were spent for the good of the nation!

But one-third of the amount raised in taxation remains in the hands of the officials who collect it. This is incredible, but true. The cost of collecting the revenue amounts, if I mistake not, in England, to 8 per cent.; in France, to 14 per cent.; in Piedmont, to 16 per cent.; and in the States of the Church, to 31 per cent.

If you marvel at a system of extravagance which obliges the people to pay 4 for every 2. 15s. 10d. required for their mis-government, here is a fact which will enlighten you on the subject.

Last year the place of munic.i.p.al receiver was put up to auction in the city of Bologna. An offer was made by an honourable and responsible man to collect the dues for a commission of 1-1/2 per cent. The Government gave the preference to Count Cesare Mattei, one of the Pope's Chamberlains, who asked two per cent. So this piece of favouritism costs the city 800 a year.

The following is the mode in which the revenue (after the abstraction of one-third in the course of collecting it) is disposed of.

1,000,000 goes to pay the interest of a continually acc.u.mulating debt, contracted by the priests, and for the priests, annually increasing through the bad administration of the priests, and carried by the priests to the debit of the nation.

400,000 is devoured by a useless army, the sole duty of which has. .h.i.therto been to present arms to the Cardinals, and to escort the procession of the Host.

120,000 is devoted to those establishments which of all others are the most indispensable to an unpopular government: I mean, the prisons.

80,000 is the cost of the administration of justice. The tribunals of the capital absorb half the amount, because they enjoy the distinction of being for the most part composed of prelates.

The very modest sum of 100,000 is devoted to public works. This is chiefly spent in embellis.h.i.+ng Rome, and repairing churches.

60,000 goes in the encouragement of idleness in the city of Rome. A Charity Commission, presided over by a Cardinal, distributes this sum among a few thousand incorrigible idlers, without accounting for it to anybody. Mendicity is all the more flouris.h.i.+ng, as is apparent to every one. From 1827 to 1858, the subjects of the Holy Father paid 1,600,000 in mischievous alms, among the injurious effects of which, the princ.i.p.al was to deprive labour of the hands it required. The Cardinal who presides over the Commission takes 2,400 a year for his private charities.

16,000 defrays poorly enough the cost of the public education, which, moreover, is wholly in the hands of the clergy. Add this moderate sum, and the 80,000 devoted to the administration of justice, to a part of the 100,000 spent on public works, and you have all that can fairly be set down as money spent in the service of the nation. The remainder is of no use but to the Government,--in other words, to a parcel of priests.

The Pope and the partners of his power must be indifferent financiers, when, after spending such a pittance on the nation, they contrive to wind up every year with a deficit. The balance of 1858 showed a deficit of nearly half a million sterling, which does not prevent the government from promising a surplus in the estimates of 1859.

In order to fill up the gaps in the budget, the Government has recourse to borrowing, sometimes openly, by a loan from the house of Rothschild, sometimes secretly, by an issue of stock.

In 1857 the Pontifical Government contracted its eleventh loan with Rothschild's house; it was a trifle, something under 700,000.

Nevertheless there were quiet issues of stock from 1851 to 1858, to the tune of 1,320,000. The capital of the debt for which its subjects are liable, amounts to 14,376,150. 5s. If you will take the trouble to divide this grand total by the figure which represents the population, you will find that every little subject born to the Pope comes into the world a debtor of something like 4. 10s., whereof he will contribute to pay the interest all his life, although neither he nor his ancestors have ever derived the least benefit from the outlay.

It is true these fourteen millions and a half (in round numbers) have not been lost for all the world. The nephews of the Popes have pocketed a good round sum. About a third has been swallowed up by what is called the general interests of the Roman Catholic faith. It has been proved that the religious wars have cost the Popes at least four millions; and the farmers of Ancona and Forl are still paying out of the produce of their fields for the f.a.ggots used to burn the Huguenots. The churches of which Rome is so proud have not been paid for entirely by the tribute of Catholicism at large. There are certain remnants of accounts, which were at the cost of the Roman people. The Popes have made more than one donation to those poor religious establishments, which possess no more than 20,000,000 worth of property in the world. The expenses lumped together under the head of Allocations for Public Wors.h.i.+p add something short of 900,000 sterling to the national debt. Foreign occupation, and more particularly the invasion of the Austrians in the north, has burdened the inhabitants with a million sterling. Add the money squandered, given away, stolen, and lost, together with 1,360,000 paid to bankers for commission on loans, and you have an account of the total of the debt, excepting perhaps a million and a half or so, of which the unexplained and inexplicable disburs.e.m.e.nt does immortal honour to the discretion of the ministers.

Since the restoration of Pius IX., an approach to respect for public opinion has forced the Pontifical Government to publish some sort of accounts. It does not render them to the nation, but to Europe, knowing that Europe is not curious in the matter, and will be easily satisfied. A few copies of the annual Budget are published; they are certainly not in everybody's reach. The statement of receipts and expenditure is prodigiously laconic. I have now before me the estimates prepared for 1858, in four pages, the least blank of which contains just fourteen lines. The Finance Minister sums up the receipts and the outgoings, both ordinary and extraordinary. Under the head of Receipts, he lumps the whole of "the direct contributions, and the State property, 3,201,426 scudi."

Under the head of Expenditure, we read "Commerce, Fine Arts, Agriculture, Manufactures, and Public Works, 601,764 scudi." A tolerable lump, this.

This powerful simplification of accounts enables the Minister to perform some capital tricks of financial sleight of hand. Supposing, for instance, the Government wants half a million of scudi for some mysterious purpose, nothing is easier than to bring their direct contributions in as having paid half a million less than they really have. What will Europe ever know about the matter?

"Speech is silver, but silence is gold."

Successive Finance Ministers at Rome have all adopted this device, even when they are forced to speak, they have the art of not saying the very thing the country wants to hear.

In almost all civilized countries the nation enjoys two rights which seem perfectly just and natural. The first is that of voting the taxes, either directly or through the medium of its deputies; the second, that of verifying the expenditure of its own money.

In the Papal kingdom, the Pope or his Minister says to the citizens, "Here is what you have to pay!" And he takes the money, spends it, and never more alludes to it except in the vaguest language.

Still, in order to afford some sort of satisfaction to the conscience of Europe, Pius IX. promised to place the finances under the control of a sort of Chamber of Deputies. Here is the text of this promise, which figured, with many others, in the _Motu Proprio_ of the 12th of September, 1849.