Cattle are subject to vexatious taxes, which add from twenty to thirty per cent. to their cost.  They pay when at pasture; they pay nearly twenty-three shillings per head at market; they pay on exportation.  And yet the breeding of cattle is one of the most valuable resources of the State, and one of those which ought to be the most assisted.

The horses raised in the country pay five per cent. on their value every time they change hands.  By the time a horse has passed through twenty different hands, the Government has pocketed as much as the breeder.  When I say the Government, I am wrong; the horse-tax is not included in the Budget.  It is an ecclesiastical prebend.  Cardinal della Dateria throws it in with general episcopal revenues.

“The good shepherd should shear, and not flay his sheep.”  These are the words of an Emperor, not a Pope, of Rome.

And now I dare not ask of the Holy Father certain protective measures which could not fail to double the revenue of his crown and the number of his subjects.

According to the statistical returns of 1857, the territorial wealth of the Romans is estimated at L104,400,000.  The gross produce of this capital does not reach more than L116,563. 11s. 8d., or about ten per cent.  This is little.  In Poland, and some other great agricultural countries, the land pays a net revenue of twelve per cent., which represents at least twenty per cent. gross.  The Roman soil would produce the same if the Roman government did its duty.

The country is divided into cultivated and uncultivated lands.  The former, that is to say those planted with useful trees, enriched by manure, regularly submitted to manual labour, and sown every year, lie chiefly in the provinces of the Adriatic, far beyond the ken of the Pope.  In this half of the States of the Church (the most worthy of attention, and the least known) twenty years of French occupation have left excellent traditions.  The system of primogeniture is abolished, if not by law, at least in practice.  The equality of rights among the children of the same father necessitates the subdivision of property so favourable to agricultural progress.  There are some large landed proprietors here, as there are everywhere; but instead of abandoning their estates to the rapacity of an intendant, they divide them into different occupations, which they confide to the best farmers.  The landlord supplies the land, the buildings, and the cattle, and pays the property-tax.  The tenant supplies the labour, and pays the other taxes, and the produce is equally shared between the landlord and the tenant.  The system answers well, and the Adriatic provinces would hardly seem deserving of pity, if it were not for the brigands, the inundations of the Po and the Reno, and the crushing taxation I have described.

These taxes are lighter on the other side of the Apennines.  There are even in the neighbourhood of Rome some landowners who pay scarcely any at all.  In 1854 the Consulta di Stato valued the privileged lands at L360,000.  But we will turn to the subject of the uncultivated lands.