But although it is quite true that the cultivation of a rubbio of land costs 80 scudi, it is false that the earth only yields sevenfold on the seed sown.  According to the admission of the farmers themselves—­and they are notoriously not in the habit of exaggerating their profits—­it yields thirteen-fold on the seed sown.  Thirteen measures of corn are worth thirteen times ten scudi, or 130 scudi.  Deduct 80, the cost of cultivation, and 50 remain.  Multiply by 100, the result is 5,000 scudi (about L1,070), which will be the net income arising from the 100 rubbia cultivated in corn.  The same extent of land under pasturage will produce L160 or L180.

Consider, moreover, that it is not the net, but the gross income, which constitutes the wealth of a country.  The cultivation of 100 rubbia, before it puts 5,000 scudi into the farmer’s pockets, has put some 8,000 scudi in circulation.  These eight thousand scudi are distributed among a thousand or fifteen hundred poor creatures who are sadly in want of them.  Pasture-farming, on the contrary, is only profitable to three persons, the landlord, the breeder, and the herdsman.  Add to this, that in substituting arable for pasture farming, you substitute health for disease, a more important consideration than any other.

But churchmen who hold or administer lands in mortmain, will never consent to such a salutary resolution.  It does not profit them directly enough.  As long as they have the upper hand, they will prefer their own ease, and the certainty of their income, to the future welfare of the people.

Pius VI., a Pope worthy to have statues erected to him, conceived the heroic project of forcing a change upon them.  He decided that 23,000 rubbia should be annually cultivated in the Agro Romano, and that all the land should in turn be subjected to manual labour.  Pius VII. did still better.  He decided that Rome, the origo mali, should be the first to apply the remedy.  He had a circuit of a mile traced round the capital, and ordered the proprietors to cultivate it without further question.  A second, and then a third, were to succeed to the first.  The result would have been the disappearance, in a few years, of malaria, and the gradual population of the solitudes.  The purification of the atmosphere would, too, be further promoted by planting trees round the fields.  Excellent measures these, although tinged by despotism.  Enlightened despotism repairs the errors of clumsy despotism.  But what could the will of two men avail against the passive resistance of a caste?  The laws of Pius VI. and Pius VII. were never enforced.  Cultivation, which had extended over 16,000 rubbia under the reign of Pius VI., is reduced to an annual average of 5,000 or 6,000 under the paternal inspection of Pius IX.  Not only is the planting of young trees abandoned, but the sheep are allowed to nibble down the tender shoots of the old ones.  Besides this, speculators are tolerated, who burn down whole forests, for the production of potash.