country is favourable to the palm and the orange.
Numerous and thriving flocks roam across the plains in winter, and
ascend to the mountains in summer. Horses, cows, and sheep live and
multiply in the open air, without need of shelter. Indian buffaloes
swarm in the marshes. Every species of produce requisite for the food
and clothing of man grows easily, and as it were joyfully, in this
privileged land. If men in the midst of it are in want of bread or
shirts, Nature has no cause to reproach herself, and Providence washes
its hands of the evil.

In all the three states raw material exists in incredible abundance.
Here are hemp, for ropemakers, spinners, and weavers; wine, for
distillers; olives, for oil and soap makers; wool, for cloth and
carpet manufacturers; hides and skins, for tanners, shoemakers, and
glovers; and silk in any quantity for manufactures of luxury. The iron
ore is of middling quality, but the island of Elba, in which the very
best is found, is near at hand. The copper and lead mines, which the
ancients worked profitably, are perhaps not exhausted. Fuel is
supplied by a million or two of acres of forest land; besides which,
there is the sea, always open for the transport of coal from
Newcastle. The volcanic soil of several provinces produces enormous
quantities of sulphur, and the alum of Tolfi is the best in the world.
The quartz of Civita Vecchia will give us kaolin for porcelain. The
quarries contain building materials, such as marble and pozzolana,
which is Roman cement almost ready-made.

In 1847, the country lands subject to the Pope were valued at about
L34,800,000 sterling. The province of Benevento was not included, and
the Minister of Commerce and Public Works admitted that the property
was not estimated at above a third of its real value. If capital
returned its proper interest, if activity and industry caused trade
and manufactures to increase the national income as ought to be the
case, it would be the Rothschilds who would borrow money of the Pope
at six per cent. interest.

But stay! I have not yet completed the catalogue of possessions. To
the present munificence of nature must be added the inheritance of the
past. The poor Pagans of great Rome left all their property to the
Pope who damns them.

They left him gigantic aqueducts, prodigious sewers, and roads which
we find still in use, after twenty centuries of traffic. They left him
the Coliseum, for his Capuchins to preach in. Th