it has all but annihilated trade in the Papal States. If you except
the manufacture of cameos, Roman mosaics, a little painting and
statuary, there is really no more trade in the country than is
absolutely necessary to keep the people from starvation. The trade and
industry of the Roman States are crushed to death under a load of
monopolies and restrictive tariffs, invented by infallible wisdom for
protecting, but, as it seems to our merely fallible wisdom, for
sacrificing, the industry of the country.

Let us take as our first instance the Iron Trade. We all know the
importance of iron as regards civilization. Civilization may be said to
have commenced with iron,--to have extended over the earth with iron;
and so closely connected are the two, that where iron is not, there you
can scarce imagine civilization to be. It is by iron in the form of the
plough that man subjugates the soil; and it is by iron in the form of
the sword that he subjugates kingdoms. What would our country be without
its iron,--without its railroads, its steam-ships, its steam-looms, its
cutlery, its domestic utensils? Almost all the comforts and conveniences
of civilized life are obtained by iron. You may imagine, then, the
condition of the Papal States, when I state that iron is all but unknown
in them. It is about as rare and as dear as the gold of Uphaz. And why
is it so? There is abundance of iron in our country; water-carriage is
anything but expensive; and the iron manufacturers of Britain would be
delighted to find so good a market as Italy for their produce. Why,
then, is iron not imported into that country? For this simple reason,
that the Church has forbidden its introduction. Strange, that it should
forbid so useful a metal where it is so much needed. Yet the fact is,
that the Pope has placed its importation under an as stringent
prohibition almost as the importation of heresy: perhaps he smells
heresy and civilization coming in the wake of iron. The duty on the
introduction of bar-iron is two baiocchi la libbra, equivalent to fifty
dollars, or L12 10s., per ton; which is about twice the price of
bar-iron in this country. This duty is prohibitive of course.

The little iron which the Romans possess they import mostly from
Britain, in the form of pig-iron; and the absurdity of importing it in
this form appears from the fact that there is no coal in the States to
smelt it,--at least none has as yet been discovered: wood-char is used
in t