ntinued the plans of their predecessors. The
new Pontiff commenced his reign generally with a profound sense of the
abuses and of the discontent which prevailed before his elevation, and
naturally sought to obtain favour and improvement by opposite measures.
In the cultivation of the Roman Campagna, for instance, it was observed
that each Pope followed a different system, so that little was
accomplished. The persons were almost always changed by the new Pope, so
that great offices rarely remained long in the same hands. The Popes
themselves were seldom versed in affairs of State, and therefore
required the assistance of statesmen of long experience. In the
eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries, when the election was free
from outward influence, men were generally chosen who had held under one
or two Popes the highest office of state,--Gregory VII., Urban II.,
Gelasius II., Lucius II., Alexander III., Gregory VIII., Gregory IX.,
Alexander IV. But in modern times it has been the rule that the
Secretary of State should not be elected, and that the new Pope should
dismiss the heads of the administration. Clement IX. was the first who
gave up this practice, and retained almost all those who had been
employed under his predecessor.

The burdens of the State increased far beyond its resources from the aid
which the Popes gave to the Catholic Powers, especially in the Turkish
wars. At the beginning of the seventeenth century the debt amounted to
12,242,620 _scudi_, and the interest absorbed three-fourths of the whole
income. In 1655 it had risen to 48,000,000 _scudi_. The financial
administration was secret, free from the control of public accounts, and
the _Tesoriere_, being necessarily a cardinal, was irresponsible. There
was no industry in the towns; they remained for the most part small and
poor; almost all articles of common use were imported, and the country
had little to give in exchange. All the interest of the public debt went
to foreign creditors. As early as 1595 the discontent was very great,
and so many emigrated, in order to escape the heavy burdens, that
Cardinal Sacchetti said, in 1664, that the population was reduced by
one-half. In the year 1740 the president De Brosses found the Roman
Government the most defective but the mildest in Europe. Becattini, in
his panegyrical biography of Pius VI., declares that it was the worst
after that of Turkey. There were none of those limitations which in
other countri