y of foreign grain to the Tiber
still continues, and chains the proprietors of the _Agro Romano_ to
pasturage as the only means of profitable cultivation. Travellers are
never weary of expressing their astonishment at the desolation which comes
up to the very gates of Rome, as of Constantinople; but a very simple
cause explains it in both. It is more profitable to keep the land in
pasturage than to lay it out in grain cultivation, by reason of the deluge
of foreign grain raised in semi-barbarous countries, with which the
capital is flooded. From official documents laid before the Papal
Government, which made the most anxious and minute enquiries into this
subject, it appears that 8000 crowns laid out in agriculture in the
Campagna of Rome, at the prices of Rome, would bring in a profit of only
30 crowns a-year; while the same sum laid out on pasturage of sheep on the
same land, would bring in 1972 crowns. It is not surprising, in these
circumstances, that the Campagna remains in grass.[5]

The cause of this extraordinary state of things is to be found, not in any
peculiar adaptation of the Campagna to grass cultivation; for the land is,
generally, of the most extraordinary fertility, and in former times, in
the infancy of Rome, literally speaking "every rood had its man." The
cause, and the sole cause, is to be found in the constant low price of
grain in the capital, and the purchase of the _whole of its supply_ from
foreign states. The Papal Government inherited from its Imperial
predecessor the habit, and the necessity, of making periodical
distributions of grain, at a cheap rate, to the people. The people
inherited, from the lazy successors of the conquerors of the world, the
habit of looking to the public stores for cheap distributions of food, as
those of Paris did during the Revolution. Government, elective, weak,
without any armed force, and in the hands of priests, had not courage to
incur the present hazard consequent on a departure from this ruinous
system; and they bought their grain, of course, where they could get it
cheapest--in Egypt, Odessa, and the Levant. The banks of the Volga are to
modern, what those of the Nile were to ancient Rome. The Campagna has been
chained to sterility and desolation by the same cause in modern as in
ancient times--under the Popes as the Emperors. So far has this evil gone,
that in 1797, when the Papal Government was overturned by the French, the
_Casa Annonaria_ of the Aposto