o and three feet.[29] It is in vain,
therefore, to say, that it is the oppression of the Papal government,
the indolence of the cardinals, and the evils of an elective monarchy,
which have been the causes of the ruin of agricultural industry in the
vicinity of Rome. These causes operate just as strongly in the other
parts of the Papal States, where cultivation, instead of being in a
languishing, is in the most flourishing condition. In truth, so far from
having neglected agriculture in this blasted district, the Papal
government, for the last two centuries, has made greater efforts to
encourage it than all the other powers of Italy put together. Every
successive Pope has laboured at the Pontine marshes, but in vain.
Nothing can be more clear, than that the causes which have destroyed
agriculture in the Campagna, are some which were known in the days of
the Roman Republic; gradually came into operation with the extension of
the empire; and have continued in modern times to press upon this
particular district of the Papal States, in a much greater degree than
among other provinces of a similar extent in Italy.

The last circumstance which forces itself upon the mind, in the outset
of this inquiry, is, that the desolation of the Campagna is owing to
moral or political, not physical causes. Naturalists and physicians have
exhausted all their energies for centuries in investigating the causes
of the _malaria_, which is now felt with such severity in Rome in the
autumnal months, and renders health so precarious there at that period;
and the soil has been analyzed by the most skillful chemists, to see
whether there is any peculiarity in the earth, from its volcanic
character, which either induces sterility in the crops, or proves fatal
to the cultivators. But nothing has been discovered that in the
slightest degree explains the phenomena. There is no doubt that the
Campagna is extremely unhealthy in the autumnal months, and the Pontine
marshes still more so; but that is no more than is the case with every
low plain on the shores of the Mediterranean: it obtains in Lombardy,
Greece, Sicily, Asia Minor, and Spain, as well as in the Agro Romano. If
any one doubt it, let him lie down to sleep in his cloak in any of these
places in a night of September, and see what state he is in in the
morning. Clarke relates, that intermittent fevers are universal in the
Grecian plains in the autumnal months: in Estremadura, in September
1811, o