oyment; sometimes in
harvest wages are as high as five francs, or four shillings a-day. The
wages paid to the labourers on a grain farm on which L2000 has been
expended on 500 acres, amount to no less than 4320 crowns, or L1080
sterling, annually; being above four times the cost of the shepherds for
a similar expenditure of capital, though they wander over ten times the
surface of ground. The labourers never remain in the fields; they set
off to the hills when their grain is sown, and only return in autumn to
cut it down. They do not work above twenty or thirty days in the year;
and therefore, though their wages for that period are so high, they are
in misery all the rest of the season. But though so little is done for
the land, the price received for the produce is so low, that cultivation
in grain brings no profit, and is usually carried on at a loss. The
peasants who conduct it never go to Rome--have often never seen it; they
make no purchases there; and _the most profitable of all trades in a
nation, that between the town and the country, is unknown in the Roman
States_.[38]

Here, then, the real cause of the desolation of the Campagna stands
revealed in the clearest light, and on the most irrefragable evidence.
It is not cultivated for grain crops, because remunerating prices for
that species of produce cannot be obtained. It is exclusively kept in
pasturage, because it is in that way only that a profit can be obtained
from the land. And that it is this cause, and not any deficiency of
capital or skill on the part of the tenantry, which occasions the
phenomenon, is further rendered apparent by the wealth, enterprize, and
information on agricultural subjects, of the great farmers in whose
lands the land is vested. "The conductors," says Sismondi, "of rural
labour in the Roman States, called _Mercanti di Tenute_ or _di
Campagne_, are men possessed of great capital, and who have received the
very best education. Such, indeed, is their opulence, that it is
probable they will, erelong, acquire the property of the land of which
at present they are tenants. Their number, however, does not exceed
eighty. They are acquainted with the most approved methods of
agriculture in Italy and other countries; they have at their disposal
all the resources of science, art, and immense capital; have availed
themselves of all the boasted advantages of centralization, of a
thorough division of labour, of a most accurate system of accounts