at a fixed and low price, as under
their papal successors. But the same causes which produced these effects
are still in full operation. The cry for cheap bread in a popular state,
is as menacing as it was to the emperors or popes of Rome. The only
difference is, the sacrifice of domestic industry is now more disguised.
The thing is done, but it is done not openly by public deliveries of the
foreign grain at low prices, but indirectly under the specious guise of
free trade. Government does not say, "We will import Polish grain, and
sell it permanently at thirty-six or forty shillings a quarter;" but it
says, "we will open our harbours to the Polish farmers who can do so. We
will admit grain duty free from a country where wages are sixpence
a-day, and rents half-a-crown an acre." They thus force down the price
of grain to the foreign level, augmented only by the cost and profit of
importations, as effectually as ever did the emperors or _Casa
Annonaria_of Rome.

And what has Rome--the urban population of Rome--for whose supposed
interests, and in obedience to whose menacing cry, the Roman market has
for eighteen centuries been supplied with foreign bread--what have they
gained by this long continuation of government to their wishes? Sismondi
has told us in one word--"In Rome there _is no commerce between the town
and the country_." They would have foreign grain with its consequences,
and _they have had foreign grain with its consequences_. And what have
been these consequences? Why, that the Eternal City, which, even when
taken by the Goths, had 1,200,000 inhabitants within its walls, can now
scarcely number 170,000, and they almost entirely in poverty, and mainly
supported by the influx and expenditure of foreigners. The Campagna,
once so fruitful and so peopled, has become a desert. No inhabitant of
the Roman states buys any thing in Rome. Their glory is departed--it has
gone to other people and other lands. And what would have been the
result if this wretched concession to the blind and unforeseeing popular
clamour had not taken place? Why, that Rome would have been what
Naples--where domestic industry is protected--has become; it would have
numbered 400,000 busy and active citizens within its walls. The Campagna
would have been what the marches of Ancona now are. Between Rome and the
Campagna, a million of happy and industrious human beings would have
existed in the Agro Romano, independent of all the world, mutually