Venice,
the Italians ought to have made a truce with her for ten years, on
condition only of her destroying no monuments, and not taxing Italians
more than Germans; and then thrown the whole force of their army on
Calabria, shot down every bandit in it in a week, and forced the
peasantry of it into honest work on every hill-side, with stout and
immediate help from the soldiers in embanking streams, building walls,
and the like; and Italian finance would have been a much pleasanter
matter for the King to take account of by this time; and a fleet might
have been floating under Garganus strong enough to sweep every hostile
sail out of the Adriatic, instead of a disgraced and useless remnant
of one, about to be put up to auction.

And similarly, _we_ ought to have occupied Greece instantly, when they
asked us, whether Russia liked it or not; given them an English king,
made good roads for them, and stout laws; and kept them, and their
hills and seas, with righteous shepherding of Arcadian fields, and
righteous ruling of Salaminian wave, until they could have given
themselves a Greek king of men again; and obeyed him, like men.

_April 24._

162. It is strange that just before I finish work for this time, there
comes the first real and notable sign of the victory of the principles
I have been fighting for, these seven years. It is only a newspaper
paragraph, but it means much. Look at the second column of the 11th
page of yesterday's 'Pall Mall Gazette,' The paper has taken a
wonderful fit of misprinting lately (unless my friend John Simon has
been knighted on his way to Weimar, which would be much too right and
good a thing to be a likely one); but its straws of talk mark which
way the wind blows perhaps more early than those of any other
journal--and look at the question it puts in that page, "Whether
political economy be the sordid and materialistic science some
account it, or almost the noblest on which thought can be employed?"
Might not you as well have determined that question a little while
ago, friend Public? and known what political economy _was_, before you
talked so much about it?

But, hark, again--"Ostentation, parental pride and a host of moral"
(immoral?) "qualities must be recognized as among the springs of
industry; political economy should not ignore these, but, to discuss
them, _it must abandon its pretensions to the precision of a pure
scien