Читать книгу Rome in 1860 - Edward Dicey - Страница 4

Table of Contents

In foreign discussions on the Papal question it is always assumed, as an undisputed fact, that the maintenance of the Papal court at Rome is, in a material point of view, an immense advantage to the city, whatever it may be in a moral one. Now my own observations have led me to doubt the correctness of this assumption, which, if true, forms an important item in the whole matter under consideration. It is no good saying, as my “Papalini” friends are wont to do, Rome gains everything and indeed only exists by the Papacy. The real questions are, What class at Rome gain by it, and what is it that they gain? There are four classes at Rome: the priests, the nobles, the bourgeoisie, and the poor. Of course if anybody gains it is the priesthood. If the Pope were removed from Rome, or if a lay government were established (the two hypotheses are practically identical), the number of the Clergy would undoubtedly be much diminished. A large portion of the convents and clerical endowments would be suppressed, and the present generation of priests would be heavy sufferers. This result is inevitable. Under no free government would or could a city of 170,000 inhabitants support 10,000 unproductive persons out of the common funds; for this is substantially the case at Rome in the present day. Every sixteen lay citizens, men, women, and children, support out of their labour a priest between them. The Papal question with the Roman priesthood is thus a question of daily bread, and it is surely no want of charity to suppose that the material aspect influences their minds quite as much as the spiritual. Still even with regard to the priests there are two sides to the question. The system of political and social government inseparable from the Papacy, which closes up almost every trade and profession, drives vast numbers into the priesthood for want of any other occupation. The supply of priests is, in consequence, far greater than the demand, and, as the laws of political economy hold good even in the Papal States, priest labour is miserably underpaid. It is a Protestant delusion that the priests in Rome live upon the fat of the land. What fat there is is certainly theirs, but then there are too many mouths to eat it. The Roman priests are relatively poorer than those in any other part of Italy. It is one of the great mysteries in Rome how all the priests who swarm about the streets manage to live. The clue to the mystery is to be found inside the churches. In every church here, and there are 366 of them, some score or two of masses are said daily at the different altars. The pay for performing a mass varies from a “Paul” to a “Scudo;” that is, in round numbers, from sixpence to a crown. The “good” masses, those paid for by private persons for the souls of their relatives, are naturally reserved for the priests connected with the particular church; while the poor ones, which are paid for out of the funds of the church, are given to any priest who happens to apply for them. So somehow or other, what with a mass or two a day, or by private tuition, or by charitable assistance, or in some cases by small handicrafts conducted secretly, the large floating population of unemployed priests rub on from day to day, in the hope of getting ultimately some piece of ecclesiastical patronage. Yet the distress and want amongst them are often pitiable, and, in fact, amongst the many sufferers from the artificial preponderance given to the priesthood by the Papal system, the poorer class of priests are not among the least or lightest.

The nobility as a body are sure to be more or less supporters of the established order of things. Their interests too are very much mixed up with those of the Papacy. There is not a noble Roman family which has not one or more of its members among the higher ranks of the priesthood, and to a considerable degree their distinctions, such as they are, and their temporal prospects are bound up with the Popedom. Moreover, in this rank of the social scale the private and personal influence of the priests, through the women of the family, is very powerful. The more active, however, and ambitious amongst the aristocracy feel deeply the exclusion from public life, the absence of any opening for ambition, and the gradual impoverishment of their property, which are the necessary evils of an absolute ecclesiastical government.

The “Bourgeoisie” stand on a very different footing. They have neither the moral influence of the priesthood nor the material wealth of the nobility to console them for the loss of liberty; they form indeed the “Pariahs” of Roman society. “In other countries,” a Roman once said to me, “you have one man who lives in wealth and a thousand who live in comfort. Here the one man lives in comfort, and the thousand live in misery.” I believe this picture is only too true. The middle classes, who live by trade or mental labour, must have a hard time of it. The professions of Rome are overstocked and underpaid. The large class of government officials or “impiegati,” to whom admirers of the Papacy point with such pride as evidence of the secular character of the administration, are paid on the most niggardly scale; while all the lucrative and influential posts are reserved for the priestly administrators. The avowed venality of the courts of justice is a proof that lawyers are too poorly remunerated to find honesty their best policy, while the extent to which barbers are still employed as surgeons shows that the medical profession is not of sufficient repute to be prosperous. There is no native patronage for art, no public for literature. The very theatres, which flourish in other despotic states, are here but losing speculations, owing to the interference of clerical regulations. There are no commerce and no manufactures in the Eternal city. In a back street near the Capitol, over a gloomy, stable-looking door, you may see written up “Borsa di Roma,” but I never could discover any credible evidence of business being transacted on the Roman change. There is but one private factory in Rome, the Anglo-Roman Gas Company. What trade there is is huckstering, not commerce. In fact, so Romans have told me, you may safely conclude that every native you meet walking in the streets here, in a broadcloth coat, lives from hand to mouth, and you may pretty surely guess that his next month’s salary is already overdrawn. The crowds of respectably-dressed persons, clerks and shopkeepers and artizans, whom you see in the lottery offices the night before the drawing, prove the general existence not only of improvidence but of distress.

The favourite argument in support of the Papal rule in Rome, is that the poor gain immensely by it. I quite admit that the argument contains a certain amount of truth. The priests, the churches, and the convents give a great deal of employment to the working classes. There are probably some 30,000 persons who live on the priests, or rather out of the funds which support them. Then, too, the system of clerical charity operates favourably for the very poor. Any Roman in distress can get from his priest a “buono,” or certificate, that he is in want of food, and on presenting this at one of the convents belonging to the mendicant orders, he will obtain a wholesome meal. No man in Rome therefore need be reduced to absolute starvation as long as he stands well with his priest; that is, as long as he goes to confession, never talks of politics, and kneels down when the Pope passes. Now the evil moral effects of such a system, its tendency to destroy independent self-respect and to promote improvidence are obvious enough, and I doubt whether even the positive gain to the poor is unmixed. The wages paid to the servants of the Church, and the amount given away in charity, must come out of somebody’s pockets. In fact, the whole country and the poor themselves indirectly, if not directly, are impoverished by supporting these unproductive classes out of the produce of labour. If prevention is better than cure, work is any day better than charity. After all, too, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and nowhere are the poor more poverty-stricken and needy than in Rome. The swarms of beggars which infest the town are almost the first objects that strike a stranger here, though strangers have no notion of the distress of Rome. The winter, when visitors are here, is the harvest-time of the Roman poor. It is the summer, when the strangers are gone and the streets deserted, which is their season of want and misery.

The truth is, that Rome, at the present day, lives upon her visitors, as much or more than Ramsgate or Margate, for I should be disposed to consider the native commerce of either of these bathing-places quite as remunerative as that of the Papal capital. The Vatican is the quietest and the least showy of European courts; and of itself, whatever it may do by others, causes little money to be spent in the town. Even if the Pope were removed from Rome, I much doubt, and I know the Romans doubt, whether travellers would cease to come, or even come in diminished numbers. Rome was famous centuries before Popes were heard of, and will be equally famous centuries after they have passed away. The churches, the museums, the galleries, the ruins, the climate, and the recollections of Rome, would still remain equally attractive, whether the Pope were at hand or not. Under a secular government the city would be far more lively and, in many respects, more pleasant for strangers. An enterprising vigorous rule could probably do much to check the malaria, to bring the Campagna into cultivation, to render the Tiber navigable, to promote roads and railways, and to develop the internal resources of the Roman States. The gain accruing from these reforms and improvements would, in Roman estimation, far outweigh any possible loss in the number of visitors, or from the absence of the Papal court. Moreover, whether rightly or wrongly, all Romans entertain an unshakeable conviction that in an united Italian kingdom, Rome must ultimately be the chief, if not the sole capital of Italy.

These reasons, which rest on abstract considerations, naturally affect only the educated classes who are also biassed by their political predilections. The small trading and commercial classes are, on somewhat different grounds, equally dissatisfied with the present state of things. The one boon they desire, is a settled government and the end of this ruinous uncertainty. Now a priestly government supported by French bayonets can never give Rome either order or prosperity. For the sake of quiet itself, they wish for change. With respect to the poor, it is very difficult to judge what their feelings or wishes may be. From what I have seen, I doubt, whether in any part of Italy, with the exception of the provinces subject to Austrian oppression, the revolution is, strictly speaking, a popular one. I suspect that the populace of Rome have no strong desire for Italian unity or, still less for annexation to Sardinia, but I am still more convinced that they have no affection or regard whatever for the existing government; not even the sort of attachment, valueless though it be, which the lazzaroni of Naples have for their Bourbon princes. It is incredible, if any such a feeling did exist, that it should refuse to give any sign of its existence at such a time as the present.

With respect to the actual pecuniary cost of the Papal government, it is not easy to arrive at any positive information; I have little faith in statistics generally, and in Roman statistics in particular; I have, however, before me the official Government Budget for the year 1858. Like all Papal documents, it is confused and meagre, but yet some curious conclusions may be arrived at from it. The year 1858 was as quiet a year, be it remembered, as there has been in Italy for ten years past. It was only on new year’s day, in 1859, that Napoleon dropped the first hint of the Italian war. The year 1858 may therefore be fairly regarded as a normal year under the present Papal system. For this year the net receipts of the Government were,

Scudi.

Direct Taxes. … 3,011571

Customs … … 5,444729

Stamps … . … 947184

Post … . … . 111848

Lottery … … 392813

Licences for Trade . . 174525

Total 10,082670

Now the census, taken at the end of 1857, showed a little over 600,000 families in the Papal States. The head therefore of every family had, on an average, to pay about 16 sc. and a half, or £3. 7s. 9d. annually for the expenses of the Government, which for so poor a country is pretty well. Let us now see how that money is professed to have been spent,

The net expenses are,

Scudi.

Army … . … . 2,014047

Public Debt. … 4,217708

Interior … … 1,507235

Currency … … 15115

Public Works. … 681932

Census … . … 88151

Grant for special

purposes to Minister

of Finance … 1,415404

Total 9,949592

Now the Pontifical army is kept up avowedly not for purposes of defence, but to support the Government. The public debt of 66 millions of scudi has been incurred for the sake of keeping up this army. The expenses of the Interior mean the expenses of the police and spies, which infest every town in the Papal dominions, and the grant for Special Purposes, whatever else it may mean, which is not clear, means certainly some job, which the Government does not like to avow. The only parts, therefore, of the expenditure which can be fairly said to be for the benefit of the nation, are the expenses of the Currency, Census and Public Works, amounting altogether to 785198 scudi, or not a twelfth of the net income raised by taxation. Commercially speaking, whatever may be the case theologically, I am afraid the Papal system can hardly be said to pay.