The copper and lead mines, which the
ancients worked profitably, are perhaps not exhausted. Fuel is
supplied by a million or two of acres of forest land; besides which,
there is the sea, always open for the transport of coal from
Newcastle. The volcanic soil of several provinces produces enormous
quantities of sulphur, and the alum of Tolfi is the best in the world.
The quartz of Civita Vecchia will give us kaolin for porcelain. The
quarries contain building materials, such as marble and pozzolana,
which is Roman cement almost ready-made.
In 1847, the country lands subject to the Pope were valued at about
L34,800,000 sterling. The province of Benevento was not included, and
the Minister of Commerce and Public Works admitted that the property
was not estimated at above a third of its real value. If capital
returned its proper interest, if activity and industry caused trade
and manufactures to increase the national income as ought to be the
case, it would be the Rothschilds who would borrow money of the Pope
at six per cent. interest.
But stay! I have not yet completed the catalogue of possessions. To
the present munificence of nature must be added the inheritance of the
past. The poor Pagans of great Rome left all their property to the
Pope who damns them.
They left him gigantic aqueducts, prodigious sewers, and roads which
we find still in use, after twenty centuries of traffic. They left him
the Coliseum, for his Capuchins to preach in.
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