The
_mercante di campagna_ comes, and confirms the intelligence, and then
pays the rent agreed upon to the uttermost baioccho. Sometimes he even
pays down a year or two in advance. What prince could forgive such
aggravated insolence? It is the more atrocious, since the farmer is
polite, well-mannered, and much better educated than the prince; he
can give his daughters much larger fortunes, and could buy the entire
principality for his own son, if by chance the prince were obliged to
sell it. The cultivation of estates by means of these people is, in
the eyes of the Roman princes, an attack upon the rights of property.
Their passion for incessant work is a disturbance of the delightful
Roman tranquillity. The fortunes they acquire by personal exertion,
energy, and activity, are a reproach by inference to that stagnant
wealth which is the foundation of the State, and the admiration of the
Government.
This is not all: the _mercante di campagna_, who is not nobly born,
who is not a priest, who has a wife and children, thinks he has a
right to share in the management of the affairs of his country, upon
the ground that he manages his own well. He points out abuses; he
demands reforms. What audacity! The priests would cast him forth as
they would a mere advocate, were it not that his occupation is the
most necessary of all occupations, and that by turning out a man they
might starve a district.
But the insolence of these agricultural contractors goes still
further.
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