The cultivation of 100
rubbia, before it puts 5,000 scudi into the farmer's pockets, has put
some 8,000 scudi in circulation. These eight thousand scudi are
distributed among a thousand or fifteen hundred poor creatures who are
sadly in want of them. Pasture-farming, on the contrary, is only
profitable to three persons, the landlord, the breeder, and the
herdsman. Add to this, that in substituting arable for pasture
farming, you substitute health for disease, a more important
consideration than any other.
But churchmen who hold or administer lands in mortmain, will never
consent to such a salutary resolution. It does not profit them
directly enough. As long as they have the upper hand, they will prefer
their own ease, and the certainty of their income, to the future
welfare of the people.
Pius VI., a Pope worthy to have statues erected to him, conceived the
heroic project of forcing a change upon them. He decided that 23,000
rubbia should be annually cultivated in the Agro Romano, and that all
the land should in turn be subjected to manual labour. Pius VII. did
still better. He decided that Rome, the _origo mali_, should be the
first to apply the remedy. He had a circuit of a mile traced round the
capital, and ordered the proprietors to cultivate it without further
question. A second, and then a third, were to succeed to the first.
The result would have been the disappearance, in a few years, of
malaria, and the gradual population of the solitudes.
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