nation is sufficiently justified. I will but add, that if it is easily
led to evil, it is still more easily brought back to good; that it is
passionate and violent, but not ill-disposed, and that a kind act
suffices to make it forget the most justifiable enmities.

I will add in conclusion, that the Italians are not enervated by the
climate to such a degree as to dislike work. A traveller who may
happen to have seen some street porters asleep in the middle of the
day, returns home and informs Europe that these lazy people snore from
morning till night; that they have few wants, and work just enough to
keep themselves from one day to another. I shall presently show you
that the labourers of the rural districts are as industrious as our
own peasants (and that, too, in a very different temperature), as
economical, provident, and orderly, though more hospitable and more
charitable. If the lower orders in the towns have become addicted to
extravagance, idleness, and mendicity, it is because they have
discovered the impossibility, even by the most heroic efforts and the
most rigid economy, of gaining either capital or independence or
position. Let us not confound discouragement with want of courage, nor
tax a poor fellow with idleness, merely because he has had the
misfortune to be knocked down and run over by a carriage.

The Pope reigns over 3,124,668 souls, as I have already observed more
than once. This population is unequally distributed over the surface
of the country. The population in the provinces of the Adriatic is
nearly double that in the Mediterranean provinces, and more
immediately under the Sovereign's eyes.

Those pious economists who insist upon it that all is for the best
under the most sacred of governments, will not scruple to tell you:--