Out of the population of 3,124,668 souls, more than a million are
agricultural labourers and shepherds. The workmen number 258,872, and
the servants exceed the workmen by about 30,000. Trade, finance, and
general business occupy something under 85,000 persons.

The landed proprietors are 206,558 in number, being about
one-fifteenth of the entire population. We have a greater proportion
in France. The official statistics of the Roman State inform us that
if the national wealth were equally divided among all the proprietors,
each of the 206,558 families would possess a capital of £680 sterling.
But they have omitted to state that some of these landed proprietors
possess 50,000 acres, and others a mere heap of flints.

It is to be observed that the division of land, like all other good
things, increases in proportion to the distance from the capital. In
the province of Rome there are 1,956 landed proprietors out of 176,002
inhabitants, which is about one in ninety. In the province of
Macerata, towards the Adriatic, there are 39,611, out of 243,104, or
one proprietor to every six inhabitants, which is as much as to say
that in this province there are almost as many properties as there are
families.

The Agro Romano, which it took Rome several centuries to conquer, is
at the present time the property of 113 families, and of 64
corporations.[3]




CHAPTER V.