wood, and one and a half for water; she carries a mule's load on her
head; she works from sunrise to sunset, without question or complaint.
Her numerous children are in themselves a precious resource: at four
years old they are able to tend sheep and cattle.

It is vain to ask these country people what is their opinion of Rome
and the government: their idea of these matters is infinitely vague
and shadowy. The Government manifests itself to them in the person of
an official, who, for the sum of three pounds sterling per month,
administers and sells justice among them. This individual is the only
gift Rome has ever conferred upon them. In return for the great
benefit of his presence, they pay taxes on a tolerably extensive
scale: so much for the house, so much for the livestock, so much for
the privilege of lighting a fire, so much on the wine, and so much on
the meat--when they are able to enjoy that luxury. They grumble,
though not very bitterly, regarding the taxes as a sort of periodical
hailstorm falling on their year's harvest. If they were to learn that
Rome had been swallowed up by an earthquake, they certainly would not
put on mourning. They would go forth to their fields as usual, they
would sell their crops for the usual price, and they would pay less
taxes. This is what all towns inhabited by peasants think of the
metropolis. Every township lives by itself, and for itself; it is an
isolated body, which has arms to work, and a belly to fill. The
cultivator of the land is everything, as was the case in the Middle
Ages. There is neither trade, nor manufactures, nor business on any
extended scale, nor movement of ideas, nor political life, nor any of
those powerful bonds which, in well-governed countries, link the
provincial towns to the capital, as the members to the heart.

If there be a capital for these poor people, it is Paradise. They