As the subjects of the Ecclesiastical State are perhaps the poorest in Italy, this has been imputed to the rapacious disposition which some assert is natural to Churchmen. This poverty, however, may be otherwise accounted for. Bishop Burnet very judiciously observes, that the subjects of a government, which is at once despotic and elective, labour under peculiar disadvantages; for an hereditary Prince will naturally have considerations for his people which an elective one will not, “unless he has a degree of generosity not common among men, and least of all among Italians, who have a passion for their families which is not known in other places[9].” An elective Prince, knowing that it is only during his reign that his family can receive any benefit from it, makes all the haste he can to enrich them. To this it may be added, that as Popes generally arrive at Sovereignty at an age when avarice predominates in the human breast, they may be supposed to have a stronger bias than other Princes to that sordid passion; and even when this does not take place, their needy relations are continually prompting them to acts of oppression, and suggesting ways and means of squeezing the people. Other causes might be assigned; but, that it does not originate from the imputation above mentioned, seems evident from this, that the peasants of particular ecclesiastics, and of the convents in the Pope’s dominions, as well as in other countries, are generally less oppressed than those of the lay lords and princes.