We must not, on the other hand, suppose that these congregations of cardinals count in any degree--except as the mere executive of his will--in the great work of his Pontificate. His own teeming brain and iron will are the sole sources of the mighty achievements of those five years. He had studied the Papal problem on all sides and was prepared at once to remedy a disorder or design a new structure. Agriculture and industry were feeble and unprosperous throughout the Papal States. Ruinous taxation, lawless oppression, and the ease with which one obtained one's bread at the innumerable monasteries, had demoralized the country and ruined the Papal treasury. Sixtus had some of the qualities of an economist--we still possess the careful account book he kept in his days of monastic authority--and he was especially concerned to nurse the Papal income in view of certain grandiose plans which he seems to have held in reserve, so that he applied himself zealously to this problem. It is generally agreed that his work here is a singular compound of shrewdness and blundering. By his restoration of public security he lifted a burden from agriculture, and he made special efforts to encourage the woollen industry and the silk industry.[316] He, at great cost, brought a good supply of water, from an estate twenty miles away, to Rome, and by this means and by the cutting of new roads re-established some population on the hills, which had long been almost deserted. We find Camilla speculating profitably in this extension of the city, but the more important point is that the population of Rome rose in five years from 70,000 to 100,000; still, however, only one tenth of the population of Imperial Rome. The Pope also gave a water-supply to Civita Vecchia and drained its marshes; and he spent--with very little result in this case--200,000 ducats in draining the marshes at Terracina, which he personally inspected in 1588.