In 1855 the vines were diseased everywhere. Lay governments vied with each other in assisting the distressed proprietors. Cardinal Antonelli seized the opportunity to impose a tax of £74,680 upon the vines; and as there were no grapes that year to pay it, the amount was charged upon the different townships. Now which has proved the heaviest scourge--the _Oidium_ or the Cardinal Minister? Certainly not the _Oidium_, for that has disappeared. The Cardinal remains. All the corn harvested in the _Agro Romano_ pays a fixed duty of twenty-two pauls per rubbio. The rubbio is worth, on an average, from 80 to 100 pauls; so that the government taxes the harvest to the amount of at least 22 per cent. Here is a moderate tax. Why it is more than double the tithe. So much for the assistance rendered to the growers of corn. Every description of agricultural produce pays a tax on export. There are governments which give a premium to exporters: one may call that encouraging the national industry. There are others, and they are still more numerous, which allow a free export of the surplus produce of the land: this is not merely to encourage, it is to assist the labourers. The Pope levies an average tax of 22 per thousand on the total amount of exports, 160 per thousand on the value of imports. The Piedmontese government is satisfied with 13 per thousand on exports, and 58 per thousand on imports. Of the two countries, I should prefer farming in Piedmont. Cattle are subject to vexatious taxes, which add from twenty to thirty per cent. to their cost. They pay when at pasture; they pay nearly twenty-three shillings per head at market; they pay on exportation. And yet the breeding of cattle is one of the most valuable resources of the State, and one of those which ought to be the most assisted. The horses raised in the country pay five per cent. on their value every time they change hands. By the time a horse has passed through twenty different hands, the Government has pocketed as much as the breeder. When I say the Government, I am wrong; the horse-tax is not included in the Budget. It is an ecclesiastical prebend. Cardinal della Dateria throws it in with general episcopal revenues. "The good shepherd should shear, and not flay his sheep." These are the words of an Emperor, not a Pope, of Rome. And now I dare not ask of the Holy Father certain protective measures which could not fail to double the revenue of his crown and the number of his subjects. According to the statistical returns of 1857, the territorial wealth of the Romans is estimated at £104,400,000. The gross produce of this capital does not reach more than £116,563. 11s. 8d., or about ten per cent. This is little. In Poland, and some other great agricultural countries, the land pays a net revenue of twelve per cent., which represents at least twenty per cent. gross. The Roman soil would produce the same if the Roman government did its duty.