It already contains more employes than all the government
offices of London put together; a few more will surely make no difference?"
"By Bacchus," he cried, "you foreigners have ideas! We could dispose of
ten or fifteen thousand of them, at least, in the way you suggest. I'll
make a note of that, for our next session."
And so he did.
But the Municipio of Naples, though extensive, is a purely local
charity, and I question whether its inmates will hear of any one save
their own cousins and brothers-in-law figuring as colleagues in office.
Every attempt at innovation in agriculture, as in industry, is forthwith
discouraged by new and subtle impositions, which lie in wait for the
enterprising Italian and punish him for his ideas. There is, of course,
a prohibitive duty on every article or implement manufactured abroad;
there is the octroi, a relic of medisevalism, the most unscientific,
futile, and vexatious of taxes; there are municipal dues to be paid on
animals bought and animals sold, on animals kept and animals killed, on
milk and vine-props and bricks, on timber for scaffolding and lead and
tiles and wine - on every conceivable object which the peasant produces
or requires for his existence. And one should see the faces of the
municipal employes who extort these tributes. God alone knows from
what classes of the populace they are recruited; certain it is that
their physiognomy reflects their miserable calling.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 50 of 488
Words from 13132 to 13382
of 131203
