It Is Diverting To Hear All Italian Expatiate Upon The Greatness
Of Modern Rome.
He will tell you there are above three hundred
palaces in the city; that there is scarce a Roman prince, whose
revenue does not exceed two hundred thousand crowns; and that
Rome produces not only the most learned men, but also the most
refined politicians in the universe.
To one of them talking in
this strain, I replied, that instead of three hundred palaces,
the number did not exceed fourscore; that I had been informed, on
good authority, there were not six individuals in Rome who had so
much as forty thousand crowns a year, about ten thousand pounds
sterling; and that to say their princes were so rich, and their
politicians so refined, was, in effect, a severe satire upon
them, for not employing their wealth and their talents for the
advantage of their country. I asked why their cardinals and
princes did not invite and encourage industrious people to settle
and cultivate the Campania of Rome, which is a desert? why they
did not raise a subscription to drain the marshes in the
neighbourhood of the city, and thus meliorate the air, which is
rendered extremely unwholsome in the summer, by putrid
exhalations from those morasses? I demanded of him, why they did
not contribute their wealth, and exert their political
refinements, in augmenting their forces by sea and land, for the
defence of their country, introducing commerce and manufactures,
and in giving some consequence to their state, which was no more
than a mite in the political scale of Europe? I expressed a
desire to know what became of all those sums of money, inasmuch
as there was hardly any circulation of gold and silver in Rome,
and the very bankers, on whom strangers have their credit, make
interest to pay their tradesmen's bills with paper notes of the
bank of Spirito Santo? And now I am upon this subject, it may not
be amiss to observe that I was strangely misled by all the books
consulted about the current coin of Italy. In Tuscany, and the
Ecclesiastical State, one sees nothing but zequines in gold, and
pieces of two paoli, one paolo, and half a paolo, in silver.
Besides these, there is a copper coin at Rome, called bajocco and
mezzo bajocco. Ten bajocchi make a paolo: ten paoli make a scudo,
which is an imaginary piece: two scudi make a zequine; and a
French loui'dore is worth two zequines and two paoli.
Rome has nothing to fear from the catholic powers, who respect it
with a superstitious veneration as the metropolitan seat of their
religion: but the popes will do well to avoid misunderstandings
with the maritime protestant states, especially the English, who
being masters of the Mediterranean, and in possession of Minorca,
have it in their power at all times, to land a body of troops
within four leagues of Rome, and to take the city, without
opposition. Rome is surrounded with an old wall, but altogether
incapable of defence.
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