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