ible in an elective monarchy of old Popes, feeble cardinals,
and a despicable soldiery. They went on deploring the evil, but never
once ventured to face the remedy. In 1802, Pius VII., a most
public-spirited and active pontiff, issued an edict, in which he
declared, "We are firmly persuaded that if we cannot succeed in applying
a remedy the abandonment and depopulation of the Campagna will go on
increasing, till the country becomes a fearful desert. _Fatal experience
leaves no doubt on that point._ We see around us, above all in the
Campagna, a number of estates entirely depopulated and abandoned to
grass, which, in the memory of man, were rich in agricultural
productions, and crowded with inhabitants, as is clearly established by
the seignorial rights attached to them. Population had been introduced
into these domains by agriculture, which employed a multitude of hands,
being in a flourishing state. But now the obstacles opposed to the
interior commerce of grain, _and the forced prices fixed by government,
have caused agriculture to perish_. Pasturage has come every where to
supplant it; and the great proprietors and farmers living in Rome, have
abandoned all thought of dividing their possessions among cultivators,
and sought only to diminish the cost of the flocks to which they have
devoted their estates. But if that system has proved profitable to them,
it has been fatal to the state, which it has deprived of its true
riches, the produce of agriculture, and of the industry of the rural
population."[41] But it was all in vain. The measures adopted by Pius
VII. to resuscitate agriculture in the Campagna, have proved all
nugatory like those of all his predecessors; the importation of foreign
grain into the Tiber, the forced prices at which it was sold by the
government at Rome, rendered it impossible to prosecute agriculture to a
profit; and the Campagna has become, and still continues, a desert.[42]

Here, then, the real cause of the long-continued desolation of the Agro
Romano, both in ancient and modern times, becomes perfectly apparent. It
is the cry for cheap bread in Rome which has done the whole. To stifle
this cry in the dreaded populace of the Eternal City, the emperors
imported grain largely from Egypt and Lybia, and distributed it at an
elusory price, or gratuitously, to the people. The unrestricted
importation of foreign grain, in consequence of those provinces becoming
parts of the empire, enabled the cultiv