In fact, the whole country and the poor
themselves indirectly, if not directly, are impoverished by supporting
these unproductive classes out of the produce of labour. If prevention
is better than cure, work is any day better than charity. After all,
too, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and nowhere are the poor
more poverty-stricken and needy than in Rome. The swarms of beggars
which infest the town are almost the first objects that strike a stranger
here, though strangers have no notion of the distress of Rome. The
winter, when visitors are here, is the harvest-time of the Roman poor. It
is the summer, when the strangers are gone and the streets deserted,
which is their season of want and misery.
The truth is, that Rome, at the present day, lives upon her visitors, as
much or more than Ramsgate or Margate, for I should be disposed to
consider the native commerce of either of these bathing-places quite as
remunerative as that of the Papal capital. The Vatican is the quietest
and the least showy of European courts; and of itself, whatever it may do
by others, causes little money to be spent in the town. Even if the Pope
were removed from Rome, I much doubt, and I know the Romans doubt,
whether travellers would cease to come, or even come in diminished
numbers. Rome was famous centuries before Popes were heard of, and will
be equally famous centuries after they have passed away.
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