Each
separate story can be disputed or explained away, but the weight of the
general evidence is overpowering. In these matters it is best to keep to
the old Latin rule, "Experto crede." I have talked with many persons,
Romans, Italians, and foreign residents, on the subject, and from one and
all I have heard similar accounts. Every traveller I have ever met with,
who has made like inquiries, has come to a like conviction. In a country
where there is practically neither press nor public courts, nor
responsible government, where even no classified census is allowed to be
taken, statistics are hard to obtain, and of little value when obtained.
Personal evidence, unsatisfactory as it is, is after all the best you can
arrive at. With regard then to what, in its strictest sense, is termed
the "morality" of Rome, I must dismiss the subject with the remarks, that
the absence of recognized public resorts and agents of vice may be dearly
purchased when parents make a traffic in their own houses of their
children's shame, and that perhaps as far as the state is concerned the
debauchery of a few is a less evil than the dissoluteness of the whole
population. More I cannot and need not say. With respect to other sins
against the Decalogue, it is an easier task to speak. There is very
little drunkenness in Rome I freely admit, but then the Italians, like
most natives of warm countries, are naturally sober.
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