“But we want hands for this purpose,” asserted a young monsignor to-day, “I do not believe that the earth would yield much!”
Rome is in want of hands for the cultivation of the earth, and the production of the people's bread, because she employs so many to attend to the churches and their ceremonies. There are probably five thousand priests and monks, and as many deacons or servants, who are occupied in the service of the churches and the daily ceremonies. In this manner ten thousand pairs of hands are employed, of which certainly one-half, at least, might labor to more profitable results. Man cannot live by bread alone, but neither can he live alone by prayer; and, least of all, by official mediatorial prayer. It exhibits most clearly the multitude of miserable wretches and beggars which exist in ecclesiastical and priestly Italy. “Pray and work!” was given as a rule for holy living by an ancient Father of the church. But the Romans do not love the work of peace, and scorn at this day to till the earth.
We had, at home in the evening, the company of a young Englishman, who has resided in Rome for ten years. Although he loves the eternal city, as his second fatherland, and is by creed a Catholic, he is, nevertheless, a friend to liberty of conscience, and the free exercise of religion, whilst he sees very clearly the inutility of a church-government in temporal affairs; in a word, of an ecclesiastical state like the Pontifical, and he believes that it is impossible for it long to maintain itself. He is an amiable young man, thoughtful and well-educated.
- Vol. II.—14
