BEFORE THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
ern half of the peninsula, and to put the public finances upon a sounder basis. Notably in Milan and in Tuscany the incoming of Austrian rule brought a far greater prosperity than had been known for generations. But, as a result of the excessive subdivision of the territory of Italy, we can easily see that foreign trade and international intercourse of every sort would be greatly hampered by the ordinary and inevitable eighteenth-century formalities at the frontiers and at city gates. Moreover, it is obvious that a country so divided could have no collective national life or spirit. Throughout the greater part of Italy, participation in political life was for most men, of whatever rank, an impossibility. Practically all that was left was to take up with some occupation of an obviously harmless type.
Under the conditions existing everywhere in Italy no man could take pride in the name of Italian. He might be a member of an ancient and wealthy family, but, shut out as he was from an active career and disdaining any useful occupation, he was likely to become an amateur in art or music — to spend his days and his nights in dancing attendance upon some woman who could never be his wife, and to fritter away his energy in inane social follies. Civilization in some parts of Italy, particularly in the southern half, seems to have been a thin veneer over ill-concealed barbarism, due to causes of remote origin. Even in the middle of the nineteenth century, "in Romagna and the Marches … the blood-feud was custom of the country, greatly enhanced by long years of Papal misrule."[1]
Still, in spite of all drawbacks, portions of the northern half of Italy, particularly Tuscany[2] and Lombardy, were measurably prosperous. In comparison with these regions the southern half of the peninsula presented a marked contrast. Speaking broadly, poverty increased in proportion as one proceeded down through the States of the Church into the regions of the extreme South. A sober investigator like Tivaroni says[3] that in the Roman territory there were no manufactures and no agriculturists. The
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