The law, which retains immense domains for ever in the hands of the same family, and custom, which obliges the Roman nobles to spend so large a portion of their incomes upon show, are equally obstacles to the subdivision and to the improvement of the land.
And while the richest plains in Italy are thus lying dormant, a vigorous, indefatigable, and heroic population cultivates with the pickaxe the arid sides of mountains, and exhausts its strength in attempting to extract vegetation from flints.
I have described the small mountain proprietors who form the populations of the towns of 10,000 inhabitants towards the Mediterranean.

You have seen with what indomitable resolution they combat the sterility of their meagre domains, without any hope of ever becoming rich.

These poor people, who spend their lives in getting their living, would fancy themselves transported to Paradise, if anybody were to give them a long lease of half-a-dozen acres in the country about Rome.

Their labour would then have a purpose, their existence an aim, their family a future.
Perhaps you think they would refuse to labour in an unhealthy country.
Why, these are the very men who at present cultivate the Roman Campagna to such extent as it is allowed to be cultivated.

They it is who, every spring, come down in large companies from their native mountains, to break up the heavy clods with pickaxes, and complete the work of the plough.