In fact, so Romans have told me, you may safely conclude that every native you meet walking in the streets here, in a broadcloth coat, lives from hand to mouth, and you may pretty surely guess that his next month's salary is already overdrawn.

The crowds of respectably-dressed persons, clerks and shopkeepers and artizans, whom you see in the lottery offices the night before the drawing, prove the general existence not only of improvidence but of distress.
The favourite argument in support of the Papal rule in Rome, is that the poor gain immensely by it.

I quite admit that the argument contains a certain amount of truth.

The priests, the churches, and the convents give a great deal of employment to the working classes.

There are probably some 30,000 persons who live on the priests, or rather out of the funds which support them.