The abundance, also, of lotteries shakes one's faith in Roman morality.

A population amongst whom gambling and beggary are encouraged by their spiritual and temporal rulers is not likely in other respects to be a virtuous or a moral one.
The frequency of violent crimes is in itself a startling fact.
To my eyes, indeed, the very look of the city and its inhabitants, is a strong _prima facie_ ground of suspicion.

There is vice on those worn, wretched faces--vice in those dilapidated hovel-palaces--vice in those streets, teeming with priests and dirt and misery.

In fact, if you only fancy to yourself a city, where there are no manufactures, no commerce, no public life of any kind; where the rich are condemned to involuntary idleness, and the poor to enforced misery; where there is a population of some ten thousand ecclesiastics in the prime of life, without adequate occupation for the most part, and all vowed to celibacy; where priests and priest-rule are omnipotent, and where every outlet for the natural desires and passions of men is carefully cut off--if you take in fully all these conditions and their inevitable consequences, you will not be surprised if to me, as to any one who knows the truth, the outward morality of Rome seems but the saddest of its many mockeries..