The ravages created by the malaria fevers amongst the ill-bred, ill-clothed, and ill-cared-for labourers, are really fearful.

Indeed it is hardly an exaggeration to say, that the whole working population of Rome is eaten up with malaria.
I feel myself convinced that the misery and degradation of the Papal States are to be attributed to two causes, the enormous burden of the priesthood, and the ravages of the malaria.

How far these two causes are in any way connected with each other, I have never been able to determine.

It is one of the rhetorical exaggerations which have impaired the utility of the _Question Romaine_, that M.About, in his remarkable work, always treats the malaria as if it was solely due to the inefficiency of the Papal Government, and would disappear with the deposition of the Pope.

This unphilosophical view is generally adopted by liberal opponents of the Papacy, who lay the malaria to its doors, while Papal advocates, on the contrary, always treat the malaria as a mysterious scourge which can never be removed or even palliated; a view almost as unphilosophical as the other.