Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846

In modern times the same ruinous system has been continued, and hence the continued desolation of the Campagna, so pregnant with weakness and evil to the Roman states. The people never forgot the distribution of grain by government in the time of the emperors; the Papal authorities never had strength sufficient to withstand the menacing cry for cheap bread. Anxious to keep the peace in Rome, and depending little on the barons of the country, the ecclesiastical government saw no resource but to import grain themselves from any countries where they could get it cheapest, and sell it at a fixed price to the people. This price, down to 1763, was just the price at which it could be imported with a fair profit; as is proved by the fact, that down to that period the Casa Annonaria sustained no loss. But it was lower than the rate at which it could be raised even in the fertile plains of the Campagna, where labour was dearer and taxes heavier than in Egypt and the Ukraine, from whence the grain was imported by government; and consequently cultivation could not be carried on in the Agro Romano but at a loss. It of course ceased altogether; and the land, as in ancient times, has been entirely devoted to pasturage, to the extinction of the rural population, and the infinite injury of the state.

And this explains how it has happened, that in other parts of the Papal states, particularly in the marches on the other side of the Apennines, between Bologna and Ancona, agriculture is not only noways depressed, but flourishing; and the same is the case with the slopes of the Alban Mount, even in the Agro Romano. In the first situation, the necessity of bending to the cry for cheap bread in the urban population was not felt, as the marches contained no great towns, and the weight of influence was in the rural inhabitants. There was no Casa Annonaria, or fixed price of bread there; and therefore agriculture flourished as it did in Lombardy, the Campagna Felice of Naples, the plain of Pisa, or any other prosperous part of Italy. In the latter, it was in garden cultivation that the little proprietors, as in nearly the whole slopes of the Apennines, were engaged. The enchanting shores of the lakes of Gandolfo and Nemi, the hills around L'Aricia and Marino, are all laid out in the cultivation of grapes, olives, fruits, vegetables, and chestnuts. No competition from without was to be dreaded by them, as at least, until the introduction of steam, it was impossible to bring such productions by distant sea voyages, so as to compete with those raised in equally favourable situations within a few miles of the market at home. In these places, therefore, the peculiar evil which blasted all attempts at grain cultivation in the Campagna was not felt; and hence, though in the Roman states, and subject, in other respects, to precisely the same government as the Agro Romano, they exhibit not merely a good, but the most admirable cultivation.

If any doubt could exist on the subject, it would be removed by two other facts connected with agriculture on the shores of the Mediterranean; one in ancient and one in modern times.

The first of these is that while agriculture declined in Italy, as has been shown from the time of Tiberius, until at length nearly the whole plains of that peninsula were turned into grass, it, from the same date, took an extraordinary start in Spain and Lybia. And to such a length had the improvement of Africa, under the fostering influence of the market of Rome and Italy gone, that it contained, at the time of its invasion by the Vandals under Genseric, in the year 430 of the Christian era, twenty millions of inhabitants, and had come to be regarded with reason as the garden of the human race. "The long and narrow tract," says Gibbon, "of the African coast was filled, when the Vandals approached its shores, with frequent monuments of Roman art and magnificence; and the respective degrees of improvement might be accurately measured by the distance from Carthage and the Mediterranean. A simple reflection will impress every thinking mind with the clearest idea of its fertility and cultivation. The country was extremely populous; the inhabitants reserved a liberal supply for their own use; and the annual exportation, PARTICULARLY OF WHEAT, was so regular and plentiful, that Africa deserved the name of the common granary of Rome and of mankind."43 Nor had Spain flourished less during the long tranquillity and protection of the legions. In the year 409 after Christ, when it was first invaded by the barbarians, its situation is thus described by the great historian of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. "The situation of Spain, separated on all sides from the enemies of Rome by the sea, by the mountains, and by intermediate provinces, had secured the long tranquillity of that remote and sequestered country; and we may observe, as a sure symptom of domestic happiness, that in a period of 400 years, Spain furnished very few materials to the history of the Roman empire. The cities of Merida, Cordova, Seville, and Tarragona, were numbered with the most illustrious of the Roman world. The various plenty of the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms was improved and manufactured by the skill of an industrious people, and the peculiar advantages of naval stores contributed to support an extensive and profitable trade." And he adds, in a note, many particulars relative to the fertility and trade of Spain, may be found in Huet's Commerce des Anciens, c. 40, p. 228.44

These facts are very remarkable, and worthy of the most profound attention; for they point in a decisive manner, they afford the experimentum crucis as to the real cause of the long-continued and frightful decay of Italian agriculture during the reign of the emperors. For here, it appears, that during the four hundred years that the Western Empire endured, while the cultivation of grain in Italy was constantly declining, and at last wholly ceased, insomuch that the country relapsed entirely into a state of nature, or was devoted to the mere raising of grass for sheep and cattle, agriculture was flourishing in the highest degree in the remoter provinces of the Empire; and the exportation of grain from Africa had become so great and regular, that it had come to be regarded as the granaries of Rome and of the world! The government was the same, the slavery was the same, in Africa as in Italy. Yet in the one country agriculture rose, during four centuries, to the highest point of elevation; while in the other, during the same period, it sunk to the lowest depression, until it became wellnigh extinct, so far as the raising of grain was concerned. How did this come to pass? It could not have been that the labour of slaves was too costly to raise grain; for it was raised at a great profit, and to a prodigious extent, almost entirely by slaves, in Egypt and Lybia. What was it, then, which destroyed agriculture in Italy and Greece, while, under circumstances precisely similar in all respects but one, it was, at the very same time, rising to the very highest prosperity in Egypt, Lybia, and Spain? Evidently that one circumstance, and that was – that Italy and Greece were the heart of the empire, the theatre of long-established civilization, the abode of opulence, the seat of wealth, the centre to which riches flowed from the extremities of the empire. Pounds were plentiful there, and, consequently, labour was dear; in the provinces pence were few, and, therefore, it was cheap. It was impossible, under a free trade in grain, for the one to compete with the other. It is for the same reason that agricultural labour is now sixpence a-day in Poland, tenpence in Ireland, and two shillings in Great Britain.

The peculiar conformation of the Roman empire, while it facilitated in many respects its growth and final settlement under the dominion of the Capitol, led by a process not less certain, and still more rapid, to its ruin, when that empire was fully extended. If any one will look at the map, he will see that the Roman empire spread outwards from the shores of the Mediterranean. It embraced all the monarchies and republics which, in the preceding ages of the world, had grown up around that inland sea. Water, therefore, afforded the regular, certain, and cheap means of conveying goods and troops from one part of the empire to the other. Nature had spread out a vast system of internal navigation, which brought foreign trade in a manner to every man's door. The legions combated alternately on the plains of Germany, in the Caledonian woods, on the banks of the Euphrates, and at the foot of Mount Atlas. But much as this singular and apparently providential circumstance aided the growth, and for a season increased the strength of the empire, it secretly but certainly undermined its resources, and in the end proved its ruin. The free trade in grain which it necessarily brought with it, when the same dominion stretched over all Spain and Africa, and long-continued peace had brought their crops to compete with the Italian in the supply of the Roman, or the Grecian in that of the Constantinopolitan markets, destroyed the fabric the legions had reared. Italy could not compete with Lybia, Greece with Poland. Rome was supplied by the former, Constantinople by the latter. If the Mediterranean wafted the legions out in the rise of the empire, it wafted foreign grain in in its later stages, and the last undid all that the former had done. The race of agricultural freemen in Italy, the bone and muscle of the legions which had conquered the world, became extinct; the rabble of towns were unfit for the labours, and averse to the dangers of war; mercenaries became the only resource.

The fact in modern times, which illustrates and confirms the same view of the chief cause of the ruin of the Roman empire, is, that a similar effect has taken place, and is at this moment in full operation in Romelia, and all the environs of Constantinople. Every traveller in the East knows that desolation as complete as that of the Campagna of Rome pervades the whole environs of Constantinople; that the moment you emerge from the gates of that noble city, you find yourself in a wilderness, and that the grass comes up to our horse's girths all the way to Adrianople. "Romelia," says Slade, "if cultivated, would become the granary of the East;" whereas Constantinople depends on Odessa for daily bread. The burial-grounds, choked with weeds and underwood, constantly occurring in every traveller's route, far remote from habitations, are eloquent testimonials of continued depopulation. The living, too, are far apart; a town about every fifty miles; a village every ten miles, is deemed close; and horsemen meeting on the highway regard each other as objects of curiosity.45 This is the Agro Romano over again. Nor will it do to say, that it is the oppression of the Turkish government which occasions this desolation and destruction of the rural population; for many parts of Turkey are not only well cultivated but most densely peopled; as, for example, the broad tract of Mount Hœmus, where agriculture is in as admirable a state as in the mountains of Tuscany or Switzerland. "No peasantry in the world," says Slade, "are so well off as those of Bulgaria; the lowest of them has abundance of every thing – meat, poultry, eggs, milk, rice, cheese, wine, bread, good clothing, a warm dwelling, and a horse to ride; where is the tyranny under which the Christian subjects of the Porte are generally supposed to dwell? Among the Bulgarians certainly. I wish that, in every country, a traveller could pass from one end to the other, and find a good supper and warm fire in every cottage, as he can in this part of European Turkey."46 Clarke gives the same account of the peasantry of Parnassus and Olympia; and it is true generally of almost all the mountain districts of Turkey. How, then, does it happen that the rich and level plains of Romelia, at the gates of Constantinople, and thence over a breadth of an hundred and twenty miles to Adrianople, is a desert? Slade has explained it in a word. "Constantinople depends on Odessa for its daily bread." The cry for cheap bread in Constantinople, its noble harbour, and ready communication by water with Egypt on the one hand, and the Ukraine on the other, have done the whole. Romelia, like the Campagna of Rome, is a desert, because the market of Constantinople is lost to the Turkish cultivators; because grain can be brought cheaper from the Nile and the Wolga than raised at home, in consequence of the cheapness of labour in those remote provinces; and because the Turkish government, dreading an insurrection in the capital, have done nothing to protect native industry.

There are many countries to whom the most unlimited freedom in the importation of corn can do no injury. There are, in the first place, the great grain countries, such as Poland and the Ukraine: they have no more reason to dread the importation of grain than Newcastle that of coals, or the Scotch Highlands that of moor-game. In the next place, countries which are poor need never fear the importation of corn from abroad; for they have no money to pay for it; and, if they had, it would not be brought in at a profit, because currency being scarce, of course the price will be low. Lastly, Countries which have vast inland tracts, like Russia, Austria, France, and America, especially if no extensive system of water communication exists in their interior, have little reason to apprehend injury from the most unrestricted commerce in grain; because the cost of inland carriage on so bulky and heavy an article as corn is so considerable, that the produce of foreign harvests can never penetrate far into the interior, or come to supply a large portion of the population with food.

The countries which have reason to apprehend injury, and in the end destruction, to their native agriculture, from the unrestricted admission of foreign corn, are those which, though they may possess a territory in many places well adapted for the raising of grain crops, are yet rich, far advanced in civilization, with a narrow territory, and their principal towns on the sea-coast. They have every thing to dread from foreign importation; because both the plenty of currency, which opulence brings in its train, and the heavy public burdens with which it is invariably attended, render labour dear at home, by lowering the value of money, and raising the weight of taxation. If long continued, an unrestricted foreign importation cannot fail to ruin agriculture, and destroy domestic strength in such a state. Italy and Greece stood eminently in such a situation; for all their great towns were upon the sea-coast, their territory was narrow, and being successively the seats of empire, and the centres of long-continued opulence, money was more plentiful, and therefore production dearer than in those remote and poorer states from which grain might be brought to their great towns by sea carriage. In the present circumstances of this country, we would do well to bear in mind the following reflections of Sismondi, "It is not to no purpose that we have entered into the foregoing details concerning the state of agriculture in the neighbourhood of Rome; for we are persuaded that a universal tendency in Europe menaces us with the same calamities, even in those countries which at present seem to adopt an entirely opposite system; only the Romans have gone through the career, while we are only entering upon it."47

The times are past, indeed, when gratuitous distributions of grain will be made to an idle population, as under the Roman emperors, or bread be sold for centuries by government at a fixed and low price, as under their papal successors. But the same causes which produced these effects are still in full operation. The cry for cheap bread in a popular state, is as menacing as it was to the emperors or popes of Rome. The only difference is, the sacrifice of domestic industry is now more disguised. The thing is done, but it is done not openly by public deliveries of the foreign grain at low prices, but indirectly under the specious guise of free trade. Government does not say, "We will import Polish grain, and sell it permanently at thirty-six or forty shillings a quarter;" but it says, "we will open our harbours to the Polish farmers who can do so. We will admit grain duty free from a country where wages are sixpence a-day, and rents half-a-crown an acre." They thus force down the price of grain to the foreign level, augmented only by the cost and profit of importations, as effectually as ever did the emperors or Casa Annonariaof Rome.

And what has Rome – the urban population of Rome – for whose supposed interests, and in obedience to whose menacing cry, the Roman market has for eighteen centuries been supplied with foreign bread – what have they gained by this long continuation of government to their wishes? Sismondi has told us in one word – "In Rome there is no commerce between the town and the country." They would have foreign grain with its consequences, and they have had foreign grain with its consequences. And what have been these consequences? Why, that the Eternal City, which, even when taken by the Goths, had 1,200,000 inhabitants within its walls, can now scarcely number 170,000, and they almost entirely in poverty, and mainly supported by the influx and expenditure of foreigners. The Campagna, once so fruitful and so peopled, has become a desert. No inhabitant of the Roman states buys any thing in Rome. Their glory is departed – it has gone to other people and other lands. And what would have been the result if this wretched concession to the blind and unforeseeing popular clamour had not taken place? Why, that Rome would have been what Naples – where domestic industry is protected – has become; it would have numbered 400,000 busy and active citizens within its walls. The Campagna would have been what the marches of Ancona now are. Between Rome and the Campagna, a million of happy and industrious human beings would have existed in the Agro Romano, independent of all the world, mutually nourishing and supporting each other; instead of an hundred and seventy thousand indolent and inactive citizens of a town, painfully dependent on foreign supplies for bread, and on foreign gold for the means of purchasing it.

Disastrous as have been the consequences of a free trade in grain to the Roman States, alike in ancient and modern times, it was introduced by its rulers in antiquity under the influence of noble and enlightened principles. The whole civilized world was then one state; the banks of the Nile and the plains of Lybia acknowledged the sway of the emperors, as much as the shores of the Tiber or the fields of the Campagna. When the Roman government, ruling so mighty a dominion, permitted the harvests of Africa and the Ukraine to supplant those of Italy and Greece, they did no more than justice to their varied subjects. Magnanimously overlooking local interests and desires, they extended their vision over the whole civilized world, and

"View'd with equal eyes, as lords of all,"

their subjects, whether in Italy, Spain, Egypt, or Lybia. Though the seat of government was locally on the Tiber, they administered for the interest of the whole civilized world, alike far and near. If the Campagna was ruined, the Delta of Egypt flourished! If the plains of Umbria were desolate, those of Lybia and Spain, equally parts of the empire, were waving with grain. But can the same be said of England, now proclaiming a free trade in grain, not merely with her colonies or distant provinces, but with her rivals or her enemies? Not merely with Canada and Hindostan, but with Russia and America? With countries jealous of her power, envious of her fame, covetous of her riches. What should we have said of the wisdom of the Romans, if they had sacrificed Italian to African agriculture in the days of Hannibal? If they had put it into the power of the Carthaginian Senate to have said, "We will not arm our galleys; we will not levy armies; we will prohibit the importation of African grain, and starve you into submission?" How is England to maintain her independence, if the autocrat of Russia, by issuing his orders from St Petersburg, can at any moment stop the importation of ten millions of quarters of foreign grain, that is, a sixth of our whole annual consumption? And are we to render penniless our home customers, not in order to promote the interest of the distant parts of our empire, but in order to enrich and vivify our enemies?

It is said public opinion runs in favour of such a change; that the manufacturing has become the dominant interest in the state; that wages must at all hazards be beat down to the continental level; and that, right or wrong, the thing must be done. Whether this is the case or not, time, and possibly a general election, will show. Sometimes those who are the most noisy, are not the most numerous. Certain it is, that in 1841 a vast majority both of the electors and the people were unanimous in favour of protection. But, be the present opinion of the majority what it may, that will not alter the nature of things – It will not render that wise which is unwise. Public opinion in Athens, in the time of Demosthenes, was nearly unanimous to apply the public funds to the support of the theatres instead of the army, and they got the battle of Chæronea, and subjection by Philip, for their reward. Public opinion in Europe was unanimous in favour of the Crusades, and millions of brave men left their bones in Asia in consequence. The Senate of Carthage, yielding to the wishes of the majority of their democratic community, refused to send succours to Hannibal in Italy; and they brought, in consequence, the legions of Scipio Africanus round their walls. Public opinion in France was unanimous in favour of the expedition to Moscow. "They regarded it," says Segur, "as a mere hunting party of six months;" but that did not hinder it from bringing the Cossacks to Paris. The old Romans were unanimous in their cry for cheap bread, and they brought the Gothic trumpet to their gates from its effects. A vast majority of the electors of Great Britain in 1831, were in favour of Reform: out of 101, 98 county members were returned in the liberal interest; and now they have got their reward, in seeing the Reformed Parliament preparing to abolish all protection to native industry. All the greatest and most destructive calamities recorded in history have been brought about, not only with the concurrence, but in obedience to the fierce demand of the majority. Protection to domestic industry, at home or colonial, is the unseen but strongly felt bond which unites together the far distant provinces of the British empire by the firm bond of mutual interest.

MR BROOKE OF BORNEO

48On the 19th of August last, some twenty boats belonging to her Majesty's ships, Agincourt, Vestal, Dædalus, Wolverine, Cruiser, and Vixen, and containing about five hundred men, attacked and destroyed in the Malladu, a river of the Eastern Archipelago, the forts of Seriff Housman, a notorious and daring pirate, whose crimes had paralysed the commerce of the seas of Borneo, and finally rendered British interference absolutely necessary for the security of British life and property. The action was one of the many that the suppression of piracy in these regions has demanded – was gallantly fought, and full reported in the journals of the time; – a narrow river, with two forts mounting eleven or twelve heavy guns, (and defended by from five hundred to one thousand fighting men,) protected by a strong and well-contrived boom, was the position of the enemy. The English boats took the bull by the horns – cut away part of the boom under a heavy fire; advanced and carried the place in a fight protracted for fifty minutes. The enemy fought well, and stood manfully to their guns. The mate of the Wolverine fell mortally wounded whilst working at the boom, axe in hand; but his death was avenged by a wholesale slaughter of the pirates. At two minutes to nine, those who had remained on board the Vixen heard the report of the first heavy gun, and the first column of black smoke proclaimed that the village was fired. On the evening of the 19th, a detachment of ten boats, with fresh men and officers, quitted the Vixen, and arrived at the forts shortly after daylight. The work of destruction was complete. The boom, above spoken of, was ingeniously fastened with the chain-cable of a vessel of three hundred or four hundred tons; other chains, for darker purposes, were discovered in the town; a ship's long-boat; two ship's bells, one ornamented with grapes and vine leaves, and marked "Wilhelm Ludwig, Bremen," and every other description of ship's furniture. Some piratical boats were burned, twenty-four brass guns captured; the other guns spiked or otherwise destroyed. Malladu ceased to exist; the power of Seriff Housman was extinguished in a day.