pressing the point of the withers against the yoke, and not at all by the bows; and in examining them, the master and man contended that the strength of an ox lies there, and not in his shoulders, nor in his head, or roots of the horns. It appears a strange practice, but it is yet stranger, that yoke a beast how you will, he does his work, and apparently without distress.

Chentale to Racconis.... They have here a most singular custom, which is that of shovelling all the moveable soil of a field into heaps of a large load, earth, stubble, and weeds; they say, per ingrassare la terra.

To Turin.... The lands sown with wheat, on three feet ridges, is worked fine with a machine of wood, at the end of a handle, formed nearly like a hoe. Wherever one sees these operose niceties, we may conclude the farms are very small.

Turin....Plough with a pair of oxen, no reins, no driver; go to work at five in the morning, and hold it till night, except one hour and a half at dinner, that is twelve hours work, and do a gionarta a day, something under an acre, one bout to a three feet ridge, reversing.

Vercelli....Price of a ploughing, 31⁄2 livres per giornata, this is about 3s. 4d. per English acre.

MILANESE.... Milan to Pavia.... Hire of a ploughman and pair of oxen, 4 livres a day, but if no food for the oxen, 6 livres. The ploughs here vary from those of Piedmont. The handles are not above half as long, and are called stiva; the beam, buretto; the coulter, coltura; the share, massa; the earth-board, orechio; the land-board, orechini. There is a most gross and absurd error in all the ploughs I saw, which is the position of the coulter, eighteen or twenty degrees too much to the land; every one who is acquainted with the right structure of a plough, knows that it should just clear the share; this great variation from the right line, must add greatly to the draft; and in difficult land fatigue the cattle.

Mozzatta.... A light poor plough, the share with a double fin, but so narrow as to cut only four inches of the furrow, the heel of the plough is nine or ten inches wide, the work it performs is mere scratching, and the land they were sowing with wheat, a bed of triticum repens and agrostis stolonifera. They have here a great opinion of digging; and a proverb which says, La vanga ha la punta d'oro. -The spade has the point of gold.

Codogno....Here as near Milan, the coulters are many degrees out of the line of the share, and the shares not more than four inches wide. Shocking!

Codogno to Crema.... The harrows in this country have handles to them of wood; I am amazed that this practice is not universal; yet I never saw it before, except on my own farm.

VENETIAN STATE.... Bergamo....In passing from Vaprio to this place, they are ploughing with a pair of oxen a-breast, and two horses before them in a line; wheelploughs, share five inches wide, and with a double fin. Near the town of Bergamo, I saw them ploughing a maize stubble for wheat, as full of grass almost as a meadow: a lad drives, and another stout one attends to clear the coulter from grass, &c. the plough low on the carriage, with wheels, the breast all iron, and not ill formed, the fin of the share double, and about eight inches wide, the coulter nearly in the same direction as the share, but clearing four inches to the land side, two short handles. The furrow full nine inches deep, but crooked, irregular, and bad work. Notwithstanding this depth, they are great friends to the spade. From four to six for one, are common crops with the plough, but twelve to fourteen for one are gained by the spade. There must be an inaccuraccy in this, the difference cannot be owing merely to digging. We may be certain that the husbandry in other respects must be much better.

Vicenza.... They here plough with four oxen in harness, many of them are of an irongrey colour, with upright thick ugly horns. Some however are fine large beasts. Their plough is a strange tool; it is two feet four inches of Vicenza wide (their foot is above one and a half English :) the share has a double fin of a foot wide, consequently cuts half a foot in the furrow of more than two; has wheels, but no coulter. The land-board is called fondelo; the share, vomero; the earth-board, or breast, arsedeman; two short handles, the left sinistrale; the right brancolé; the beam, pertica.

ECCLESIASTICAL STATE.... Bologna.... The coulters of the ploughs here stand sixteen degrees from the right line, an incredible blunder, had I not before met with it in the Milanese. The beam, pertica; the handles, stiva; the mould-board, assa; the share, gomiera; the ground-rest, nervo del socco; the coulter, coutre.

TUSCANY.... Florence.... Here the beam is called stanga, and bura; the single handle, stagola; the body of the plough, chicapo di aratro; the share, vangheggiola. The body is hewn out of one large piece of wood, the fin double, and seven or eight inches wide. I see no ploughing but on three feet ridge-work, reversing. They are now sowing wheat among tares, about six inches high, and plough both in together at one furrow, splitting the ridges with a double-breast plough. Oxen are used that draw by the nape of the neck; then women with a kind of half pick, called marona, work the ridge fine. No dressing of the seed against smut, &c.

PARMA.... The plough here has wheels, a single-breast that turns to the right, and pretty well, a double finned share, and the coulter standing three inches to the left of the right line; drawn by two oxen, and two cows, with a driver.

SAVOY.... The oxen in the vale of Chamberry, draw not only by the horns, the yokes bound to them in the common way by leathers, but they have a double bar, one against the shoulders, as if the beast might be able to draw by both at pleasure.

MANURES.

Nice....There is here a greater attention paid to saving and using night soil, than even in Flanders itself. There is not a necessary in the town which is not made an object of revenue, and reserved or granted by lease. In all the passages between the walls of gardens in the environs, are necessaries made for passengers. The contents are carried away regularly in barrels, on asses and mules, and being mixed with water, is given regularly to the vegetables of the gardens. The last winter having damaged many orange trees, they pruned off the damaged branches, and to encourage them to shoot again strongly, the roots are dug around, and at the foot of each tree a good mess of this invigorating manure is buried.

MILANESE.... Milan.... Night soil is greatly valued, it is bought at a good price, and spread on sowing wheat.

STATE OF VENICE.... Vicenza.... Sig. Giacomello has tried gypsum with success, broken small and calcined in an oven, also in a lime kiln, pulverises it finely and sifts it. He remarks that this is the chief use of calcination. Uses it for clover, lucern, and meadows; sows it as a top dressing on those plants, just as they rise; never buries it; mixes with sand, in order to spread equally; best to sow it when the land is dry, never when the plants are high and wet; quantity, one hundred and forty pounds grosso, upon one thousand two hundred and fifty tavoli of Treviso. If the land is bad, three hundred pounds, and on middling, two hundred pounds. The effect on perennial clover, upon good land, is such, that any greater crops would rot on the ground. The same quantity of meadow that gives without gypsum, a carro of hay, will, with that manure, spread about the 11th of November, produce two carri the year following; three carri the year after that; and on some meadows even to four carri. On old poor meadows, full of hard and bad grasses, this manure does not take effect so soon, and requires a larger quantity of gypsum. (Modi di aumentare i Bestiami, 1777, p. 9.)

Sig. Pieropan informed me that this manure has been used here for eight years with much success, especially on all dry lands, but is good for nothing on wet ones; it is supposed to act by attracting moisture; four hundred pounds of twelve ounces are spread on a campo; best for clover, wheat, or natural grass. It is said to force land so much, that it demands more dung than if no gypsum had been spread.

Parma to Piacenza.... The dunghills in this country are neatly squared heaps.

CHAP. XXXIV....OF THE ENCOURAGEMENT AND DEPRESSION OF AGRICULTURE.

IN every country through which an inquisitive man may travel, there can be no object of his inquiries more important than these-How far is government, and all the circumstances any way dependent on government, favourable or unfavourable to the culture of the earth? In truth, this question involves the whole circle of the political science. In so immense a range, it is in the power of an individual to give but a few sketches, which may afterwards, by some masterly hands, be melted into one harmonious piece. All the writings on political economy which I have hitherto read, are filled too much with reasonings, yet experiment ought to be the only foundation. The facts which I have collected under this head, may be thus arranged: 1. Government. 2. Taxation, 3. Tythe. 4. Commerce. 5. Population. 6. Prohibitions. 7. Prices of commodities.

SECT. I.... OF GOVERNMENT.

It is a vulgar error of no inconsiderable magnitude, to imagine, as many writers have done, that all arbitrary governments are the same. Whoever travels into countries under various forms of dominion, will find from innumerable circumstances, that strong distinctions are to be made. The mildness of that of France can never be mistaken, which was so tempered by what was the manners of the people as to be free in comparison with some others. Among the Italian states the difference will be found to be considerable.

The dominion of the house of Austria has been by some considered as hard, harsh, and unfeeling, till the admirable Leopold retrieved, by the wisdom and humanity of his government in Tuscany, the character of his house. By the constitution of Milan, no new tax could be assessed or levied without the consent of the states, but Mary Theresa, about the year 1755, abolished the states themselves, which never were restored till Leopold came to the throne. It may easily be conceived, that such a system of despotism was followed by measures that partook of its spirit; the general farms, by which I mean the farming of the taxes, which had from the beginning of the present century been grievous to the people, became doubly so about the year 1753, when new ones were established. The administration of these farms was cruel, or rather infamous; and the ruin brought on numbers for the smallest infraction of the regulations, spread a horror against the government through every corner of the Milanese, and tended strongly to occasion a declension in every source of national prosperity. The abolition of these farms was the work of the emperor Joseph, who heard such a reiteration of complaints against the farmers, whose great wealth* rendered them doubly odious, that he made such representations to his mother as were effectual, and they were abolished about eighteen years ago. The present emperor no sooner came to the throne, than he re-established that constitution of which his mother had deprived the Milanese; the states and the senate were restored, and also the right of the states to appoint what is called an orator to Vienna, in fact, an ambassador paid by themselves, to lay their representations before the court without the intervention of a governor, a right which cannot be deemed unimportant. So that at present the government of Milan, though by no means such as can meet our ideas of freedom, is yet a kind of limited monarchy; for assuredly that government which does not possess the power of taxation, must be esteemed such.

Count Firmian, while prime minister for the Milanese, was the author of a law, which, if it could be adopted in England, would be worth an hundred millions to us. It obliges all communities, &c. that possess waste or uncultivated lands, to sell them to any one that offers a price, in order to cultivate them, but they have the necessary liberty of publishing the price offered, and receiving proposals of a better; a fair auction takes place, and the lands become cultivated. Such possessors of wastes are even obliged to let them at an annual rent for ever by the same process, if any offer or rent is made to them, be it as low as possible. And the effect of this excellent law has been the cultivation of many wastes, but not all; for on returning from Mozzatta to Milan, I passed a very extensive one, highly capable of profitable cultivation.

VENICE.... The celebrated government of this republic, is certainly the most respectable that exists in the world, in point of duration, since it has lasted without any material change, and without its capital being attacked for 1300 years, while all the rest of Europe and of Asia has been subject to innumerable revolutions, and the bloodiest wars and massacres, even in the very seat of empire. That duration is one of the first objects of a government, can never admit a doubt, since all other merit, however it may approach human perfection, is nothing without this. A well organized aristocracy, in which the greatest mass of the wisdom of the community shall be found in a senate, seems from the vast and important experiment of this celebrated republic, to be essentially necessary to secure the duration of any government. But the duration of an evil becomes a mischief instead of an advantage: and that tyranny which is so politically organized as to promise an immense duration, is but the more justly to be abominated. The knowledge which will result from long experience, may probably teach mankind the right composition of a mingled form, in which the aristocratic portion will give duration and firmness; the democracy, freedom; and the conformation of executive power, energy and execution. Perhaps the British government approaches the nearest to such a description.

The reputation of the Venetian government is now its only support, a reputation which it does not at present merit in the smallest degree: but as this idea is directly contrary to the accounts given by many travellers, I feel it necessary to premise, that I should think it merely trifling with the reader to travel to Venice in order to write dissertations in my own name, on the government of that republic; I do no more than hold the pen to report the opinions of Italians, on whose judgment I have every reason to rely, and as exaggerated panegyrics have been published of the government of this state, it is fair to hear what may be urged on the other side of the question.

* One of them now living, count de Crepy (what a plague have such fellows to do with titles, unless to be written on the gallows on which they are hanged?) has between 20 and 30,000 zecchini a year in land. He was originally a poor boy, that sold cloth on a mule at Bergamo; one of his commis made 100,000 zecchini.

For twenty years past, there has been in the republic little more than a multiplication of abuses, so that almost every circumstance which has been condemned in the arbitrary governments of Europe, is now to be found in that of Venice. And as an instance of the principles on which they govern their provinces, that of Istria was quoted. 1. Το preserve the woods (which belong to the prince) they prevent the people from turning any cattle into them; and if any man cut a tree, he is infalliby sent to the gallies, which has driven numbers out of that part of the country where the woods are situated. 2. There are great opportunities of making salt, and the pans might be numerous, but it is a monopoly held by the state; they purchase a certain quantity, at 10s. French, per quintal, and if more than the specified quantity be made, it is lodged in their magazines on credit, and it may be two, three, or four years before the maker of it be paid. 3. Oil is a monoply of the city of Venice; none can be sold but through that city, by which transit, an opportunity is taken to levy two ducats (each 4 livres of France) per barrel of one hundred pounds, and five more entree into Venice. 4. The coast abounds remarkably with fish, which are taken in almost any quantity; salt is on the spot, yet no use can be made of it but by contraband, except for Venice singly. Thus a great trade in barrelled fish is foregone, in order to make a whole province beasts of burthen to a single city. 5. The heavy tax of a stajo of wheat, one hundred and thirty pounds, is laid on each head of a family, payable to the Venetian bailiff.

The practical result of such principles of government, confirms whatever condemnation theory could pronounce. Every part of the province, except a district that is more favoured than the rest in soil and climate, is depopulated; and so much are the woods preferred to the people, that parts which once abounded with men, are become deserts; and the small population remaining in other parts, is every day diminishing. Dalmatia is in a yet worse state: for the greater part is a real desert: in 1781 and 1782, no less than twelve thousand families emigrated from the province. As I have not travelled in these provinces, I do no more than report the account given by well informed Italians, though not residing in the territories of the republic. Before the government of this stern aristocracy is made the subject of exaggerated praise, let facts counter to these be made the foundation. But farther,

In the immediate operations of their government at home, the same weakness is found. Their poverty has increased with their revenue; they have raised the leases of the farmers general (for that odious collection is the mode they pursue) considerably; and near twenty years ago they seized many of the possessions of the monks: that act for which the national assembly of France has been condemned; but which, in the hands of numerous other governments, has either passed without animadversion, or has been commended. They did the same with the estates of some of the hospitals, but though such exertions have raised their revenue to 6,100,000 ducats (1,054,0001.) yet they have found their affairs in such a situation, from bad management, that they have been obliged to sell the offices, which were in better times granted to merit; and committed a sort of bankruptcy, by reducing the interest of their old debts from 5 to 3 per cent. Their credit is at so low an ebb, that no longer ago than last June, they opened a subscription to fund 700,000 ducats, and notwithstanding every art, could procure no more than about 300,000. Instead of their famous chain, which marked the wisdom of their œconomy, their treasury is without a sol: and to shew the apprehensions they have of provinces under their dominion throwing off their yoke, if they are at a small distance from the seat of government, the state makes a distinction in the political treatment of the Bergamasque and Brescian territories, from those nearer to Venice, in respect to privileges, punishments, taxes, &c. No favourable feature of their government; and which shews that they think the people made for their city.