Absolute power may make laws for the learned as well as unlearned: but freedom alone, and the emulation excited, and the opportunities of employment which present themselves, in a well constituted society, will call forth the energies of the human mind and give them due effect.

REVENUE.

The marquis de Pombal's financial regulations redound much to his credit. "Previous to his ministry," says Dumouriez, "the finances of Portugal were in a most deplorable state of administration, 22,000 clerks or writers, divided into a considerable number of offices, devoured the revenues, embroiled the accounts, and swallowed up the treasure. The "minister, by a single edict of the month of october 1761, reduced this "enormous crowd of blood-suckers to thirty-two well qualified and chosen 66 persons.

66

The revenue, according to Zimmermann, amounts to £.1,800,000.This account corresponds with that of Dumouriez; who says that there are various opinions respecting it; some calculating it at 70,000,000, and some at 80,000,000 livres."

NAVY.

The marquis's regulations respecting the navy, likewise, appear to have considerable merit. "Five or six disabled ships and as many frigates " without officers or sailors constituted the whole force of Portugal.". Having procured the appointment of his brother to the office of secretary of the marine department, that he might have it more completely under his direction, he, in seven or eight years, put it upon a respectable footing. The actual state of the navy (in 1766) says Dumouriez, "sists of ten ships of the line and double that number of frigates, all "built of the finest Brazil timber."-Zimmermann says that, in 1785, "the navy consisted of twenty-four ships; thirteen of which were of "the line."

66

"con

ARMY.

According to the establishment of the year 1772, the army ought to consist of 35,998 men; viz. thirty-eight regiments of foot, and twelve of cavalry.-Beside these, there is a militia, formed from among the peasantry.°

9 Zimmermann. 337.

ITALY.

ITALY.

CHARACTER AND REVOLUTIONS.

NO part of the world has undergone more signal changes, whether we respect the people or the country itself, than Italy.-The Romans, a warlike people, became dissolute and luxurious, and, by degrees, enervated, from what may be termed an unnatural wealth, arising from conquest.— Their grandeur was ill-founded. And the decline and final extinction of the western empire was as rapid and wonderful as its rise and unexampled extent of dominion and power.

The middle ages present an entire new state of things. The former inhabitants of Italy were not absolutely exterminated by the irruption of the barbarous hordes; but they were driven for refuge to places of the greatest security.-Venice either was founded in consequence of the desolation of the territories near the Adriatic by the Huns, or afforded an asylum to those who were expelled from them; and, on account of its local advantages and its security, it became the favourite seat of com

merce.

It was afterwards rivalled by Genoa and other cities, which, amidst the changes that took place in their political circumstances in the course of the middle ages, laid the foundation of an extensive trade, by which they acquired vast wealth, the memorials of which remain in their sumptuous palaces and collections of paintings and statuary.

When the course of trade was changed by the discovery of the passage to the East Indies by the Cape of Good Hope, the Italian merchants

were

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the

were deprived of their sources of wealth: and those nobles whose ancestors had acquired princely fortunes by commerce, not being prepared to meet the change in the effective value of money, which took place at the same period, were left with the habits consequent on riches, without the means of supporting that magnificent style of living to which they had been accustomed. Luxury and sloth debased their spirits, at the same time that they enervated their bodies.-An English traveller who visited Italy above an hundred years since, speaking of the Venetians, says, young nobility are so generally corrupted in their morals, and so given up "to a most supine ignorance of all sort of knowledge, that a man cannot easily imagine to what a height this is grown: and for military courage there is scarce so much as the ambition of being thought brave remaining among the greater part of them. It seemed to me a strange thing to "see the Broglio so full of graceful young senators and nobles, when "there was so glorious a war on foot with the Turks, but instead of being "heated in point of honour to hazard their lives, they rather think it an "extravagant piece of folly for them to go and hazard it when a little money can hire strangers that do it on such easy terms; and thus their arms are in the hands of strangers, while they stay at home managing their intrigues in the Broglio, and dissolving their spirits among their sc courtezans. And the reputation of their service is of late years so "much sunk that it is very strange to see so many come to a service so decried, where there is so little care had of the soldiers, and so little regard had to the officers: the arrears are so slowly paid; and the "rewards are so scantly distributed, that if they do not change their "maxims they may come to feel this very sensibly; for as their subjects "are not acquainted with warlike matters, so the nobility have no sort of "ambition that way, and strangers are extremely disgusted. It is chiefly "to the conjuncture of affairs that they owe their safety, for the feebleness "of all their neighbours, the Turk, the emperor, the king of Spain, the

pope, and the duke of Mantua, preserves them from the apprehension " of an invasion, and the quarrels, and degeneracy of their subjects, "save them from the fears of a revolt, but a formidable neighbour would "put them hard to it." -Such was the character then borne by the Venetians.

"The

Venetians. Nor was it confined to the subjects of this republic. "worst people of all Italy," says the same writer, "are the Genoese, and "the most generally corrupted in their morals." Nor were laziness and vice confined to any particular description of people. "It amazes a stranger," says he," to see in their little towns the whole men of the town walking "in the market places in their torn cloaks." Having no employment, and being easily subsisted, they appear to derive their chief enjoyment from the indulgence of a nerveless indolence.

These circumstances are deserving our notice, because they enable us to account for the late revolutions in Italy. When a person observes a country divided into small states, without any principle of union, and a people without morals or a sense of national honour, far from being surprised that they have been overrun and subjugated, he will be ready to exclaim with Tiberius, O homines ad servitutem paratos. It has been observed, that slaves make tyrants, not tyrants slaves. And it may be observed with equal truth, that an enervated and unwarlike people invite conquerors, and are destined to be held in thraldom by some state or other, till their character and circumstances shall be essentially changed. What the remote effect of the late revolution will be, time alone can prove. As the division of the country into small states, impressing a sense of weakness, appears to have concurred with personal character in effecting their subjugation, so it is highly probable that, when an union into one state shall have given them a sense of strength, the confidence arising from it will induce them at some future period to assert their independency, and to unite with Austria to balance the power of their conqueror. The Italians, freed from the disgrace of dependency, may then again display that genius for the liberal arts and the sciences for which they have been celebrated; and they may

ve that, although their morals and their whole character have been depraved through 'accidental circumstances, and particularly that of a wretched system of government, they have still the latent principles of respectability, and are capable of displaying talents and virtues worthy of their ancestors.

b Tacit. Annales. 3. 65.

POPULATION