A DARK PICTURE by Catholic Mirror

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Nov 18, 1889

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 15, No. 44.

A DARK PICTURE.

By Catholic Mirror

THE triple alliance, which includes Italy, was formed by Bismarck to overawe France and to protect Germany against the power of Russia. The price paid to Italy was non-intervention on behalf of the pope’s temporal power, and the cost to Italy—national impoverishment. Some idea of the position in which the later school of Italian statesmen have placed their country, by reversing the policy of “keeping her hands free,” may be seen in the following statement of her finances, which the Nation gives:—

The national debt, which, on the 31st of December, 1861, stood at £120,000,000 sterling, has reached the enormous figure of £520,000,000, with an annual charge of £23,000,000, exceeding considerably that sustained by the debt of the United Kingdom, and forming almost two-fifths of the entire expenditure of the country. This expenditure for the present year was placed at £63,000,000, but amounts, owing to the extra £5,000,000 voted for the army and the navy, to £68,000,000—an expenditure far exceeding that of England in times of peace since 1868, exceeding considerably the charges of the Federal budget of the United States, which has a population more than double that of Italy, and the greatest amount of wealth existing in the world.

This magnitude of public debt, the increasing misery, the increasing deficit, the enormous taxation, are as a terrible malady which must be cured at any cost. How can it be cured? Further taxation is impossible—the land can bear no more; the land tax, unequally distributed (as the territorial census, ever promised, is not yet forthcoming), amounts in certain portions of Italy to eighty-seven and ninety per cent. of the estimated value. Hence small proprietors have been taxed out of existence; the larger ones, mortgaged up to their eyes, cannot spend sufficiently in manure or modern agricultural implements, still less in labor. After starving upon the impossible pittance of from four pence to eight pence a day, rainy days and holidays excepted, the surplus agricultural population has emigrated, chiefly to Brazil and Buenos Ayres, whence come sad accounts and appeals for money to return. Every article of consumption is overtaxed at the gates of every city, so that if free trade exists, in name at least, for the produce of other nations, Italy's own produce in cattle, wine, poultry, fruit, etc., is taxed often at the rate of twenty per cent. Take, for example, wine. In the vineyards round Florence this year you could buy a hundred liters for five dollars; once within the gates, they cost seven.

As a proof that no other tax can be borne, that none of the old taxes, "on a broad basis," can be renewed, you have the fact that when, during the present year, it was demonstrated to the House that fresh special, extraordinary credits must be accorded for the army and navy, Crispi, with all his energy and influence, could only extract an unwilling vote for the extra millions, saddled with "a prohibition against levying any extra tax." In this lies the gist of the question. The triple alliance compels Italy, who, in 1879, had a standing army of some 700,000 men on the rolls, with a militia of other 900,000, to keep under arms permanently or temporarily nearly a million of men, her mobile and territorial militia, ready for call. Without going into tedious statistical details, it is easy to understand the cost of the equipment and maintenance of the permanent army of useless hands, of the equipment, traveling expenses, and armament of the various categories called out for military exercises for from twenty days to one month, or more, every year. Add to this the expenses of war material, fortifications, etc., and it is apparent that the country is and must remain crippled as long as such a state of things exists. We do not here allude to the navy, which is on all hands admitted to be an absolute necessity for Italy as a defense.—Catholic Mirror.