| Show The Poverty of Italy Italys poverty is attributable in a great measure to the lack of private initiative on the part of the Italian people Italy was in the past too much governed either for good or ill In Naples and Sicily the tyranny of Bom ba and his predecessors utterly destroyed destroy-ed the power of Initiative If to lift your hand to help yourself and to be busy self reliant and independent is to be per se suspect and probably lead to pour ruin you very soon lose the desire or the power to initiative and instead wait too see what the government will do It was the same in the well governed grand duchies People in Tuscany were so well looked after patted dpwn and coddled that they lost the use of their mental sinews There has of course been a great reaction from the timidity and lack of push since the unification of Italy and a large section of the community now seem as energetic as if they were Frenchmen French-men or Germans But though the visible vis-ible population may seem energetic and capable of working out their own salvation sal-vation the invisible population which is twenty times more numerous is still utterly incapable of making strong or decided movements on its own account ac-count It is capable of working and does work hard at its appointed toil but it has not yet felt that touch of hopeful endrgy which is the true philosophers phil-osophers stone and turns all things to gold The great maRS of the Italian population popu-lation goes on its way not sadthe people are naturally joyousbut with the belief that nothing much beyond daily sustenance is to be got out of work Their delight is in fireworks and the sunshine and the festa not Insetting In-setting on and making things hum in business In a word Italy is like a man who has been paralyzed and has partifelly recovered Tha brain is quite active and the arms have their full vigor but the lower limbs still move with difficulty and uncertainty Ultimately no doubt the legs and the rest of the body will recover as completely com-pletely as the arms but till they do the man is weak The Spectator |
